CHENNAI : In 1987, when Punjab was grappling with chaos and violence, actor Sunil Dutt and his daughter Priya Dutt commenced a 2,000-kilometer, 76-day Mahashanti Padyatra (foot trip) from Bombay to Amritsar (Golden Temple) to promote communal unity. In 2017, when Gita Balakrishnan read about this walk, she was blown away by the crux of this concept of creating awareness. “I thought it would be lovely to discover India on foot. And it took me almost five years to do it. Initially, the idea was to explore the five climatic zones, along with students, but eventually, I zeroed in on a solo walk from Kolkata to Delhi. It was important for me to do it alone as it was also a personal journey. The images of all the migrant workers walking back during lockdown struck me very hard. So I committed to that first walk in July 2021,” shares the 55-year-old architect.
This year, Gita has set out on a walk from Chennai to Bengaluru in the Walk for Arcause 4.0. The 320-kilometer foot tour, hosted by Mphasis in collaboration with the AVAS Trust, aims to raise awareness among architects and the design community about how their work may promote inclusion and accessibility via social design.
A personal mission
Gita’s first walk was 1,700 km, the longest among all her walks. In October 2022, she set off to Dhaka. In September 2023, she ventured on a short walk from Konark to Puri and then to Bhubaneswar. The recent walk, she shares, provided a chance to connect with varied group of participants, including people with disabilities, architecture students, the elderly, and NGO representatives, along the way to find unique ideas for responsible design.
The walk that started from The Museum of Possibilities, Chennai, on January 7, is set to end on January 28 at the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru. Gita says, “There is an empowerment corridor at the Marina beach which is made of wood by the Museum of Possibilities. It is the only place where people with disabilities can walk up to the water or wheel themselves in a wheelchair as walking on sand can be very difficult. The Museum of Possibilities demonstrates how common people can make small changes in their own homes to make things convenient for persons with disabilities. So starting the walk from a place like that was a fabulous experience.”
Inculcating empathy
Gita affirms that this walk is very different from the earlier walks where she was clocking a lot more in terms of mileage. She says, “I was doing 25 to 40 kilometers and the average was about 30 to 32 kilometers per day. So this time, there is a clear focus on universal design and its accessibility where every day a formal interaction is curated. I need about two and a half hours every day for the interaction itself. So the target of walking this time is not more than 20 kilometers a day.”
She wakes up early and leaves by 4.30 am, before sunrise. She says, “The south of India wakes up early. In certain locations where I have walked before, the first one and a half hours will be spent in contemplation and then you start meeting people. Here, I start meeting people very early. Even if there is a small group, I stop and chat. If kids are going to school, I sit and chat with them. I carry a laptop with presentations for the formal presentations where I interact after the walk is over. For the informal ones, we carry flashcards, colourful ones that tell stories.” Narrating one interaction she had, Gita says, “I met Prabhakar, a wheelchair user, who’s playing in the Tamil Nadu Wheelchair Cricket Team. He has played in Odisha and other places. I asked him how the city and all the travelling are for him. He shared that he was quite comfortable because he had a motorised wheelchair. He is also a lab technician and the hospital is equipped to take care of his needs. However, he mentioned that getting on a train is a bit of a task. He has to get out of his wheelchair and crawl up the steps. Problems like these have to do with design, it’s just a matter of thinking. So all designers need to keep these things in mind when they are designing.”
On a parting note, Gita says that the walk is about bringing issues to the forefront and developing empathy in people.