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METROSCAPE
Building Boy
The Purpose:
Architect Gautam Bhatia has been faithfully jeering the absurdities of
Indian urban architecture for years now (through both treatise and tongue),
so it was logical that he would shift to draughtsmanship as another means
of popular sneer. But at a recent show of 50-odd drawings at Delhi's India
Habitat Centre Bhatia's objective was more wholesome: to explore the extent
of architectural possibilities, both real and imagined. And a chance to
show that he could do some good sketching as well.
The guffaws: Upwardly Mobile Homes acquire
a literal and subverted definition when expensive houses are carted on
a Tata-look-alike lorry. The Tower of Babble showcases Early Housing Board,
Late PWD, Early Maurya Sheraton, Bania Gothic, Neo Greater Kailash and
31 other distinct Delhi landscapes.
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CONCRETE SHOW: Tower of Babble (left); Bhatia
and his sculpture
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The Greater Kailash obsession: The largely
nouveau riche colony in Delhi was where Bhatia roamed around as a child
and saw the most "insanely funny buildings" or "baroque
palaces". His grouse: why can't buildings be more in harmony with
their surroundings?
Social message: Yes, there's one here
too. Three religions come together in a hallucinatory architectural fellowship
called "Courtyard of the Friday mosque of St John the Baptist of
Khajuraho". (In other words temple shikhars, bulbous domes and Victorian
plinths.)
The sculptures: Slices of figures that
look like they are going to be skewered for a barbecue. Others are so
elastic that they could get 360 degrees twice over. "They're my antidote
to the humdrum of day-to-day architecture," says Bhatia. Need another
for GK and the rest of Delhi.
—Anshul Avijit
THE WHITE WAY: Here's
some white metal to soothe a carat-crazy nation. For all those whose blood
pressures drop with rising gold prices there is something to look forward
to with the launch of the India Ogawa line of platinum jewellery. The
collection, designed by Japanese artist Kazuo Ogawa with motifs from traditional
Indian paisley, the Japanese symbol of the rising sun and the four-leaf
clover, was presented at Mumbai's Taj Hotel last weekend. But trinkets
were just an aside in the evening where Ogawa's troupe ignored the single-file-march
choreography for a sundry display of belly dancing, Egyptian coronation
rituals and African tribal jigs. "What, choose platinum over gold?"
was among the rhetorical queries heard during the event.
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