For years I went to Asha Hairdressers (Naranpura Ahmedabad) and the same barber gave me a haircut. A barber talking to you while cutting your hair is a special pleasure for most men. At times he could cross his boundaries or pass on to you an appalling piece of information. In my native place we had a large ancestral house and the patriarch, the grandfather, would entertain all of us kids that...
In my youth my uncle used to buy me shoes from Vanthali. The shoemakers of this town were famous in Saurashtra and Gujarat. So much so that in the good old days most of the raajaas and the princes used to wear the shoes made by the Vanthali mochies. It was a matter of prestige for the mochies and a matter of pride for those who owned Vanthali shoes. In 2011, I ventured to visited Vanthali to...
It was about seven of a cold winter morning when we arrived at Dhar by bus (around 1969). From here we were to proceed to Mandu. We were stiff and tired due to overnight journey, tightly seating in the bus with cold wind that seeped on us through the windows. Some wanted urgently to go and many wanted to wash and brush teeth. Some ordered tea and were in no hurry. There was a largish, overgrown...
We had gone to attend the annual meet of National Association of Students of Architecture in Kharagpur. On the way we had planned to visit Bhubaneswar. We finished our site visits and took up a couple of rooms to rest before catching our train in the early morning. We got huddled up and adjusted ourselves to get some sleep. We were not far from the station and had a lot of luggage so I decided to...
It was a cool and misty morning on my last day of my research visit to Kuvarsi Bhadramal area in Palanpur District. I was waiting at the bus-stop, which was nothing but a road and a little sign saying ‘Kuvarsi'. The sun must have barely begun to rise behind the hills. I could hear the sounds of the village stirring awake in the background. Four or five adivasi(s), the forester's son and two of...
Prof. V.R. Shah and I had taken the students of the School of Architecture for a measured drawing trip. The students were busy in their own world. We thought of having a beer and a dinner somewhere. We were shown a darkish lane where the shop was located. There was a collapsible gate through which the shop keeper sold spirits. We stood in the line and after a long while when our turn came asked...