Shivajinagar impressions

A group of French students walking around Shivajinagar area.

Amazed by the noise, colors, flowers and urban mix, their eyes wide open, they are taking pictures every second, in order to remember every single detail of what appears to them. If they frown it is not because they worry but it requires much concentration to focus on what the guide is telling them and trying to impress the sight on their minds at the same time.

While their looks are going all around, their feet are guided into a abandoned temple. The place is in court : some wants to destroy it and rebuilt new complexes and some others fight to preserve it, as testimony of past and traditions. The sacred dimension of the temple saves it from demolition for now but nothing seems to happen. People are living there, honoring its refuge function.

Isn’t it crazy India investors and building firms wants to eradicate such places, where social interactions are strongly implanted; wouldn’t it be like reproducing our occidental mistakes while developing cities and harming human exchanges? Because glass and concrete new buildings, even transparent, are not as welcoming and convivial as those tiny little colorful houses the tourists we still are can be invited in easily. As intercultural designers in the making we are precisely here to learn from communities’ habits and customs so as to improve living places around us. The lesson might be to take from local inhabitants and observation in the streets rather than our occidental stressful and individual megalopolis.

 

A market stall inside the traditional Russel Market in Shivajinagar, which the traders have collectively restored after a huge fire destroyed much of it in February 2012, Photo: Sabina v. Kessel