Feeling Around in the Dark

The deteriorating interiors of the heritage building was an ominous playground. Except for the shards of light pushing through the cracks and openings of the windows, the place was completely dark. Guided by the city engineer, our surveyer, and followed by the key-holder who was constantly ensuring that I didn't trip over the mounds of rubble and garbage, we slowly made our way through a procession of rooms. All it took was a few unlatched window shutters to bring the spaces to life; one after another, the character of each room was unveiled before my eyes.

Eventually, we come to the central double story space, which would have been a lobby of sorts. It was apparent from my view through a small on-looking opening, that the structure of the roof had failed over this enormous span. What was once a beautiful arched two-storey space is now a sun-drenched container of garbage.

Despite the poor state of the building's means of egress, we managed to reach the second floor by accessing low roofs from window openings and climbing up a few rusty ladders. In our exploration of the upper floor, we came to more awesome-looking structural failures of floor and roof assemblies.

The further up we climbed, the more interesting the building became. At the end of each wing on the upper floor, there is access to an occupiable space located on top of one of the gateway entrances onto the site, opening up views back down onto the busy street that feeds this community.

Then we hit the roof. Actually, roofs. Stepped terraces looking down into secret interior courtyards, and stairs and ladders onto plateaus further up capped off the experience.

From the highest roof, we came to a giant hole in the structure that looked right back down into the double-storey entrance space we saw earlier.

The romantic, ruined state of the building made it hard for me to imagine this place renovated and preserved to be more reflective of the city's heritage than it was at the moment. Perhaps all that was necessary was to simply make the building accessible? To me, this building was novel and nostalgic (Rome), in fact, I could not stop taking photos of every nook and cranny. Every crack in the walls and every pattern of light was so rightly composed. And every piece of broken glass and rubble was so perfected situated from my perspective.

Trailing behind the group, I was the essence of a Japanese tourist that day.

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Serious Weekday fun - Heritage Site

The revitalization of this building and the re-planning of the greater site is what I will be working on while I'm with MPUSP.

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The site is CRAZY.

Main street entering the site

One of the gates at the site entrance.

Courtyard currently used as parking lot.

Central courtyard of Bhopal Municipal Commission building across the street.

Perimeter colonnade.

The low building on the left is actually the city library entrance

adjacent the building site. Completely hidden!

There is a car mechanic operating under one of the arched entrances onto the site from the Lake.

The site steppes down towards the Lake

View of Lake from the roof

The building is currently abandoned except of a portion which is used as offices on the ground floor. Someone has actually built his home in the covered space of a side entrance.

We had to skip over his bed to get in.

Weekday Fun

On Monday morning, Anees (office driver) picked us up from our flat in a shiny Toyota SUV, and dropped us off here. The MPUSP office is in the New Bhopal area, 5 minutes away from where I live.

The MPUSP program is essentially a team of consultants in various areas including urban development, where I've been given the opportunity to lend a hand in the State capital. Everyone works off their own laptops and cell phones. Almost everyone is on to Google technologies and collaborate over the Internet.

Awesome.

My office space is down the hall.

I noticed that there was water, tea or coffee waiting on every desk. Throughout the course of the day, my glass was constantly being refilled by very nice attendants (I guess that's what I'd call them?) who floated around the building. I realized that theses young men took orders, picked up take-out, and laid out clean cutlery for lunch everyday. On top of this, they were responsible for making copies, fetching prints and whatever else you asked of them.

I guess if most middle class households have servants, government affiliated offices would naturally have an office version too? Anyway, I felt very inadequate.

I also found that most of the consultants weren't addressing the attendants with "thank-you"s or "excuse me"s. It seemed to me most Indians did not practice the same kind of excessive etiquette as we did, not much was superficial, if you were really thankful, then you said it.

I probably said "thank-you" 50 times on my first day.

I also had 4 cups of delicious chai.

The Silk Factory

Mrs. Sahai runs a government-owned silk factory across the street from the farmhouse. The factory consists of 5-6 small one-storey buildings and produces a variety of of silk threads that range from raw to fine, and hand-spun to machine-spun. She was kind enough to show me around.

The process begins with these

The cocoons are boiled to kill the worm inside

and loosen the threads of silk

Machines twist 2-3 strands of silk into threads

Higher grade, extra strength threads,

are spun from one continuous strand

A few men are responsible for processing raw silk from wild cocoons

The assortment

Throughout my tour,

some of the women stared a little, others chuckled at me. I thought it's either

because there was an oriental chick with a fortune cat t-shirt walking around, or

because she was sticking her camera into pots of boiling cacoons. All of them

smiled shyly at me as I "nameste"-ed though their work space.

It was obvious that the number of women staffed at the factory hugely out-numbered the men. Mrs. Sahai informed me that the factory employs roughly 90 workers who are mostly women either living on site, or in nearby communities. The textile industry is one of the most significant sectors of work for woman and is very much apart of the state's heritage.

Being the one of the greenest and most fertile states in India, the land of Mahdya Pradesh

provides a livelihood for many of its poor, who would otherwise be jobless and hungry.

The Farmhouse

Raj took me to his parent's farmhouse for the first weekend to relieve my jetleg in sustainable luxury. I did not know what to expect.

The Sahai family lives 2 hours outside of the city in this house. Surrounded by a spice and floral garden along the building perimeter, with a view out to 40 acres of farmland beyond, the family and about 12 employees lives off the land. The vegetable and animal farm provides all the food they consume each day while sprinkled solar panels and methane collection provide for a significant portion of their energy intake.

Mulberry plants

Families of workers live on the farm in simple huts.

Chicken coop

Poo pies drying on the edges of a well.

The staff work from 4am each morning.

While I was staying at the farmhouse, the home-cooked traditional meals were amazing. Every ingredient is harvested in the mornings and used by the next day. Fresh, filtered milk, is whipped into butter just in time for breakfast. There were curries, chutneys, and soups with a million spices and pillowy chapatis for lunches and dinners. Fresh suculant papaya, tart guava made into jelly, and sweet, buttery moon lentils for dessert. The Sahais were beyond hospitable, they were offering me a gift.

Mixed vege soup with spices for breakfast! Which woke me up nicely.

Bread pancakes fried in garlic-y, spicy, cottage-cheesy, butter sauce.

So much variety, with endless helpings.