29/11

It is the resultant or mind diverse and divergent forces which causes a town to be built and grow.

When the pressure or steam builds up in a pressure cooker and beyond holding capacity it is automatically released through an inbuilt mechanism — the whistling cap — if not, it bursts. The weakest point yielding first,  when flood comes, if it is not diverted into pre planned channels, if bursts the banks, the dams, breaches the banks and causes havoc.

Most calamities throw their shadows long before they actually strike.

One dear friend of mine after retirement want to Kerala on a lucrative job, but came back to Chandigarh within 6 months, settled for a big flat of the housing board from the salary of Rs. 4k, Govt. [illegible], and the now having happily.

Another friend in the Punjab University who had some years ago stated that he need not build a house for himself in Chandigarh because he has one in Allahabad where he can ‘hide his head’  after returning is now settling for a flat in Mani Maj Rd.

The list can do on ad-infinitium.

I see around me in sector 8 of Chandigarh where I have a house by the grace of god, or by the skin of my teeth, a number of existing houses in various stages of renovation according to the latest fashion at (obviously) astronomical costs. (I hear the on-going ratio of black & white in property transection is 60:40). I guess most of them N.R.I.’s who could not afford it in South Delhi.

I was a participant in Indira Gandhi Open University Design Competition which was held up for several months because its ‘site’ was located in the ‘green belt’ of the Master Plan of Delhi. Finally the organisers we are able to overcome the obstruction and the competition went on, I believe the campus this now in existence. I shall end this tirade with just one more example (although I could soon and on).

If the interested and powerful parties have acquired land in the area where ‘new Chandigarh’ is proposed to be built, it ’will’ be bilt, not because it should be built, but because the planners architects and other decision makers did not provide an escape value to release the pressure when it built up beyond endurance (in bribe to expansion plan)

When Mohali and Panchkula were planned-out it was the peers of the same planners who are now crying wolf on sensing the advent of new Chandigarh. Those peers were the associates of le Corbusier.

They all argue that smaller towns should be developed.