Sometime in the early 1990s, a young Ashoka fellow set about shaking off the archetypal lethargy of old Kolkata. This man, Debashsis Nayak, formed an organisation called the Foundation for the Conservation and Research of Urban Traditional Architecture (CRUTA), and went out taking both tourists and residents of old Calcutta on guided tours through an intricate maze of lanes and bylanes of the cold city.
The heritage walks soon found takers among oldtimers of the city, and when Kolkata celebrated its tri-centenary, the talk of the town was about community involvement in urban conservation. The occasional tours were usually led either by a CRUTA member or a neighbourhood resident. These were largely street tours that concerned themselves with architecture and architectural detail of buildings that were relics of a Victorian era.
The tours would wind through alleys and serpentine lanes that often opened up into small squares. Nayak knew what these open spaces were - these provided a natural ventilation system, and this part of Kolkata was surprisingly cooler than the rest. These squares were served as hubs of community activities.
Nayak was not surprised that the people were blissfully ignorant about the architectural grandeur that stood around them. But the people were quick to learn.
Slowly, however, the CRUTA’s programmes fell apart, as such endeavours often do in Kolkata. Nayak then moved on to Ahmedabad, where his ideas were lapped up the municipal corporation. He now heads the heritage cell of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and works relentlessly for the conservation of the 60,000 historic properties that are registered there. The catchword is a simple word - pride.
Nayak’s efforts paid off - Ahmedabad now has a popular Heritage Walk and the Gujarat Institute of Housing and Estate Developers (GIHED) assists property owners in the Old City in various activities, and an institute for heritage city research is on the cards.
The mantra, if any, lay in a programme that Nayak formulated for the AMC. The title of the project was self-evident: Enabling Communities to Invest in Heritage. The “investment” part here was a tad misleading, but the twist in the moniker was deliberate. Nayak wanted involvement of communities, and this he got.
In the bargain, Kolkata lost what Ahmedabad gained. The architectural heritage of the former is decaying, and that of the latter is being maintained to a considerable extent.
In here lies a lesson for Bangalore to learn.
