My City, My House

In the 1960s, Delhi was a different sort of place. We lived in a government house, thick-walled, with yellow, peeling plaster. At the time, all houses were the same, thick-walled and peeling, perpetually staining with the monsoons, set within their own garden plots.

The world has embarked on a new steel and plate glass future. Unconnected to earth or its surroundings, the house is now a technological device. Jayachandran / Mint

The house had spacious, airy rooms, stone floors, high ceiling vents, long verandas and a car porch. Behind the porch was a green painted jaffrey (perforated stone or concrete screens), fluffed white with jasmine creepers; you could hear the quiet hiss of summer grass on a hot day; at night, mosquito nets were hung above the beds lined up on the lawn, their sheets scented in motia (jasmine) petals; the grass was cooled every evening with a spray of water. It was the same on every lawn, in every house, down the full length of the street, the whole neighbourhood. The sameness of things—house, street, neighbourhood—was the great attraction of a time when sensory urban pleasures were reserved and private.

Also read City Centre’s earlier articles

The house is still there and on those days when the present city overwhelms with its sights and sounds and smells, a view of the old place, still as ramshackle and monsoon-stained as ever, is a return to a different time. When architecture was a background to life.

New: the home as a technological showcase

But that is now an altogether archaic view. The world has embarked on a new steel and plate glass future buttressed by the hope of a more consumptive life, a life as much about self-confidence as a show of it. Unconnected to earth or its surroundings, the house is now a technological device.

This house is one with greater inputs of wiring, more kilowatts, track and concealed lighting, generators, security systems, electronic barbecues, temperature-compliant jacuzzis and wall-mounted home entertainment systems. Sleeping on the lawn at night is today considered a form of insanity. Besides, there is little need to provide courtyards and verandas to cool the place when the sun’s heat on three storeys of laminated glass can be offset by a 12-tonne chilling plant. Who needs the city’s overburdened municipal services when water, electricity and security can be made available on the premises?