Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Desperately looking for 'heritage' items in Chandigarh

I had the privilege of visiting the mother of civilizations-Egypt, recently. I saw absolutely stunning statues and pyramids dating to 3rd to 1st century BC....Now those were heritage items and places... USA as a country is hardly 300 years old...they do not have any monuments or articles dating back to period before that...so their idea of heritage is different from the Egyptian or Indian history of the past. Chandigarh as a town is say 60 years old, and unlike other parts of India where we have extremely impressive old heritage sites and articles, it has nothing more than 60 years old to show... So Chandigarh is desperately trying to 'discover' some 'heritage' items to show that it too has a pedigree...Le Corbusier was the welknown architect of Chandigarh. The effort is on to call what ever he, or even his nephew Jeanneret, touched or sat in as "heritage items". The chairs about which a lot of brouhaha is being made are of ordinary design - believe me very ordinary. Just take a look at the photo of those chairs and you would agree that this is the commonest design of chairs found in all government offices all over the country... So please, PLEASE grow up and stop calling everthing that is connected even remotely with Le Corbusier ot Jeaneret as 'heritage'.... Let us accept that we do not have anything older than 60 years in Chandigarh and calling 60 year old chairs as 'heritage' is really so shallow, funny and even sad! Let us, instead, take pride in the wonderful design of Chandigarh as a town,...