Bachi Karkaria pays tribute to fellow Mumbaikar Charles Correa, who twice saw his grand plans for the city sabotaged by its politicians
He was a prophet without imprimatur in his own city. Charles Correa, who passed away late on the night of 16 June, was among the great architects of our times. His institutional buildings across the world are all iconic. Yet, Mumbai, his lifelong home, boasts just one residential tower designed by him – an irony as much as a travesty. Though the cubist Kanchanjunga is eye-catching, it’s still high-rise: a genre caustically savaged by this patron saint of low-slung architecture.
It gets worse. Correa’s real passion was the designing of cities that are easy to live, work, play – and commute – in. But his karma was Mumbai, which can check none of these boxes with a straight face. The man who described cities as “places of hope” was fated to live in a city of disappointments. It’s not just because its skyline resembles an alarming ECG. More specifically, Mumbai mindlessly sabotaged two of his masterful plans, each of which would have helped it regain its post-independence swagger as India’s showpiece.
One was his design for New Bombay across the harbour in 1964; the other his masterplan in 1996 for the textile mill-lands in the heart of what had by then been rechristened Mumbai. Ironically, he had been appointed for these visionary tasks by the very politicians who would later subvert them; one with myopic indifference, the other with unmitigated greed.
Correa’s sheer genius excused his arrogance. He worked with a manic stillness, and was caustically impatient with journalists unable to convey his nuanced urban vision – this writer included. I also still blush over a 2013 incident, when I invited him to launch my book on Mumbai at the Times Litfest. He adamantly refused at first, dredging up some long-ago lapse, then relented – only to lambast me from the stage for a bigger “crime”. I was the festival director, and our 11th-hour sponsor was exactly the kind of developer he routinely slammed for the city’s destruction.
By the time he died at 84, Correa had long been a disillusioned man, compensating for the rampaging skyline at home with the accolades and commissions abroad he continued to execute. Ahmedabad-based Balkrishna Doshi, a believer in the same principles of architecture and planning for 60 years – and best man at Correa’s wedding – said he was “overwhelmed” by the new project plans his friend showed him on a recent visit. These included an extension for his awesome Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown: a research and treatment facility for neurosciences and cancer built on almost the same spot on Lisbon’s river Tigus from which Vasco da Gama sailed out on another voyage of discovery, five centuries ago. (Doshi also recalled how Correa would play “Those were the days, my friend” every time he visited him.)