%0 Report %D 2018 %T When is Space? %E Rupali Gupte %E Prasad Shetty %? Anuj Daga %X

Since its inauguration in 1993, the Jawahar Kala Kendra has been one of the most significant buildings for architects around the country. In many ways, it embodies some of the most important ideas of Charles Correa through its open to sky spaces, its public orientation and its humane scale. The building is important to the city of Jaipur as a foremost effort that folds history and modern efforts together to create a public space par excellence. An exhibition on architecture has been waiting to take place at the JKK.

I am delighted to present this exhibition titled ‘When is Space?’ curated and designed by Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty. This project has a conceptual ambition of tying together the visions of Sawai Jaisingh, the ideas of Charles Correa and the practices of contemporary architects and artists. The exhibition is being put together as a set of provocations from the works of Charles Correa and the city of Jaipur with responses from 27 participants including architects, artists, designers, photographers and social scientists. The Sawai Mansingh II Museum of Jaipur has also graciously agreed to lend some of the archival material for the exhibition. Along with these, two schools of architecture - Aayojan School in Jaipur and JJ College in Mumbai are also involved.

It is for the first time that an architecture exhibition of this format is being shown at JKK where architects and artists are involved in actively engaging with its spaces. It is an exhibition on the explorations of space. We hope this sets the tone for many more artistic journeys, where various disciplines come together to prise open new terrains of thinking about and making architecture.

Pooja Sood
Director General, Jawahar Kala Kendra

 

%B An Exhibition on Contemporary Architecture Commissioned by Jawahar Kala Kendra %I Jawahar Kala Kendra %C Jaipur %<

Annotations

[p. 10, facing The Floating Roof]

… One steps out of the box to find oneself… in a veranda, from which one moves into a courtyard, and then perhaps back into a room and out into a balcony… and so forth. The boundary lines between these various zones are not formal and sharply demarcated, but easy and amorphous. Subtle modulations of light, in the quality of ambient air register each transition on our senses… a walk on a seashore in the evening, or to cross a desert and arrive at a house around a courtyard, is a human experience beyond merely photogenic. At these moments, certain responses are triggered off in minds – responses conditioned by thousands of generations of life on this planet. Perhaps they are the half-forgotten memories of a primordial landscape, of a lost paradise…? In any event, as we approach the open-to-sky end of the continuum they condition very powerfully our perceptions. (Charles Correa, A Place in the Sun, 1983)

Maan Singh was commanded (by Akbar) to march beyond the Indus and put down the rebellion in Kabul. The great commander hesitated as the river Indus was the limit for the the medieval ‘Hindu’. The point at which the river was traditionally crossed (by non-Hindus) had been labelled by the ‘Hindus’ as the uttuk (Attock) or barrier. Responding to the hesitation of Maan Singh, Akbar wrote a couplet to be sent to Maan Singh:
Sub hain bhum Gopal ka
Jis me uttuk kahan?
Jis ke man me uttuk hai
So een uttuk hoega.

The whole earth belongs to God Where is the barrier in it? He whose mind has a barrier Will always find itself bound. Maan Singh crossed the river and crushed the rebellion in Kabul.
(Manoshi Bhattacharya, The Royal Rajputs, 2017)

[p. 12, facing The Malleability of All Things Solid: Note Book Series]

… [In Jaipur], Jai Singh sought to synthesize the two seemingly disparate sets of ideas about the heavens that obsessed him: the oldest myths of the mandala, and the newest ones of science – all in one holistic gesture. This is what art can accomplish: synthesize disparate entities into one holistic unity…. While we were working on the Jawahar Kala Kendra, I kept wondering: this is a contemporary building based on an ancient paradigm of the cosmos – could we build a contemporary building which expresses how today’s science conceptualizes the universe. (Charles Correa, Zero, 1998)

Previously, Rajput capitals were typically established amongst hills… But Jaipur was to break this mould… it was to stand proudly on a plain, exposed towards the south, with its main gates giving onto an imperial highway, to open it to traffic and trade. For Jaipur was conceived not as the military retreat of feudal warlords…, but as a commercial city … (Jaipur was located) between the central imperial cities and the ports of Gujrat, their contact with the Indian Ocean trade and the rest of the Islamic world. A fair proportion of Mughal business, both commercial and political, passed through along this road. And so this above all is what made the plain the ideal place for Jai Singh to realize his vision of a new kind of capital city: here he could capitalize on an already well-established trade route… The strength of the reformed state was to depend less on arms than on money. It was famous to bankers and merchants, therefore, not to distinguished warriors, that Sawai Jai Singh now wrote personal letters, inviting them to settle in his new city, including them with tax concessions and gifts of land on which to build elegant courtyard houses, called havelis, for accommodation of their families. He sent invitations especially to Jain traders whose traditions led them – and lead them still – into industries that combine minimum violence with maximum profit. (Giles Tillotson – Jaipur Nama, 2006)

[p. 14, facing Five Gardens]

I had learnt in one Gyorgy Kepes’ seminars: the notion of the museum as an endless succession of rooms, however brilliantly designed, leads to exhaustion. What we need are places where the eye can rest, and the mind can contemplate what it had just seen. (Charles Correa, Zero, 1998)

Behold! Here are new trees, new leaves, new branches, new flowers, new beautiful parrots sit on them. New bees are humming and birds are singing their tunes. There are new peacocks, parrots, chakoras. New koel is cooing and producing new notes. Sawai Jaisaha Maharaj Mukatmani has his Jainivas Garden with perennial spring reining therein. There are many temples here… There are wells step-wells in gardens, The Manasagar is overflowing and the river is flowing swiftly. (from a poem by Girdhari – Bhojanasara (1739) translated by PK Gode, 1946)

[p. 16, facing Nav / Laya – A Confluence]

… the Jawahar Kala Kendra is doublecoded: a contemporary building based on an archaic notion of the cosmos – the very same navagraha that so obsessed Jai Singh. And in a gesture that recalls the genesis of the original city, we moved one of the squares aside, so as to give direct public access to three of the planets (the library, the theaters and the administration). Moving that corner square away from the others is a very contemporary (and compulsive) gesture. And it proved decisive – because in the process, it gave me access to the navagraha. Otherwise, I could never have been able to deal with the heavy double-symmetry of the diagram itself – without rigor mortis setting in… The disciplined geometry of the nine compartments allows each planet to have its own idiosyncratic organization, expressing the mythic qualities of that particular planet, including its auspicious colour. The only way to go from one planet to the next is to step, like Alice in Wonderland, from one of those ten feet by ten feet openings into another landscape, another world. As you move around the complex and the diverse spaces of each planet, what gives orientation and stability to the whole experience are the glimpses you get of the void at the center. It tells you where you are. And it energizes the whole complex. (Charles Correa, Zero, 1998)

The greatest (aspect) of Jaipur is that its map was prepared before constructing the city and the city was constructed as per the map…. Roads cut each other on the same angles… The main road from east to west is 111 feet wide and two miles and forty yards long. Three wide roads intersect it. A wide road originates from the Palace gate known as Tripola gate. This road divides the town situated between the second and third major roads. Thus nine rhombuses have been formed. In Jaipur it is known as Chaukori. The nine rhombuses have been kept as a symbol of nine treasures of Kuber, the god of affluence. The northwestern end has been merged in the Amer mountains. Hence eight rhombuses have been made with the oblong area; one has been built in its south, three have been made equilaterally in the east. (Rajendra Shankar Bhatt – Sawai Jai Singh, 1972; Translated from Hindi by Shailesh Kumar Jha, 2005)

[p. 18, facing A Wall as a Room]

… we must learn to be inventive about how we generate our habitat at the microscale. For instance, there is little relation between the form of our streets, and how we use them. Most sidewalks in Bombay are very crowded during the day with hawkers (forcing pedestrians onto the traffic lanes) – and as evening falls, with people unfolding their bedding for a night’s rest. Very often these night people are not pavement-dwellers, but office boys and domestic servants who keep their belonging in a shared room, and use city pavements for sleeping at night. This pattern allows them to economize on living expenses (and thus maximize the monthly remittances sent back to their villages). What is dismaying is not that they sleep outdoors (on hot, sultry nights, obviously a more attractive proposition than a crowded, airless room), but that they have to do so under unhygienic conditions, with the public walking right amongst (and over!) them. Is there any way in which the city streets and sidewalks could respond to their needs? (Charles Correa, Scanning the Options – The New Landscape, 1989)

The main streets are the principal bazaars; on each side, under the arcades of the palaces, temples and houses, are the shops of the artisans, who are seen working almost in the open air at their trades, the tailors, shoemakers, goldsmiths, armorers, pastry-cooks, confectioners, copper-smiths, etc. The grain merchants occupy very spacious huts of thatch, constructed in a sort of coarse lattice work, … in the midst of the main street. (Quotation from Victor Jacquemont’s Impressions of Jaipur and Amber in 1832 in Jadunath Sarkar – A History of Jaipur, 1939-40 published in 1984)

[p. 22, facing A Story of Cubes]

… from six apples, take away four mangoes, how many are left? The answer must be found not by quantifying apples in terms of mangoes (as it is done in cost-benefit studies) but keeping their identities clear and separate in one’s mind – and yet finding the right balance! This is what art is about: from the depiction of objects in a still-life painting, to the layout of the capital complex at Fathepur Sikhri. To deal with these abstract equations effectively and truthfully, each element must be accepted on its own autonomous terms. (Charles Correa, Learning from Ekalavya, 1997)

Sawai Jai Singh was proposing to build the entire city at once, and so considerations of time, cost and transport contributed to the decision to build in rubble and plaster, with a cosmetic coat of paint. But the Maharaja also sought to emulate the imperial cities of Delhi, Agra and Fathepur Sikri, and these had been built from finegrained pinkish red sandstone that was available to the Mughals in abundance from the quarries around Mathura, Sikhri and Dholpur. The obvious compromise was to match this colour with the necessary coat of paint, to create the illusion of Mughal grandeur… Jaipur’s paint reveals the aspirations of its founder to wear a cloak of Imperial Pink. (Giles Tillotson – Jaipur Nama – Penguin, 2006)

[p. 24, facing Pavilion for Incremental Form]

If there ever is a Bill of Rights for housing in the Third World, it would surely have to include – enshrine! – the cardinal principles of Incrementality, Open-to-Sky Space, Equity, Disaggregation, Pluralism, Malleability, Participation and Income Generation. (Charles Correa, Equity – The New Landscape, 1989)

[p. 26, facing Drawing in Space]

The mythic imagery that underlies our habitat still plays a crucial part in our perceptions. Let’s look at two examples – the first are the towns that the Dogon people of Zaire, in West Africa, build for themselves. They are very clear diagrams, structured like a human torso (with the headman’s house at the top, and the other section as arms and legs, including stomach, genitalia, etc.) But when you see the actual town – it’s utter chaos! Yet most Dogons, asked to describe their town, will perceive – and point out to you – only the idealized form, the mythical image, which they see very vividly… [The second example is] at the other end of the world – in New York! When you visit that city, do you really see it as it actually is – a decaying and monotonous grid of traffic intersections, with buildings like pigeon holes – much like Cleveland, Detroit or any other prosaic North American City? No. Instead, because we realise we are in New York, we see that mythical entity: Manhattan! Fifth Avenue…. Central Park…. 42nd Street… their very names are magic! (Charles Correa, The Ideal City, 1999)

[p. 28, facing An Indivisible Margin of Error]

After having constructed these instruments, the places of stars were daily observed. After seven years had been spent in this employment, information was received that observatories had been constructed in Europe and that the learned of that country were employed in the prosecution of this important work… For this reason, having sent to that country several skillful persons along with Padre Manoel de Figueiredo he procured the new tables of stars which has been published there thirty years before under the name of Pere de la Hire (Tabulae Astronomicae, completed in 1702), as well as the European tables anterior to these (especially Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis Britannica, 1712- 25)… On comparing these tables with actual observations, it appeared that there was an error of half a degree in the former in assigning the moon’s place, and there were also other errors in the other planets, although not so great – especially in the times of the eclipses… Hence he concluded that, since in Europe astronomical instruments have not been constructed of such a size and such large diameters, the motions which have been observed with them may have deviated a little from the truth. (Zij-i- Muhammad Shahi – Jaisingh – Table of Stars, in which he speaks of himself in the third person, 1733) (Jadunath Sarkar – A History of Jaipur, 1939- 40)

[p. 30, facing 5 / 8]

“Fiction” said “Cocteau, “is primordial memory”. Perhaps so also built-form. Certainly Architecture is concerned with much more than just its physical attributes. It is a many layered thing. Beneath and beyond the strata of function and structure, material and texture, lie the deepest and most compulsive layers of all. (Charles Correa, A Place in Sun, 1983)

Interpreted in the light of the shastras, Jaipur’s grid plan is a mandala… the geometry and the orientation of the mandala lock the city and its inhabitants into a sacred landscape and a divine order. As you walk through the mandala, the pavements of Jaipur seem to say to your feet that things are as they are, not because men – or even Maharajas – have so decreed, but because we all participate in the reflection of an order that is nothing short of cosmic. (Giles Tillotson – Jaipur Nama – Penguin, 2006)

[p. 32, facing Elevator from the Subcontinent]

To identify the hierarchal system (of open spaces that are essential for life) … is the first essential step towards providing viable housing. Without this, one is in grave danger of formulating wrong questions. This misunderstanding is the reason why so many attempts at low cost housing perceive it only as a simplistic issue of trying to pile up as many dwelling units as possible on a given site, without any concern for the other spaces involved in the hierarchy. The result: environments that are inhuman, uneconomical – and quite unusable. For they ignore the fundamental principle: in a warm climate – like cement, like steel – space itself is a resource. (Charles Correa, Space as a Resource – The New Landscape, 1989)

[p. 34, facing Garden of Desire]

Yet, merely increasing the maidans (open spaces) is not necessarily the solution – for they are not used by the entire populace, but only a certain age groups for cricket, football and other games. No little toddler of two or three years would dare to play here; nor does one see middle aged couples using them for evening strolls. On the other hand, the pavements along the seafront in Bombay – which incidentally don’t show up in the statistics! – are the great community spaces of the city. (Charles Correa, Space as a Resource – The New Landscape, 1989)

There should be many cross-roads with shops on them. The back-yards of the houses should meet together…. It (Jaipur) should be populated in one year and should be twelve Kosas in extent. Merchants from different places should be called to stay here (i.e. to make it their home). There are shrubs, sanddunes, gullies all over. These should be levelled up and then the Havelis should be constructed. (from a poem by Girdhari – Bhojanasara (1739) translated by PK Gode, 1946)

[p. 36, facing Mammoth, Flatlans, Hewn]

Incredible, evocative architecture! Stones are dead things sleeping in the quarry, but the apses of St. Peter are a passion!’ Throughout his life, Corb has sought to create an architecture of passion. His buildings —both in concept and visual language have always been presented at a certain decibel level. No soffo voce, no politeness, but–like Wagnerthunder in the concert hall. This is probably the single most important fact about Corb because it necessitates his discarding any solutions which cannot be projected at the decibel level he favours. (It is interesting to note that when Corb sometimes intentionally lowers the volume, as for instance in the new extensions to the High Court, he achieves an architecture not unlike that of Louis Kahn). How does one project architecture at this decibel level? (Charles Correa, Report from Chandigarh, 1964)

[p. 38, facing Crematorium at Coimbatore]

We live in a world of manifest phenomena. Yet, since the beginning of time, man has intuitively sensed the existence of another world: a nonmanifest world whose presence underlies — and makes endurable — the one he experiences every day. The principal vehicles through which we explore and communicate our notions of this nonmanifest world are religion, philosophy, and the arts. Like these, architecture too is generated by mythic beliefs, expressing the presence of a reality more profound than the manifest world in which it exists…. The sacred is neither public nor private, though it qualifies both immeasurably by engaging the mythic dimensions inherent in the nonmanifest. Mankind has always been fascinated by the invisible, the unknown, the unknowable. (Charles Correa, The Public, the Private and the Sacred, 1989)

[p. 40, facing Pavilions - Caves, Boundaries and the In Between]

… like the stories of Scheherazade… once the sequence starts, you’re hooked… but can this ever provide a legitimate basis for serious architecture? Can such arbitrary and episodic narrative ever express the control, the rigour, the discipline, so fundamental to holistic thought?... restricting the number of elements, and using them over and over, is the key… the same handful of props used again and reused again and again, and each time, because of a slight change in angle, or in sequence, carry a new significance… with each narration of identical events, truth is reborn in a new form transforming the lyrical openended tales into refracted and imploded metaphysics… it is at the same time holistic and episodic. (Charles Correa, Hornby Trains, Chinese Gardens and Architecture, 1998)

[p. 42, facing Twisted Folds]

…the concept of Zero did not spring from the pragmatic exigencies of arithmetic, but pre-existed as a metaphysical concept, crucial to the Vedic understanding of the universe… Kahn would say: “I love English history, I love the bloodiness of it, I’ve got eight volumes which I enjoy reading… well, actually, I haven’t read all eight – I’ve read only Volume One… and even that, I haven’t read more than just the first few pages… Actually, I don’t think history started the way they say it did. I think it started before that. I want to read Volume Zero… Architecture is magnificent because it deals with the recessions of the mind… with that which is not yet said, and which is not yet made”… Architecture is at its most profound when it is part of this critical process of discovery… when it expresses that ‘which is not yet said, and which is not yet made’…. (Charles Correa, Zero, 1998)

This admiring spectator of the theater of infinite wisdom… was, from the first dawning of reason in his (Jai Singh’s) mind and during his progress towards maturity, entirely devoted to the study of mathematical science… and by the aid of the Supreme Artificer he obtained a thorough knowledge of its principles and rules. He found that the calculation of places of the stars, as obtained from the tables in common use (Sanskrit, Arabic and European) in many cases give them widely different positions from those determined by observations, especially in the appearance of the new moons. Seeing that very important affairs, both regarding religion and the administration of the Empire, depend upon these,… he represented the matter to the Emperor Muhammad Shah, who was pleased to reply: ‘Since you, who are learned in the mysteries of science, have a perfect knowledge of this matter, having assembled the astronomers and geometricians of the faith of Islam, and the Brahmans and Pandits and the astronomers of Europe, and having prepared all the apparatus of an observatory – do you so labour for the ascertaining of the point in question, that the disagreement between the calculated times of those phenomenon and the times which they are observed to happen, may be rectified. (Zij-i- Muhammad Shahi – Jaisingh – Table of Stars, in which he speaks of himself in the third person, 1733) (Jadunath Sarkar – A History of Jaipur, 1939- 40) 

[p. 44, facing Artrovert: Conversations in Grey]

Urban living involves much more than just the use of a small room of say, 10 sqm. The room, the cell, is only one element in a whole system of spaces that people need. The system is generally hierarchal. For us, under Indian conditions, it appears to have four major elements: First, the space needed by the family exclusively for private use, such as space for cooking, sleeping, storage, etc; Second, the areas of intimate contact, e.g., the front doorstep wher children play, where one chats with the neighbour; Third, the neighbourhood meeting place (e.g., the city watertap or the village well) where one becomes a part of the community; and Finally, the principal urban area, the ‘maidan’, used by the whole city. (Charles Correa, Space as a Resource – The New Landscape, 1989)

[p. 46, facing Folly House]

In its concentrated form, low-rise housing is the timeless and classic pattern of residential land-use and has a number of crucial advantages: It is incremental; It has great variety; It is malleable – sensitive to social/cultural/ religious determinants; It makes for speedier construction; With shorter construction period, the interest cost of capital for construction is less; It does not use high-priority construction materials.; Renewability is promoted; Maintenance is easier; It promotes equity with better access to land resource. (Charles Correa, The New Landscape, 1989)

[p. 48, facing Restoration of Sethna Building]

… Jack Robertson put it very well. He said, “You know, its easy to design a house in the bazaar in Isfahan because you know what the whole machine looks like. So you can easily design a spare part. And the same is true of the old center of Jaipur, or of the row-houses around a Georgian square in London. In contrast, American downtown today looks like a bunch of spare parts without anyone having a foggiest notion of what the whole machine will look like. And this is the urban model that more and more towns and cities around the planet are importing everyday.” That’s really a brilliant analysis. Urban designers can’t conceptualise the overall machine because they do not have incisive hands-on knowledge of what the spare part could be. (Charles Correa, Make Sure It’s Your Train, 1995) 

If the spiritual life of the city is thus well ordered, so too is its physical fabric. For what has first struck every visitor to the walled city of Jaipur is the regularity of its plan: it is built on a grid. Traditional Indian towns are more characteristically tangled webs of narrow, winding alleys, overhung and enclosed, in which one quickly loses any sense of direction. But in Jaipur there is no such experience. All the streets run rigidly straight as if obeying a compulsion or a law of nature... They are parallel with the city walls and meet each other at right angles… Surprisingly enough, although it seems untypical, Jaipur’s grid represents no novelty; indeed it follows a long-establishment tradition. It embodies a conception of a city as defined in a series of texts known as vastu shastras, which are canonical treatises, usually in Sanskrit, usually on architecture, design and planning… the eighteenth century Indian architects required neither Jesuits nor Germans to teach them how to draw straight lines… the principle (of urban planning) had been nurtured in shastras for over a thousand years. And this thought leads us at last to the identification of the plan’s true authors: they were Indian planners (sadly anonomous) who were learned in the shastras and eager to within their long-established traditions. (Giles Tillotson – Jaipur Nama – Penguin, 2006) 

[p. 50, facing CPWD]

… today in housing… the first step (into the trap) is to aggregate demand. This means not only current demand but also backlog, and often future demand as well. The numbers arrived at are of course, colossal – and get the adrenalin flowing! The next step is to set up large centralized agencies to deal with this demand. Now the trap has closed… the result is the same as in the old cowboy’s method of keeping cattle: count the legs and divide them by four… For once you have aggregated the numbers, comes the temptation to clone. In other words, having to house 10,000 families, the architect designs a building which can accommodate say, 500 of them – which means that twenty such buildings have to be built. And that’s its! The private developer loves it – as does the bureaucrat in the large government agency. It makes for a very clean office file! For any financial year precise estimates can be made of exactly how much cement, brick and steel is needed. This in turn allows him to present a well-organized budget to his bosses. No wonder he is happy. It is the exact opposite of the pluralistic, disaggregated, messy user participation processes. (Charles Correa, Disaggregating the Numbers – The New Landscape, 1989) 

Jai Singh invited scholars from all over the country and provided them facilities to settle permanently in Jaipur…. He also invited traders to settle down in Jaipur and trade. Letters of credit of Jaipur traders, worth crores of rupees were acceptable across the world… Glorious tradition of crafts also developed with the growth of Jaipur. Jai Singh encouraged it… Craftsmen, thinkers, jwellers, weavers, ironsmiths, cobblers, carpenters, potters, etc. lived comfortably in Jaipur. (Rajendra Shankar Bhatt – Sawai Jai Singh, 1972; Translated from Hindi by Shailesh Kumar Jha, 2005) 

[p. 52, facing The Toilet Manifesto]

… as long as we are dealing with small bits and pieces of the problem, there doesn’t seem to be any solution at sight. To find the right strategies, we must start with an overview; we must of necessity examine the entire system we call ‘city’ and try to identify those living patterns and lifestyles, which are optimal in their totality – including roads, services, schools, transportation systems, social facilities and of course, the housing units themselves. Only then might we be able to perceive how one could – in Buckminister Fuller’s ineffable phrase – ‘rearrange the scenery’. (Charles Correa, Urbanisation – The New Landscape, 1989) 

There are three-square intersections where the three main roads merge. It is known as Chaupar in Jaipur…. Many bylanes originated from the mainroads – one wide and another small. All of them were in the same sequence. All are equilateral and make identical angles. There is a provision of small lanes in either side of the houses. It was arranged so in order to make arrangement for cleanliness and exit of the polluted air. (Rajendra Shankar Bhatt – Sawai Jai Singh, 1972; Translated from Hindi by Shailesh Kumar Jha, 2005) 

[p. 54, facing Urban Porosities]

An Urban Manifesto: I believe in the cities of India. Like the wheat fields of Punjab, and the coalfields of Bihar, they are crucial part of our national wealth.
1. They generate the skills we need for development: Doctors, nurses, lawyers, administrators, engineers – not just from the great metropolises, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, but from a hundred smaller centers across the country.
2. Cities are engines of economic growth: There is no way, either politically or morally, that we can divert rural funds to develop towns and cities. On the other contrary, cities, properly managed, can generate surplus funds not only for their own development, but to help subsidize the surrounding rural areas as well.
Cities are centers of hope: Too often we look at our cities from our own self-centered point of view. So we see only the shortages, the failures. But for millions and millions of migrants, landless labour and wretched have-nots of our society, cities are perhaps their only hope, their only gateway to a better future. (Charles Correa, An Urban Manifesto, 2007)

He (Sawai Jai Singh) laid out many streets and thus enhanced the joy of heart. He said to Vidyadhara that a city should be founded here. Jainivas should come within this city, this is my wish. I have got immense treasure. Take what you want and use it. Sawai Jaipur should be a made a unique city… Many Brahmins were feasted and were given Dakshina. They are blessed, “May this city be beautiful and immortal”.
There are many cross-roads with shops on them and thousands of market (hats) where merchants of different countries are plying their trades. Many elephants, Arab horses and camels from Kutch come here. Embroidered cloth and plain cloth and jeweled ornaments were brought to Jaipur for sale from different parts of the world as Jaipur is founded by Rajadhiraja. The Europeans also live here They have come here after crossing the oceans. They are very wise and intelligent. In this way merchants of many places have come there. Hundis of lacs and crores are currently here. They are all happy and do their business peacefully. O! Girdhari, none look at them with any spirit of envy. No body speaks improperly with any person. Oh Girdhari in this city all the 32 weights are quite correct and precise. (from a poem by Girdhari – Bhojanasara (1739) translated by PK Gode, 1946) 

[p. 56, facing Making Ground Opening Skies]

… a friend of mine read (a story) in a Marathi journal. The author, travelling on a BEST bus, recognizes two people from his village who are sitting together on the same bench, side by side. One is the village dhobi, and the other is its money-lender. Naturally they are not talking to each other – and both staring straight ahead. But there are no other seats available, they must endure this close proximity – something that would be totally repugnant back in their village. I thought to myself: more than 2000 years ago Lord Buddha tried to abolish the caste system – and in the last century, Mahatma Gandhi spent his whole life trying to banish untouchability. They both appear to have failed. Now here comes along a dumb old BEST bus, and without any political rhetoric and without any polemics, it is changing India. That is what our cities are about. They are mechanisms of social engineering, much more powerful than anything we have seen before. They will transform this country. (Charles Correa, Looking Back, Looking Forward –The New Landscape, 1989) 

Madhuracharya who was the Mahant of Galta at the time of Jai Singh was the first Mahant on the Gaddi to write books. He wrote a few books in Sanskrit and supported what is called the Madhur upasana of Rama. This form of devotion to Rama had started sometime at the end of the 16th century when Tulsi Das also wrote about the joyful and amorous life of Rama and Sita in the Uttara Kanda of his Geetawali. The literature on Madhur upasana of Rama was an imitation of the literature of the Krishna Bhakti branch of Vaishnavism, and though it depicted only the love life of Rama with his lawfully married wife Sita, in course of time it had become quite erotic. The effect that these erotic writings had on the lives of the people, especially on the lives of those who were supposedly living celibate lives in the Vaishnava monasteries can well be imagined. One of the important acts of Jai Singh was the reformation of these monasteries and he did it in two ways. First he made the Vaishnava vairagis follow the Hindu Chaturvarna rule in a strict manner, secondly he permitted marriages among them. (Ashim Kumar Roy, History of Jaipur City, 1978) 

[p. 58, facing Squaring the Circle]

Man, since the beginning of time, has always sensed the presence of the invisible- and has used the most materialistic elements, like stone and earth, steel and concrete, to express the invisible – and paradoxically has used compulsive myths that obsess him… according to Vedic thought, the world we see is only part of our existence, the forms and events we perceive are significant merely to the extent that they help us understand the nonmanifest layers that lie beneath. Hence the magic diagrams, the yantras that explain the true nature of the cosmos. Of these, the vastu-purush-mandalas form the basis of architecture. Thus buildings are conceived as models of the cosmos – no less! (Charles Correa, The Public, the Private and the Sacred, 1989) 

So he (Jai Singh) constructed at Delhi several instruments for astronomical observation… But finding that brass instruments did not come up to ideas which he had formed of accuracy, because of the smallness of their size, the want of division into minutes, the shaking and wearing of their axes, the shifting of the planes of the instruments etc., … he constructed in Delhi instruments of his own invention, of stone and lime of perfect stability,… such as Jai Prakash, Ram Yantra and Samrat Yantra… And, in order to verify the truth of these observations, he constructed instruments of the same kind in Sawai Jaipur, Mathura, Benares and Ujjain… so that every person who is devoted to these studies, whenever he wished to ascertain the place of a star – might observe the phenomena. (Ziji- Muhammad Shahi – Jaisingh – Table of Stars, in which he speaks of himself in the third person, 1733) (Jadunath Sarkar – A History of Jaipur, 1939- 40) 

[p. 60, facing #Roar #Tools #Infrastructure]

… people go from village to town but, more importantly… after having experienced the physical degradation of life, they still do not return to the village… only a madman – or the mystic – goes out into the desert. And the mystic is really taking his God, his complexity, with him. That leaves only the madman. (Great City… Terrible Place – The New Landscape, 1989) 

One of the temples established by Jai Singh in Jaipur is the temple of Kalki – the tenth incarnation of Vishnu, (the god who) is yet to appear. (Ashim Kumar Roy, History of Jaipur City – Manohar Publishers, 1978)