On Friday morning, everybody was talking about JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar's speech on Thursday night after he had been released on bail. One old-timer from Delhi rang up to say that India “now has a new Amar, Akbar, Anthony.” The reference was to Kanhaiya, Umar Khalid and Rohith Vemula. That definitely was some food for thought.

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Five years ago, the country was in a similar mood of disenchantment and we all flocked with garlands and topis to Anna Hazare’s tent. That movement, as it turned out, got hijacked by political ambition. Then, all the “spiritual leaders” — gurus and babas, who we thought were administering to our troubled souls — turned out to be shrewd businessmen, expanding their mercantile interests. That experiment with Anna Hazare and its political and electoral misuse devalued the ‘politics of good intentions.’ Good, honest citizens across the land felt let down, even cheated.

That is why perhaps in this vacuum we find it refreshing, even invigorating, when a Kanhaiya or Umar Khalid or Rohith Vemula (posthumously) talk of dark realities of caste, class, discrimination, poverty.

Politics lures because it promises to bestow a power to tell the rest of society what to do and how to do. But here was Kanhaiya refusing the temptation: “I am not a politician, I am a student. I have no intention of joining mainstream politics or contesting any election. I want to question as a student.”

Question, yes; quibble, why not; quarrel, certainly. Keep the pot of democratic dissent boiling. “Is it possible to create modern architecture which has links to tradition in terms of culture and climate and solve our problems of exploding population and development requirements?

This was the central question posed by India’s pre-eminent architect and urban designer, Raj Rewal, when he delivered the first Cyrus Jhabvala Memorial Lecture last month in Delhi. (Full disclosure: Cyrus Jhabvala was my father-in-law).

The answer was indeed ‘yes’ and Rewal Saheb sustained this theme by extensively illustrating from the buildings he has designed for over four decades at home and abroad.

The challenge for any architect in India has been to design a building that will work for us in our mostly hot climate, rather than copy or imitate the western architecture.

It was a pleasure to discover that Raj Rewal had designed the Parliament House Library complex, a place where I have spent countless hours. It is a very aesthetically pleasing building, making full use of sunlight; even the basement reading area is bathed in sunlight on a reasonably good, clear day. The primary challenge also was to have a design that would fuse with the three major existing buildings — the Parliament House itself, the South and North Blocs and the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

As Rewal saw it, the challenge was how to reconcile the architectural legacy of imperial power, as brilliantly conceptualised and executed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, with the democratic values of today’s India. He has succeeded very well in giving a very Indian feel to the library complex. And, again, he brought in the traditional influence on his design. “The upper part of the glass dome has a symbol of circle representing the Ashoka Chakra.”

A day before the Jhabvala Memorial Lecture, Raj and his very gracious wife, Helene, invited our family to an excellent dinner.

At the dining table, I was surprised to learn that he has a strong connection with the region.

He has, for example, designed the University of Performing Arts at Rohtak. In designing that complex he tried to incorporate the precedents of Nalanda archaeological ruins, as also of Oxford University in England and Bologna University in Italy.

Of more immediate relevance, Raj Rewal is in charge of designing Punjab’s Jung-e-Azadi museum at Kartarpur. This very ambitious project is conceptualised as “a memorial to the valiant sons of Punjab.”

And, again, Rewal has taken inspiration from the past, in this case from the Harmandir Sahib in designing the Jung-e-Azadi complex, as also has incorporated the local phulkari pattern in his design.

Designing building, especially public buildings, is a daunting challenge in 21st century India. But, as Rewal argued cogently and convincingly in the Jhabvala Memorial Lecture: “The first and foremost lesson from the past is that we can fuse architecture, urbanism and landscape in our larger projects for low-cost housing, universities, public and cultural institutions. We can achieve all the functional requirements of today without losing sense of poetry and underlying rasa.” Amen.  On the morning of the Budget day, everyone was talking about Priyanka Chopra and her gorgeous dress at the Oscar ceremony.

As a former ‘Miss World,’ she is automatically entitled to be saluted as beautiful. But she is not the most beautiful nor the most talented actress in the country today. Nonetheless, she comes across as a self-confident artiste, someone who personifies the confidence of a new India on the global stage.

Bollywood has created its own little inward-looking world, self-satisfied with its borrowed mediocrity. That morning Priyanka Chopra showcased her talent in a competitive setting. She has already bagged substantive roles in Quantico and Baywatch.

It is one thing for an Indian prime minister to corral the NRI crowd to cheer him, it is quite a different proposition for an Indian actress to secure a place for herself in the Oscar lineup.

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