One of the most riveting lectures/presentations that I have heard in recent years was delivered by architect/urban planner Rahul Mehrotra who holds the Urban Planning Chair of Harvard University’s South Asia Institute. Mehrotra was delivering the Cyrus Jhabwala memorial lecture in Delhi’s India International Centre (IIC). I had planned to make a perfunctory visit for the lecture, but when I sat down, I was blown away by his vision and the range of his work. What was really striking about his amazing presentation was that he succeeded in re-pivoting an individual to see or perceive those places/events that he or she has been watching forever.

I was born in the city of Agra where trips to Taj Mahal, Sikandra, Agra Fort were usual. And it never occurred to me that there could be another way of visiting the various monuments of the city. Mehrotra edited a book planning for Conservation-Looking at Agra. The book is an outcome of research and speculation by scholars from Harvard University on how South Asian cities like Agra in India can explore the “agency of design between architecture, critical conservation, urban planning and design, and landscape architecture in heritage conservation, economic development.” This explanation pulled out from the volume may sound complex, but what I could comprehend from his presentation was that seeing Agra from river Yamuna provided a different perspective altogether. He also suggested that Emperor Shahjahan, too, visualised Agra from the banks of the river and there are many monuments and old buildings that can only be seen from a boat. Roads just miss out on many of these old structures. I am not sure whether the Agra Development Authority or the state government has heeded to this perspective to develop this old city that is struggling to dispose of its waste and sort out its traffic and pollution problems, but what’s apparent is that Mehrotra and his researchers provided a most creative approach to reworking a city like this.

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