Narendra Dengle

20 landscape no. 25 | monsoon 2009

raveling by train on my wayback from Benaras, there wasa gnawing feeling from within.

I felt the experience of the city was try-ing to tell me something - and suddenlyas I paid unhindered attention to it, it be-came clear that the city of Benaraswanted me to know that ‘..- architecture,planning, philosophies and struggles increativity…. are all very well… but whatmatters the most is the place where youkick the bucket!’ It was a bit of a shockto draw this meaning as it upset the ra-tional, emotive and social base that I hadbuilt for myself. It not only demolishedthis base but it seriously questioned theprocess of acquiring knowledge and ex-perience of the world using establishedpsychological norms to understand ‘life’as ones’ own life bound in time andspace.

A landscape that has the capacity to dothis is all the more intriguing. Can one,for instance, look at a Banyan tree inBenaras forgetting that under this verytree the Buddha gave his first sermon atSarnath? Benaras had made me intro-spective but not in any analytical way. It

was as if you had become one with thecity and there was a new understandingthat had dawned upon. In a strange waythe analyzer and the analyzed hadunited. Who did this and how did it hap-pen? I measured the events of the pastfour days. I had stayed and meditated atthe J Krishnamurti foundation at Rajghatfor three days, had taken a stroll throughthe lanes of the city, and visited the KashiVishwanath mandir, not to forget the boatride that exposed me to the unfathom-able rituals celebrating events from birthto death in a cyclic way. This happenedback in 1978 when I lived in New Delhi.The experience was unmatchable andcould not be deciphered by logic, ratio-nal or a theory. It could neither be termed‘influence’ nor could it be translated intoarchitecture with known tools. I had todiscover new ways of comprehendingand transferring these perceptions intoarchitecture and landscape if I was everserious about them. It seemed like a jobof a poet. As for myself, I could not merelyexperience and go on living the sameold ways, for some mutations had oc-curred!

Narendra Dengle

...architecture,planning,philosophies andstruggles increativity... are allvery well... butwhat matters themost is the placewhere you kick thebucket!

i n d i a n l a n d s c a p e s |

landscape no. 25 | monsoon 2009 21

| i m a g e s & p e r c e p t i o n s


The more I dwelled on this experiencethe greater I became aware that theknown repertoire of handling space wasinadequate. Calling it an essence of In-dian experience would be too naïve andsimplistic. The complexity of this expe-rience was dynamic and its impact total,like a thunderbolt. Could I observe it with-out making a value judgment about theexperience of Benaras - I wondered? Forinstance, I was aware that everyone whovisited the city may not have had a simi-lar experience and therefore the experi-ence itself had to do with the place-space-time and psyche. A landscape is whatadorns the land, air and water. Besideswhat is natural and man-made, the land-scape also includes people and the pre-cipitates of experience within them. Theprecipitate, of course is in the subcon-scious, often without a rhyme or a rea-son. After all there has to be something

that is viewed by someone. The funnything is that the landscape seems tochange with the changed perception ofit. If people are told convincingly thatthey actually live in buildings that aretruly wonderful then they do begin to seethe point sooner or later. Their view ofthe world in turn changes. The ghats andthe intention of the city were telling methat there was more to life than merelysettling down on the bank of a great river.I needed to have a fresh look at the sur-roundings than get frustrated with thesqualor, unkemptness, the ritualisticblindness, and the persuasive greedinessof the pandyas, who serve the deity. Icould not judge by comparisons alone.You must stay with the experience ofBenaras without clouding it with the ex-perience of some other city like Paris.This place had to be seen as a place intransition, like a port, to be embarked

and disembarked. I had to throw awaythe known clichés like the ‘holy city’because it had something more to offerbeyond a ritualistic, organized form ofreligion. There was something whichcontinued without or with little acquisi-tions. I could not say what that some-thing might be and yet I knew that themessage had come from the visual land-scape comprising of people who werebusy with rituals like ants searching forfood. A cacophony of sounds that in-cluded rhymes, the holy dips, songs ofboatmen, wails full of sorrow, ringingbells, and crackling wood fire, patternsof movement which beat any logic anddisturbed notions of scale, textures ofsurfaces-of the ghats and ripples of wa-ter, a fusion of smells- pleasant and un-pleasant- and so on...



I think we are conditioned to convertingour experience towards making a com-fortable life around us. We want to strainit of its complexities and like a mali whomakes endless borders of diagonal brickand flowering plants, want to streamlineit. The sails of the boats in the Ganges,cycle rickshaws driven by seasonedhardworking bodies with deep lines inthe face in the gallies, the sound of thepoorab thumari giving insight into deeplynurtured traditional performing arts, toomake a collage that may be differentfrom the religious collage and yet equallyprovocative and thoughtful. How wouldI comprehend this landscape of Benaraswithout dilution or blending, I wondered?Because if I managed it then perhaps Imight be able to address the complexi-ties of life through design without anyadulteration and thereby discover some-thing totally refreshing. It is like a huge

tree becoming aware of its roots. Bon-sai-ing life though very philosophicseemed abstract, even cruel. Haikus aredifferent.

The ghats of Benaras have a backdropof architecture that is created with thesame enthusiasm as today’s exhibitiongrounds. Having concluded that the placewas indeed of importance, the ownersbuilt their havelis, mandirs, samadhis,dargas and palaces with designs to out-wit each other. There seems to be a com-petition to create better and more promi-nent architecture than the neighbour’s.While this is what one can achieve bymeans of design and perhaps wealth, sig-nifying the individual and his achieve-ments leaning towards indulgence andfashion, the streets and the ghats embodythe notion of universality and equity. Theyrejoin death to be the great equalizer and

how would Icomprehend thislandscape ofBenaras withoutdilution orblending, Iwondered?



leveler and thus point to man’s realiza-tion that in fact the individual cannot sus-tain without the universal. Over time theghats become witnesses and narratorsof events and rituals. I do not know ofany places elsewhere in the world, wherethe ghats become embankments of riv-ers with the consistency that is foundfrom the north to the south in India. Be-sides the popular commercial Hindi cin-ema, I believe the ghats are the only otherunique elements of architecture thatembody Indian psyche. The latter I be-lieve is more mystic than the former! Iam aware that the contemporary urban

psyche may not be similarly connectedwith the ghats and yet I do believe thatdeeper down even urban youth woulddiscover the dormant connections. Theghats also symbolize the end of a jour-ney. There is no further to go. This iswhere time and space dissolve, into anabyss of universality, together with theconsciousness of the ego.

The attributes of the experience ofBenaras begin with the intention of thehuman to settle down. The place is se-lected, and an edifice of belief is cre-ated around it to make the habitation a

worthy experience. Curiously, this inten-tion is without the hue of any particularreligion; which is why the hakims, Sufisand saints give importance to the ‘place’.A very renowned hakim in theneighbourhood of East Nizamuddin inNew Delhi, who was blind and withoutpupils, once told me that it was not hisdoctoral skills but ‘rather there was some-thing in the place’ which helped cure hispatients. I realized immediately why dif-ferent religions built temples, accordingto their respective beliefs, over the ex-isting temple sites of other religions.



Narendra Dengle (born’48) is a practicing architect and academic. His works, since 1974 include rural and urban projects

addressing contemporary cultural, environmental and aesthetic issues. He is Design Chair at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi

Institute of Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai and member- the Urban Conservation Committees for Pune and

Mahabaleshwar. His book ‘Jharoka’, on critical issues in architecture was released in 2007. He has made films on

Architectural Appreciation. E-mail: [email protected]

Urban space, I thought, must be seen aspart of such complex landscape, whichis both physical and psychological, thatBenaras offers. The rational and the ir-rational, the narrative and the individualperception must find ways to overlap, innewer ways, every time. The cityscapeand the riverscape are intertwined intomaking the landscape of Benaras. Thebuilt form is unassuming in that it con-sists of a hybrid landscape of layers ofintensions, aspirations, visions, naïvesimplicity and articulate form, installa-tions that are flexible, all contributing toa living and performing culture. Its un-inhibiting form is its strength because it

assembles a landscape inspired by anempirical thought process, albeit am-biguous and uncultivated by articulatetraining in universities but at the sametime quite comfortable in the latter’s com-pany. The message that I drew fromBenaras did not come from the scholas-tic study of its history, or that the Hindusbelieve it to be the center of the cosmos,or the politics of the Uttar Pradesh, but Irealized that it came from its unique land-scape. The visual image, although a resi-due in its own right, consists of messagesinclusive of the non visual world point-ing toward something beyond.

the message that Idrew fromBenaras... camefrom its uniquelandscape... thevisual imageconsists ofmessagesinclusive of thenon visual worldpointing towardsomething beyond

All images by Ashish Lahoti. The author would like to thank Ashish (architect-urban designer) for his enthusiasm in sending

the images and also allowing to use them.


Narendra Dengle

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