Rohan Shivakumar
Cinematographer-filmmaker Avijit Mukalkishore’s six-year-old documentary envisions Chandigarh as a physical manifestation of India’s struggle with modernity. Nostalgia for the future Jawaharlal Nehru’s progressive approach to nation building. On the city’s architecture, the first Prime Minister of independent India was quoted as saying, “I don’t like every building in Chandigarh. I like a few. I like the general concept of the township, but above all What I like is that it’s a creative approach – not sticking to what our ancestors and the likes have done, but thinking in new terms.”
A still from the movie
Nehru’s vision for the country’s first planned city makes a compelling case for modernism in the documentary, which explores the nuanced, layered and multifaceted abstraction of Indian modernity through the prism of architecture and the home—Baroda. I Lakshmi Vilas Palace, Sabarmati Ashram and Shodhan Villa in Ahmedabad for refugee colonies in New Delhi—over a century. “Corbusier represented a strand in which Indian modernism was shaping itself. It was not the only one. It was important to us. Ambedkar, Gandhi, Sayaji Rao and even the architects of the residential colonies in Delhi were Indian citizens. were creating a concept that was not Nehruvian. We wanted to see Indian modernism in a form that is fragmented and multi-layered,” says its director Ojith and architect Rohan Shivakumar.
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Both of them believe that as 21st century citizens of India, we inhabit the future envisioned for us in the post-independence nation-building project. “This is us, from this point in history, nostalgic about the ideals of building nationhood and citizenship in a modern, inclusive, liberal and progressive nation. Hence the title is an oxymoron,” he says. Films Produced by Division, its Hindi subtitle Call waiting Awajit is seen as a rhetorical title for the genre of Partition propaganda films, e.g. Towards a better future, your ideal home And A good citizen. “Another oxymoron is the Hindi word kul, which represents both yesterday and yesterday. So, is this the future we are moving towards, or does that future involve a romanticized idea of a glorious past,” he says. asks the question.
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The documentary constantly shuttles between past and present, delving into the meaning of historically significant aspects and contexts of modernity through the people who once lived in them. “We use Lakshmi Vilas Mahal to refer to Ambedkar’s home in Rajgarh – Mumbai. Ambedkar’s education was patronized by Maharaja of Baroda Sayaji Rao. The house Ambedkar built to live in the Hindu Colony of Mumbai. “It rejects any historical and religious depiction of its neighbours. Instead, it looks like a colonial bungalow,” explains Awajit. He goes on to say that this refusal is representative of the method used by Ambedkar to reclaim and reconfigure the untouchability for a new identity.
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In Shudhan Villa, the annex attached to the main building, which houses all the services, is removed from the main part of the building and connected by a walkway. “Gandhi’s spiritual conception of the body refused to address the concrete realities of Dalit existence and trauma, while Delhi’s housing projects made concrete outlines of caste and class. This is not unique to these examples. We live in cities that are deeply isolated despite all our efforts to develop and modernize,” he adds.
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The tools of modernity, as the documentary also states, have not truly liberated us. “They were taken over by the Western-educated and aspiring middle class after reinforcing caste and class prejudices,” says Ovijit. He said that modernism is a style of architecture and it has no meaning unless it represents the value system of modernism – the desire for a world of freedom, equality, justice and fraternity.
A still from the movie
“The word nostalgia evokes a longing for home. This film is about homes and uses film and video content to relate, remember and represent the idea of home. This digital video and film, color and switches between black and white, to evoke memories and memories of home. “The film uses a lot of archival material from Films Division films. The material of celluloid film is a memory of the past. Bits of the film were shot on a 16mm Bolex camera and the material was made to look like home movies that might have been made at the locations, or documentaries on the residence made by someone else. The look was monumental but also critical,” he adds.
Will present an illustrated lecture on Awajit. Nostalgia for the future February 25 at Kasthori Srinivasan Hall, 11.10 am to 12.10 pm. Lecture is also a part of it. The Hindu Lit for Life 2023.
