Puzhutivakkam literally means “The dusty place”. This is could be a pithy discription for pretty much any Indian town or city, but the original copyright goes to the Chennai neighborhood located at the south eastern periphery of the city.  A jumble of ill-planned streets and modest single family homes, Puzhutivakkam with neighboring Adambakkam, Nanganallur and Madipakkam was the preferred destination of retired pubic sector employees in the 70s and 80s to purchase a plot of land and realize their Indian Dream with their hard earned retirement funds . But now, in the age of stratospheric real estate prices, even their gainfully employed sons and daughters who tend to populate the software industry may not be able to afford their parents property that easily.

There are two options for those who would like to upgrade their smaller dwellings. Either they can sell out to a developer and get themselves a brand new, cookie-cutter apartment along with a tidy sum of cash. Or take it upon themselves and risk the treacherous world of self-managed building construction.    With House for 2 Brothers  (H2B), the client Santappa Kalian braved the latter route with the able intervention of  Mahesh Radhakrishnan and his team at the Madras Office for Architects and Designers (MOAD) and in the process have realized a clean, contemporary insert in the land of dust.

Very early on the design process Mahesh recommended they would not demolish or make any major alterations to the existing residence and the new construction will be a deliberate extension with minimal intervention  to the existing home.  Firstly it can be a technical nightmare while attempting a major renovation with a 30 year old construction. Secondly he wanted the new construction to express itself to the fullest without having to diminish the importance of the earlier home. A meticulously designed, custom detailed assemblage of pristine white volumes, the H2B is a 2-bed, 2-bath, 1200 sf extension to an existing parent. While the new addition is built upon the existing north-south circulation spine, the two dwellings couldn’t be more different from each other, just as the two generations responsible for realizing these buildings.

The moment you cross the threshold from the old living room with low ceiling and shuttered windows to the new addition, you are made aware it not your dad’s house anymore. Soft glow of indirect sunlight greets you as you walk across the new hallway, doubly lit by the skylight above the adjacent stairway and the clear story windows inserted in the space between the ground floor and first floor volumes.  A cantilevered, minimalist stairway leads to first floor with a view of the backyard beyond the terrace paved with china mosaic with mangos from the adjacent tree gently resting on the parapet.

The new heart of the ground floor is the dining space with the view of the lotus pond, enveloped on three sides by a deliberately patterned ferro-cement Jalli. A new age mashrabiya reminiscent of digital pixels provides the much needed privacy from the immediate neighbors while allowing the breeze the pass through.  During late evening, as the setting sun filters its way through the Jalli, the dining space is magically transformed into a three dimensional chiaroscuric tapestry of golden sunlight and deep shadows - a place where performance is guaranteed every evening as long the sky is clear of cloud and haze. As the twilight gives way to darkness, the Jalli dematerializes with the warm glow of incandescents.

The contrast between the old and new house could not be any more apparent when it comes to the choice of materials, textures, and play of natural light in animating the interior spaces. Yet they both co-exist as a single multigenerational dwelling, reconciling differing aesthetic, social and functional priorities. The new extension, hardly visible from the access road does little to strip the parents’ home of its identity. Yet, it firmly asserts its modernity  without compromising on the utility of both units.

At some point the white exterior walls of modernist volumes will eventually bite the Puzhidivakkam dust as they weather the unforgiving Chennai heat, smog and annual monsoons. Yet, those naturally lit, intimate interior spaces will continue to play host to the daily tango between light and shadows for generations present and future.

"Photography Strictly Prohibited" - The menacing board greets you even before you enter the main mantapam in Sarangapani temple. Considered as one of the 5  celebrated  Vishnu shrines located along the banks of Cauvery   (the other "Pancharanga Kshetrams" being in Srirangapatna, Srirangam, Trichy and Mayiladuthurai), the multi-walled Sarangapani Temple during the middle of the afternoon is an oasis of serenity within the bustling commercial heart of Kumbakonam. The visitors are few, and most of them looked like locals.  The cool interiors stands in welcome contrast to stifling afternoon heat and you can say its nap time for many. There are fewer raised eyebrows when when the camera shutters unceremoniously breaks the silence and reverberates across the pillared halls. And best of all, you get to witness the dramatic play of daylight as its streams through the narrow skylights and temple courtyards, creating a limitless palette of brown and grey shades across the array of columns.

But all good things must come to an end. After about an hour, the word must have got through that someone is having too much fun with his camera. I eventually got yelled at by one of the watchmen for flouting the rules. When I mutter something like "I thought we werent supposed to photograph the shrine", it infuriates him even more and he started questioning my literacy before I scurry away. The party may be over for my camera sensors for now. But day after day the sun beams will continue to shower their magic on those granite reliefs and stone cold floors, as it has always done for hundreds of years. And thats one memorable matinee you can always experience for free.

• $1.2 trillion in capital investment


• 2.5 billion square meters of roads to be paved


• 700-900 million square meters of commercial and residential space


• 7,400 kilometers of subways and transportation to be constructed

It all sounds swell until you realize that GE-USA has recently signed a preliminary agreement with China for building high-speed electric locomotives where China will be licensing the latest technology for building high-speed electric engines. While GE is claimed to be the world leader in diesel locomotives, the fastest trains in the US -  the Acela Express, powered by GE engines - with a purported maximum speed of 150 mph (240 kmph), typically averages an underwhelming  80 mph (130kmph). Just to put things in perspective the high-speed trains running on electric engines that connect provincial capitals in China are operating at speeds averaging more than 200 mph (320 kph).

That's a long way from the 19th century when the Chinese sweat, muscle and tears were shipped to California to help build the western railroads to the 21st century licensing offer from the land where you cant really 'google' the meaning for intellectual property.  A fitting completion of the Karmic circle drawn with indelible capitalist ink.

Perhaps somebody should remind the Indian railway minister Ms. Mamta Banerjee that the distance between New Delhi and Beijing is only around 2400 miles compared to 7,300 miles between the Indian capital and GE corporate headquarters in Fairfield, CT.  In abstraction, that would be 12 days to Beijing powered by Chinese electric engine compared to 90 days to Connecticut in a GE locomotive.

Surely we all know who the winners are going to be in this multi billion dollar deal between GE and Indian Railways ; after all GE could use a small share of those handsome profits to seek oriental wisdom on magnetic levitation.

New York Times article on China bringing high-speed rail expertise to US

Economic Times article on GE and Indian Railways

Between 2040 and 2050 the Tamil Nadu government put up a brave face trying to save the last remains of the beach next to Kamaraj Salai with corrosion-resistant concrete tetrapods manufactured with technological know-how from China. But the untimely low pressure depression from the Bay of Bengal during the heat of summer would finally wash away what has always been the signature open space for Chennai for more than one hundred and fifty years.

Given the relocation challenges the Tamil Nadu government had to face in the last ten years, the loss of the last twenty feet of beach land almost seemed like a non-issue. Unlike the Tsunami that hit the shores of Chennai on Dec 27, 2004  the government didn't have to be bothered by the fisherfolks this time. For in the place of fishermen's village now exists a floating luxury eco-resort constructed on pneumatic  foundations designed to  rise with sea levels and to survive cyclonic wind speeds. Besides, why would you need a fishermens village when you can order a fresh vacuum sealed pack of genetically modified and locally farmed Alaskan salmon from your neighborhood Walmart?  Walmart may be fighting another round of class action charges in the United States, but their business in India is doing better than ever. With their headquarters moved from Bentonville, Arkansas to Naypyidaw, Myanmar, they are a virtual retail monopoly in entire Asia.

The biggest political challenge the government would face in the recent years with the rising sea levels would be the relocation of the final resting places of four ex-chief chief ministers of Tami Nadu  - the tacky memorial tombs that populated the entire northern end of the beach.  The samadhis of M.Karunanidhi and his son M.K.Stalin were the first of the four memorials to be transported to higher grounds promptly followed by those of M.G.Ramachandran and C.N.Annadurai. Briefly the government considered the proposal for floating memorials put forth by the engineering conglomerate that owned the floating eco-resort, but the timing of general elections would favor a more controversial yet traditional approach to the relocation of the final remains. Earth was preferred to water. There is a lot more money to made from salt water these days and giving away prime waterfront real estate for free to dead heads-of-state did not amount to a smart strategy to fund future elections. In the name of culture and tradition, the Tamil political flock may still prefer the five yard long cotton 'Veshti" in place of western style trousers but sartorial sentimentality doesn't come in the way of cold logic required for political machinations. With the high profile memorials  transplanted to higher round, they now need to attend to official business. There is a bidding war brewing between Reliance Industries and AquaChina to grab the  memorial lands for the next generation desalination plants that would join the existing marine-industrial corridor that would extend all the way  from Eranavurkuppan in Ennore to the north to Pondicherry in the South. And bidding wars are a good thing for party and personal coffers.

In the middle of the heightened media frenzy that revolved around the the live telecast of the anticipated high tide event, the remains of one other political personality was turning in his grave - that of Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff, the governor of Madras from 1881 to 1886, who concieved and built the promenade along the beach and christened it  " The Madras Marina."

While I was studying architecture at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy -- the then Regional Engineering College-- any field trip to the neighboring town of Thanjavur was guaranteed to offer two major rewards.  Good food in an inexpensive restaurant and an evening visit to the 1000 year old Brihadeeshwara Temple --the "Big Temple" -- where in addition to consuming deep fried snacks for cheap, you have the luxury of being within the confines of one of the cleanest and best maintained temple complexes in country, thanks to its designation as a UNESCO world heritage site.  As students of architecture, the sheer monumentality of the temple spire would never fail to impress us while we munched away the deep fried murrukkus with tamarind rice lazing over the the manicured lawns with the sketchbooks by our side.

I visited the temple again few years ago after almost ten years and was relieved to observe that not much had changed - the randomly parked tour buses outside the temple perimeter, the aging elephant in front of the main gateway dispensing its ritual tap on your head with its moist trunk in exchange for a small fee, the well maintained lawn full of people of various ages, the busy 'prasadam' stall selling food,  and the the fairly empty shrine within the inner sanctum void of  mad rush of devotees. And more importantly, no fresh coat of multi-colored plastic emulsion over thousand year old stone walls - UNESCO and the Archeological Survey of India must be doing at least something right.

Generous open spaces between the concentric perimeter walls, and partly enclosed pavilions  are characteristic features of Dravidian temple typologies. However, these open spaces are seldom transformed into active public spaces for various reasons. But I have this theory: the greater the power attributed to the presiding deity, the poorer the quality of open spaces located within the temple.

Even after my mundane day to day existence working  on the 25th floor at the San Francisco offices of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill,  the tallest structure in Thanjavur with a 20 story high tower was still a delight to the eyes. But after starting to make a living designing public places,  I noticed something more to the temple beyond its history and sheer monumentality. The temple complex was probably the only successful public space within the entire town or perhaps the entire district. You just didnt visit the shrine..you lingered soaking up the urbanity that was always present around the religious edifice. And it was not a coincidence the the temple seem to attract more tourists than ardent devotees. There were more camera clicks than prayer chants.More people outside the shrine than within. There were longer lines outside souvenir shops and snack stalls and there was no mad rush to soak up on your quota of  divine blessings.

Perhaps it's a nice thing Lord Brihadeeshwara can't promise miracles. And it gives me a source of comfort that if I do visit the Big Temple in the future, I am likely to still hear those reverberations from the temple bell, observe a  local resident meditating in quiet corner, dodge toddlers running around the lawn, and notice those architecture students with their sketchbooks enjoying their deep fried "murukkus."