SHIVA RIJAL

We manage to save some money to buy a piece of land and construct a house that we can call our home in this city where we happen to be born or to grow up or arrive at a certain point of time in our lives. Those of us who already own a house in Kathmandu try our best to maintain, update or modify its architectural features as per change in taste and time. But, in either case, architecture as a generic name given to a building including the space it occupies is the very reality that consumes our energies, savings and the lifetime that we give to maintain the covenant with it. We perennially remain architectural beings, caught in the uniquely terrible architectural race in this city and elsewhere.

Theoretically speaking, dreamers such as architects, entrepreneurs and urban policymakers and planners create the world of city architectures. This makes us believe that a city ought to be a very rational creature developed out of well-designed plans and architectural exercises. But, in the case of Kathmandu, such assumptions about city architectures and urban planning sound very idealistic. Hundreds of thousands of people here cannot own an architecturally safe and healthy house. That is why houses in a single lane in Kathmandu do not look the same in terms of size, appearance and their appeal.

A lane in Kathmandu is thus a collage of dreams that reflects a huge gap and lack of economic, political and urban planning sensibilities. Kathmandu’s single lane reveals the face of universal urban-escape that, no matter how smart architecturally a house may be, is not enough to create a total city escape. Much also depends on other neighboring houses no matter how small and architecturally insignificant they may look. City architectures in Kathmandu are pictures of successful as well as bruised-dreams that the individual dreamers live with.

It is a common experience everywhere that the more houses a city gets, the more alienated its inhabitants become. In no time, the same city architectures cause individual dreamers to feel alienated from the urban life and societies. There could be several psychological reasons for this. In today’s economic, developmental and architectural contexts of Kathmandu, every private space that is architecturally beautiful and striking is the property of a rich person whom we may not like to meet in our life. Service centers from hospital to hotels and schools to toilet in this city define us as potential customers. We know that people in such premises pretend to be good. Our experience tells us that to own up an architectural space either in the form of home or office in this city is becoming terribly expensive every day. How are our children going to fight this economically expensive and philosophically meaningless architectural race? We look at the horizons in dismay.

Government-owned architectural spaces in Kathmandu function with the taxes we pay as per law of this land, and we become very sad to know that only few honest people work here. We also become very angry to know that many corrupt leaders and their progenies owned, and still own, several architecturally significant places in the city. Moreover, experts argue that we are bound to face a strong earthquake in Kathmandu sooner or later. In case of such an ominous event, the very buildings that have taken our energies and become the cause of frustrations are going to be the cause of the death of at least a hundred thousand of us. Senior architects believe it is now impossible to bring cities in Kathmandu Valley into their older architectural tracks. Architects and urban policymakers dedicated to the heritage of Kathmandu’s architectural heritage tell us that they too are the members of a marginalized intellectual community in the development contexts of the present times in this city. A walk through streets in Kathmandu naturally makes us ponder over a greater chaotic urban-escape in future.

But architectures are inevitable in our lives. They make us crazy, scared, arrogant, angry and so on. We also know that architectural spaces can liberate our minds and souls from many psycho-architectural traps that we have given to ourselves. Several times in our lives it has struck us that houses, hotels and university class rooms among other forms of architectural spaces are not the only places we love to visit and stay within. As dreamers in this city, we need some architectural spaces where we can feel free from the very burden of taking part in the never ending architectural race. Deep down we know that there are beautiful as well as ugly sides of such dreams that we live by. And we want to contemplate about it. That’s why we find ourselves walking or quietly sitting in and around Swayambhunath, Boudhanatha and similar other areas or find ourselves making trips to some places, where instead of houses and offices, only nature and sky are seen in the horizon.

For many it may look a dharma-driven and pleasure-seeking activity. But such acts are architectural fights that we are bound to make within. In such spaces, we come to realize that houses and offices which we own or do dream of owning in this city and elsewhere are the root causes of the dukkha or suffering in our lives. Here we realize that we are part of the cosmos and we share this world with birds, dogs, stars and sky. And the cosmos is a place where we do not need to make any house or own any office and find ourselves being helplessly cheated by wrong fellows. Here, we sacrifice our houses, offices and dreams of owning many of them at least for a certain period of time. We no longer become mere dreamers set to win architectural race but some beings trying to ‘read’ the complexities of our lives. We become wiser in such spaces.

But we ought to go on fighting with the reality. Architectures as subjects which enslave and liberate us demand to be addressed accordingly. As a source and medium of liberation, we need to honor, respect and preserve them as sacred entities in order to maintain some psycho-architectural balances in our minds and souls. This means as we take part in the race of owning some architectural spaces in this city, we should not harm and let others do so to such sacred architectural spaces. Similarly, the urban planners and policymakers should fight to create awareness that by preserving, promoting and inventing spaces which provide people some sense of moral and spiritual orders, it helps in directly contributing to the prosperity of humanity.

To conclude, at times when price of land in Kathmandu is becoming expensive every day, not many open spaces are left now. Hence, it will be very wise of us if we set some time to ponder over spaces which help us to restore peace and order in our lives.

rijalshiva@gmail.com

source:Rijal, Shiva(2011),"Architecture, fear & freedom", republica, 16 June 2011