Time like a whirlwind swept me off my feet through marriage and transplanted me in Delhi in a 'finished' house. And through my husband I had several close encounters with Mr Baker.
On one of his visits to our Asian Games Village home, very diffidently, I told him about my school friends' comments and childhood perceptions of him. He gave a hearty laugh and then answered my first childhood question.
It was Gandhiji who had inspired him to put his architectural skills to build affordable homes. Still more diffidently I ventured to ask if he'd do our home. Without an answer, he whipped out from his pocket a sort of diary, a sheaf of irregular sized papers bunched loosely and strung together by a tag. He shot a volley of questions at me.
My idea of space, my family's. Still the prisoner of a few girlish dreams, quirks, I rattled off...I'm err...claustrophobic... I'd like a bit of the sky in every room, even in the kitchen and the toilets...no square rooms... give me curves, please. Let there be wind and slanting rains, birds and bees, cozy nooks, secret spaces, suspense, mystery, a house to fill with memories...
I had seen Mrs George's house (that Baker had built). There was something that had fascinated me there. A broken, green bottle wedged into the wall. The setting sun had left its wicked signature through it casting a kind of psychedelic lighting on the red and black oxide floor. Give me that light and plenty of it, please. That was in the nineties...
Also see: A day in the life of a school in Bihar
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