A Capital idea

It took 20 years to build the original version of Rashtrapati Bhavan

People who haven't been to the Central Secretariat area in Delhi won't quite know what it means to physically travel down the roads of what, intrinsically, is the country's power centre. The design is such that you feel like you are at the epicentre of the largest democracy on Earth. Wide roads. Grand bungalows. Policemen who almost look liveried. And Parliament House, the theatre from where our politicians debate on our future.

Anoushka Jain

But you don't actually have to go there to get a sense of its history. A virtual walk this weekend will transport you to the place, unveiling how two British architects - Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker - left a colonial imprint that married different architectural styles such as the Coliseum in Rome and 11th-century Hindu temples in Madhya Pradesh. A Delhi-based heritage company called En Route Indian History is organising it. Anoushka Jain, the firm's founder, tells us that Lutyens wasn't a big fan of Indian architecture at all. But he was instructed by the British government to include indigenous elements like chhatris, so that the rulers could form a connect with the local populace. So, to circumvent this aesthetic conundrum he had, Lutyens merged four chhatris with the dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan in such a way that they couldn't be figured out at all.

The walk will highlight other tidbits such as how real-estate developer Shobha Singh, late author Khushwant Singh's father, was one of the main contractors of the Central Secretariat area. "He was called ‘aadhi Dilli ka malik' since he owned half the buildings there," Jain tells us, adding that the beauty of virtual walks - vis-à-vis physical ones - is that people from any part of the world, including Mumbai, can join the tour. She says, "Our last walk was around the Nizamuddin Dargah [in Delhi] and I got a mail from a person in Pakistan saying that she would love to join it because she had always wanted to visit the place, but had never got the chance." That, it must be said, is just how geo-politics works.

On: July 11, 5.30 pm
Log on to: insider.in
Cost: Rs 350