Remembering Daddy and his down-to-earth ways

For us as a family, this is a time of remembering, recollecting and flash-backing those times which we as children and later on as adults so very dearly cherish and keep stored away in some deep corner of our beings. The values, the concepts, the do’s and don’ts instilled in each one of us, consciously or otherwise, are the foundation stones on which we were able to build our personality. Thanks entirely to our parents for showing us the simple, down to earth way of life.

As the centenary year celebrations come to a climax, it is heartening to see the love and respect and fondness with which Laurie Baker’s  friends and colleagues remember him. Kerala, I think gave my father the maximum in terms of a truly professional life. I feel it is necessary to reminiscence a bit about these early years when  we decided to settle down in Kerala.

Having come down from the scenic and panoramic Himalayas with its snow-capped mountains and crisp air, the family finally decided to settle in the cardamom hills of Kerala, in a remote unknown place (at that time) called Vagamon, which was primarily a tea grower’s paradise with tea plantations and factories dating back to the British times. Medical facilities were more or less non-existent. The nearest hospital was down in the plains and very often a tea picker was not lucky enough to survive a snake bite. It was essentially this craving need for medical help that attracted my parents to this place. In keeping with our nomadic nature, the shift from the Himalayas down to this place in Kerala was once again a mission that had to be accomplished.

Life began in an abandoned tea factory. This ramshackle tin structure was made into a temporary home. As always, once the locals realized that a doctor (my mother) had come to help them, they extended all help in finding a bit of land for us to settle on. What came up next was a collection of grass huts. Living in a grass hut was no joke.  At night you would hear all sorts of scary sounds like the grunting of wild pigs, bandicoots, jackals and other noises that very often kept one awake. Then, of course, there was the scare of snakes. To cap it all,  the absence of electricity made matters worse. Glass kerosene lamps or ‘chimneys’ as they were known locally, were the only source of light –one had to be particularly careful because of the grass huts.

Later, we started on the building of the house, or bungalow as it came to be known. This was a mansion of a house with six  bedrooms, built something on the lines of a Swiss chalet, comprising  a large and spacious sitting room with a breathtaking view down the valley and a dining area with an equally appealing view of the stream snaking its way down to the lake. The dining area led into the snuggest of rooms which had a central fire-place. We gathered around the fireplace in the evenings, playing games, the favourite being scrabble and Canasta. The bedrooms were all on the first floor. Most of the rooms had huge glass windows which looked out on to the hills and valleys.

Medical work had started much earlier from the grass huts themselves, construction work on the hospital was also in full swing. This later turned out to be a 50-bedded hospital with a few modern equipment  like an X-Ray unit. My mother had trained up a few local girls, who formed the nursing staff.

The road from the plains up to Vagamon was scary and dangerous.  This was made by blasting away solid granite blocks from the sides of the mountains. As you went up the winding road,  the steep precipice on your left was a reminder that one small mistake meant sure death. Meeting another vehicle on a hairpin bend was the height of madness.

Towards the late sixties we travelled down to Trivandrum, initially this was just for six months, essentially for a well-needed break for my mother who was badly in need of a holiday.

Trivandrum, however, turned out to be a turning point in the life of the Bakers. Daddy got involved in many new and enlightening projects which enabled  him to reach out to a different type of architecture and clientele. It was here that his dream of reaching out to the needy and homeless really bloomed.  He was able to bring about a certain amount of acceptability to his bare-brick and cost-effective technology.  Though he faced a lot of opposition from fellow architects and engineers, he was able to overcome such hurdles by his sheer determination and special way of taking things in a humorous way, ignoring insult and injury, and going ahead with the belief that what he was doing was right.

It is heartwarming to see that his techniques, beliefs, concepts and ideologies are being kept alive by many of his friends and followers, particularly by organisations like Costford which uphold and carry forward his principles down to the last detail. I think this is the biggest tribute one can pay to him.

Needless to say, the six months’ holiday in Trivandrum, mentioned earlier, is still not over!

(The author is publication officer at Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram)