Sites linked to the NIO

Some sites linked to the National Institute of Oceanography (Goa):

www.nio.org www.indian-ocean.org www.reefindia.org www.coastalhazards.info www.mangroveindia.org

Creating an oasis amidst the heat and dust of Hampi

[By Frederick Noronha] Some 30 kilometres away from Hampi -- the impressive ruins of once prosperous Vijayanagara empire, the largest and most powerful kingdom of its time in all of India -- architect Gerard da Cunha moulded a piece of arid soil into a scenic township.

In early-February 2006, Cunha received, somewhat belatedly, the Prime Minister's National Award for Excellence in Urban Planning and Design 1998-99, offered by the Ministry of Urban Development. But the jury was unanimous in giving him the prize for his unusual project.

Cunha makes a point: "In India where our towns and cities are deteriorating at such a rapid rate, an award of this sort makes such good sense, creating role models which others can follow."

In urban India, the worth of this project might have taken its time to get appreciated. It's located in a hot, arid region, one which gets just 13 inches of rainfall a year. It was built as a Rs 150-crore self-contained township for an integrated JSW Steel plant.

Cunha shows photos of the local houses in an area, which gets temperatures of upto 45 degress Celsius. "There are often no windows, and the houses are covered with a lot of mud, to act as insulation," he notes.

Going to such a setting, he dreamt up an oasis.

"I was given this whole town to do. It turned into a place where I had to house some 10,000 people over a short period, and many more over a long period. It was a very idealistic project. It was very exciting. We had to plan on how to make whole t-o-w-n," he says, stressing the last word.

So he first framed his guidelines. "I took ten points, which I thought of as my Ten Commandments. Issues which were were vital for me," Cunha explains, and then goes on to outline his ideas. (See box.)

But the story starts a decade ago.

"We had many teams working on the project. But the starting was very daunting. There was *nothing* there," he says, with a stress on the word 'nothing'. "There was not a tree. It was so hot. And the soil, gravely." For three years, it was very intense work. It involved putting everything in place -- transformers, sewage lines, treatment plants, telephone systems and more!

Their work is on the local stone, granite. They used a pre-fabricated system, with pre-fab concrete joists, on top of which was cuddappah stone, and topped with waterproofing and insulation. "This allowed us to work with cranes, so we could build fast," he explains.

Gerard da Cunha (now 51) went and studied many townships. HMT in Bangalore, IPCL in Gujarat. "And I realised the towns were often conceived as little bits -- some housing, a school, a shopping scentre. They just kept on splattering it on a plan," he says, looking back.

"Nobody looked at it as a cohesive unit, to house the life of a community. So I went about using the house as a building block to create an interesting urban landscape. Where the unit (the house) was subsidiary to the main purpose to the town. Often you see very beautiful houses, but they don't make any town (when take together)," he added in an interview, held in an artistically restored old house in the still somewhat-green Goa suburb of Torda (near Porvorim).

[Gerard da Cunha's dad worked for the State Bank of India. He says with an embarassed laugh that he was born at Godhra, a place now notorious for the communal conflagration it sparked off. "We spent two years in one place and three in another," he says. He did most of his schooling at St Mary's at Mazgaon and college in Delhi. "I first came to Goa at the age of 18, and liked the place so much that I said I was going to come down and live here. At 27, I came down to Goa, in December 1982," he narrates.]

In the arid setting of north eastern Karnataka, Gerard da Cunha and his team then made their own options. A main maidan is located in the centre of the township. In each segment or sector, comprising of 18 houses each, they located all kitches in a way these overlooked a space where the tiny tots could play. This meant mums could easily see the children at play. Likewise, children could go to a playground without crossing any roads. Traffic has been kept on the exteriors.

"It was an idealistic situation where you would never worry about your child hitting traffic," Cunha smiles.

He had to face up to other issues too: how does one make a town -- and an industrial town at that -- exciting? "At every corner, you have to think of some interesting gateway, a park. You have to paint the scene. You're creating the lives of many people here," he says.

Look into the plans, and the big-picture becomes clear. In one centre, there's a playground. On the right is the recreational area. There's a temple, and a lake. A botanical gardens too. Just off the centre is the club, shopping centre and restaurants. "At every corner there's something interesting, so that you can relate to it. The only building I didn't do was the temple. That was built by temple-builders from Gujarat," he says.

Gerard da Cunha, whose work is influenced by Kerala-based low-cost natural-material architect Lawrie Baker -- but, thanks to his work, this form now has wide acceptance from the Goan upper middle class and elite -- says his emphasis was on natural material. "It's granite country," he adds of the terrain, in a region equidistant from both Bangalore and Goa, and which one reaches via the hot and dusty train that connects north Karnataka with Andhra Pradesh.

Did he feel like an artist doing the work? "Not really," he brushes it off, with a laugh. "It was more like a management consultant." He then explains how many tasks went into the coordination of this project.

"People (living there) are very happy about their township. They won the Prime Minister's award. There's no other township which has that kind of charm around it," he adds.

This place takes the sewage, filters the water, and ploughs it back into the system. They deploy composting and vermi-culture on their garbage. For the last eight years, no plastics are allowed in the township, says Cunha.

"Every house, because it is a hot arid area, either has a garden or a terrace. It's very nice to sleep out in the terrace at night. Even if you have a small house, the terrace really makes up for the smallness of the house," he says.

Then, they have also introduced a cable duct. So all telephone lines, cables everything has a "pre-ordained place", as the architect puts it. "Everybody is not just ad-libbing along the place. We're not digging all the time at cross purposes."

For some time the project went slow. "Steel (the firms main business interest) was not doing so well (globally). At the moment steel is doing well. So we're expanding more now than ever before. It's a lifelong project. As it grows I get more work," explains Gerard da Cunha.

But in a place growing in prominence as a tourist destination, this township has the only air-strip in the region. Gerard da Cunha is blunt about his achievements: "It's not a great piece of architecture, it's a great piece of urban planning."

He believes it's possible to replicate some aesthetic housing plans elsewhere. Houses vary from 30-square-metre sized houses to the director houses. To have a "healthy" community, there is some level of mixed use among categories too. Directors are mixed with VPs and general managers.

Explains Cunha: "(Some of the) houses are very small also. And built very cheaply. These are low cost houses but built within the system -- with contractors. Otherwise, if you really want to do low-cost houses, you have to eliminate the middleman. But that's not possible if you have to build a thousand houses in 300 days, for example."

"Time schedules are really punishing", says Cunha, who credits Sangeeta Jindal of Jindal South West for hiring his skills and overseeing the whole project. "Once a month we have a meeting of all the representatives of all the places in the township. I'm answerable (to sorting out their problems). We meet and they complain. If, for instance, there is a dangerous corner in one place, or a locality doesn't get water with sufficient pressure." One benefit of the corporate model is that immediate decisions are taken.

Is it possible to replicate such success stories? Yes, says the bearded architect, but only for company towns. For places where the staff needs to be kept close at hand, and the company is willing to pay for it.

Cunha says the place is also sought to be kept "happening". There are movies on Saturdays. They're building a movie theatre -- "not a multi-plex, a single-plex," he corrects himself. There's a good school. An airstrip, and one of the most modern steel plants in the world, in his view. This township spreads over 200-300 acres.

But that's Gerard da Cunha for you. He can take part in a Goa carnival -- as he has done in the past -- or create a museum dedicated to the Goan home. When we met, he had on his mind plans to join Laurie Baker's 92th birthday celebrations in Kerala in early March, and also work on a book and film celebrating the achievements of Goan cartoonist Mario Miranda! -- [Posted on GoanetWiki http://www.goanet.org/wiki ]

------------------------------------------------------------ Gerard da Cunha's ten commandments (for himself) ------------------------------------------------------------

These are the concerns Cunha kept in mind while creating the oasis near the site of the ancient empire:

* Unique in its identity. * Climatically comfortable in this hit region. * Safe for children. * Where houses are homes and have individuality (and are not identified by a mere number). Built built largely with pre-fabricated systems. * Flexible in its planning to cater for expansion and change. * Modern, and uses state of the art technology. * Visually interesting with wonderful streetscapes, unfolding views, surprises, vistas. * Urban in character. * Inspired by the region. * Meant primarily for people, the services and traffic being secondary. Services must be put in a network to cater to expansion and change.

----------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick "FN" Noronha is a Goa-based writer, active in cyberspace, who writes on issues both within and beyond Goa. Email contact: fred at bytesforall.org

Sunday papers... some Goa links

While visiting Uganda, where daily newspapers are priced the equivalent of 50 US cents (about 1000 Ugandan shillings), it suddenly struck me how inexpensive and affordable Indian newspapers are. A paper here costs Rs 2-3 on a weekday (under 10 cents US) and about Rs 5 on a weekend.

But papers that are advertisement-driven can be a bit (or more) reader-unfriendly at time. One compromise is the Sunday newspapers, and most outstation weekend-editions tend to have a fair amount of interesting reading material.

My joke on myself was that the Sunday Deccan Herald used to be a very readable product... till I joined (from 1987-1994) and started writing for it ;-) Anyway, whenever the chance comes along, one does like to pick up the Sunday papers. Problem is: these editions come only to the towns (Panjim mainly, Mapusa doesn't get all) and Sunday is a day when one is seldom in town!

Yesterday's papers did have some Goa links in them...

Deccan Herald's art and culture page had this tory on the Opera House in Mumbai. It read:

The fat lady sings only in Mumbai! Its rich history and intricate architecture make the Royal Opera House in Mumbai a major tourist attraction. K D L Khan on the only opera house in India. The Opera House in Mumbai waits to regain its past glory...

One wondered: with all the talent, couldn't Goa have something even remotely like this? Never mind that the sun has set on the British Empire!

And whiele reading, a Goan link presented itself. Apparently, the (then) Bombay Opera House was constructed in the Baroque style, and was the brainchild of Maurice E Bandmann, a renowned entertainer from Calcutta and Jehangir Framji Karaka, who headed a coal brokers' firm. The article further says:

An advantageous corner site was leased at the northern end of Queen's Road in the vicinity of the Sandhurst and Kennedy bridges, and in 1908, Karaka and Bandmann drew up designs for the theatre. Bandmann's manager was responsible charge of the construction...

Almost expected it! A Goan link there. As one reads a little of history, the Parsi-Goan links and the role they played in British colonial history of India keeps coming up. Even if the Goan often seems to be a junior partner in such endeavours. Interesting that Collaco is referred to only by his surname here. Does anyone have more details?

Another article in the DH is Marianne de Nazareth's review of Manohar Malgaonkar's *Inside Goa* (published by Architecture Autonomous, pp 495, Rs 695). Year of publication is not mentioned.

She writes: "Written in a fluid and easy reading style, Malgaonkar takes every Goan back to the days when their Portuguese 'masters' converted them to Christianity forcibly -- "Let him who wants to live in the islands become Christian". The others ran away to Mangalore and remained Hindu..."

That, to me, seems a bit too simplistic. In post-colonial times, it's fashionable to claim that the Portuguese converted "forcibly". It would seem more believable that many simply saw opportunity in this switch-over. Likewise, one thought that migration further south down the coast (to Karnataka and Kerala) started in pre-Portuguese times. It might be fashionable now-a-days to blame this on colonialism alone.

Another article in the SUNDAY Times of India (the paper I love to hate... it has changed the idea of what newspapers are so drastically, but you still can't afford to miss its adverts!) has this rather convoluted article on Wendell Rodricks, about a February 10 event in Colombo but written from Mumbai.

It begins thus: "The fashion world is in a state of shock. The attack on designer Wendell Rodricks at a fashion show in Colombo on February 10 has left a bad taste in the mouths of the glad-rag brigade."

After reading two-thirds of the piece, one lears that it probably was some rivalry between designers... or something to that effect. Apparently some designers had been invited to showcase their work at a charity event coordinated by a (?) Sumita Radhakrishna from Colombo on behalf of the Rotary Club of Colombo East.

Maybe one is just missing something here!

In the Deccan Herald, there's also another profile of Satish Gujral, the brother of former Indian PM Inder Kumar Gujral. We're told his "thirst for life and creativity led him to dabble in many artistic mediums".

Wonder how many would agree that his design of the Goa University was something worth writing home about?

EM, and a Saligao link

While visiting the 'Gagged by the Bag' exhibition currently underway at the Panjim municipal garden (see a report on www.goanet.org) I happened to run into the stall of the Green Goa Works. GGW is a not-for-profit company chaired by fashion designer Wendell Rodricks.

They're currently promoting EM, or effective microorganisms.

EM comes in the form of a 'stock' solution, a brownish liquid suspension containing the select organisms in a highly concentrated condition. The micro-organisms are of various beneficial kinds, including naturally occurring organisms found in yeast (used in bread) and lactic acid (used in curd). The stock solution has to be activated ('extended') first, before it can be used, and is then further diluted for a wide range of hygienic and environmental use.

This diluted solution can be used in toilets, bathrooms (including drains clogged with hair, soiled buckets), to fight set odour, dirty carpets, foul orour from used footwear, clothes and cupboards (to prevent future moulding). This liquid with a well-fermented smell and vinegar-like taste is claimed to promote better growth in plants. Even cars can be cleant with EM!

While the Green Goa Works is based in Socolwaddo, Assagao (phone 312 2609), the person I met was Alfonso Travasso, who is from Saligao (Grand Morode) himself. After working in Muscat, he has worked on this alternative and gave an interesting explanation of how environmental means were being used to tackle the growing garbage problem in the Mapusa fish-market and elsewhere.

For those interested, you can contact Alfonso on 2489 344 or mobile 9326151534. Here's wishing him the best in this useful endeavour! FN

PS: Please see http://www.greengoaworks.com

There's a bomb in your shopping bag!

S Gasper D'Souza of the Navhind Times has put up a photo exhibition at the currently underway 'Gagged by the Bag' event, on at the Municipal Garden in Panjim.

Gasper writes: "The garbage problem does not begin in the dumps. It begins in your shopping bag! Each time you go shopping, you are adding to the city's garbage. With cities bursting at the seams with increasing population [actually, with overconsumption really --FN], the waste being generated each day is simply too much for the limited space available. A day will dawn (and it has, for some cities) when we will not have any place to dump our garbage.

View the photo-documentary and article at http://www.gasperdesouza.com Contacts: 946 Gasper Village, E3/24 Tivai Vaddo, Calangute gasperd at gmail dot com Phone 227 5235 or 9422 638381

EM, and a Saligao link

While visiting the 'Gagged by the Bag' exhibition currently underway at the Panjim municipal garden (see a report on www.goanet.org) I happened to run into the stall of the Green Goa Works. GGW is a not-for-profit company chaired by fashion designer Wendell Rodricks.

They're currently promoting EM, or effective microorganisms.

EM comes in the form of a 'stock' solution, a brownish liquid suspension containing the select organisms in a highly concentrated condition. The micro-organisms are of various beneficial kinds, including naturally occurring organisms found in yeast (used in bread) and lactic acid (used in curd). The stock solution has to be activated ('extended') first, before it can be used, and is then further diluted for a wide range of hygienic and environmental use.

This diluted solution can be used in toilets, bathrooms (including drains clogged with hair, soiled buckets), to fight set odour, dirty carpets, foul orour from used footwear, clothes and cupboards (to prevent future moulding). This liquid with a well-fermented smell and vinegar-like taste is claimed to promote better growth in plants. Even cars can be cleant with EM!

While the Green Goa Works is based in Socolwaddo, Assagao (phone 312 2609), the person I met was Alfonso Travasso, who is from Saligao (Grand Morode) himself. After working in Muscat, he has worked on this alternative and gave an interesting explanation of how environmental means were being used to tackle the growing garbage problem in the Mapusa fish-market and elsewhere.

For those interested, you can contact Alfonso on 2489 344 or mobile 9326151534. Here's wishing him the best in this useful endeavour! FN

PS: Please see http://www.greengoaworks.com

Some neat photos from Goa...

These pics are all by Rajan P. Parrikar <parrikar at yahoo.com>

http://web.mac.com/parrikar/iWeb/GoaList/goalist.html

Rajan writes: "The page takes about 2-3 mins on broadband to load. You can then view the slideshow or view each picture individually."

* 13th century Mahadeva temple at Tambdi Surla in Sanguem taluka. * Plaque at Tambdi Surla -- poorly written and wrong (the temple is made of soap-stone, not basalt) * Barve's, traditional Goan eating-house (khaanaval) in Ponda. * Crossing the ferry between Pilgaon and Khandola. * View from the ferry. * Savoi Verem * KuLAgar (spice plantation) at Savoi Verem. * Fried mussels at Savoi plantations. * Traditional sweets, khaajem and laadoo (alas, no saakrichyo baaviyo -- the pink colouring agent is now banned) * Khaarem at Canacona. * Ruining Palolem (thanks to Western tramps and ill-bred Indian louts) * At the Rajbaag beach. * Tivrem, near Mashel (Marcela) * Old quarter of Panjim. * Tato's, a Panjim institution, over a hundred years old. * The new Gujarati digs at Hotel Fidalgo. * Public (installation) art by Subodh Kerkar near the Children's Park at Campal, Panjim.

Brisa Resorts advert...

This advert, in The Examiner (the Catholic mag from Mumbai, which has wittingly or otherwise played a significant role in the concretisation of the Goa coast) is perhaps indicative of the signs of the time:

BRISA RESORTS, CALANGUTE, GOA. ATTN FLAT OWNERS: Mr Antonio Vaz, based in London, presently in Goa, met some of the flat owners in Mumbai Nov 30. Is willing to run BRISA and invest 2.5 crores to make Brisa a grand resort. Those interested in giving him a go-ahead may please revert immediately with your name/ address/flat no to Ian Rebello at 98704 -7715 or email isrebello@hotmail.com

Reporting on the Diaspora

Please see Reporting on the Diaspora: Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2006 floated the idea of having a global media network which can cater to the diaspora across the world. http://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid=Web591761212Hoot63306% 20PM1927&pn=1

Not directly related to Goa, but of interest to us! FN

Wency, documentary, Norman Mendes, etc...

The other day, a young film-maker based in Delhi dropped over. Wency Mendes -- wency_mendes at yahoo.com -- says he is keen to make a documentary film on Goan music. Wency and Santana Issar had a long late evening discussion about their work, what they were planning to look at, how their costly hired camera had got stolen during a break-in at Anjuna, and a range of other subjects.

In passing, Wency (29) mentioned that his mum Anna Pinto was working in the North East. Small world! Anna and Cheryl DeSouza were among our early colleagues in the early days at the Herald, around 1983-84.

In quite another context, I knew Wency's dad, Norman Mendes. Norman was one of the influential persons who was part of the All India Catholic Universities Federation (AICUF), one of the few liberal-progressive Catholic organisations that shaped local youth in this state (and perhaps unwittingly created a generation of local campaigners and leaders in Goa subsequently). Most of the names that Wency mentioned were friends or known names: Vinay Kamat, Fr Fermin de Souza sj, the diocesan priest Emidio Pinto, and others.

It was sad to learn that Norman had died about three years ago, while still in his early fifties. We had not met maybe for two decades, but one often wonders about what's happening in the lives of friends of the past. By some coincidence, I was thinking of Norman Mendes (who was Margao-based after resettling from Mumbai) not many days ago.

Half-seriously, I told Wency that this was like a full circle being completed. Norman had influenced us in our collage days; now we were, in a small way, sharing our little info with his son!

Here's wishing Wency all the best in his work. He has already crafted a documentary on the North East, which has been shown at the Kathmandu film festival (organised by the Himal group, I think). Nice to see young people of Goan origin reach places in the world of documentary. I hurriedly added him to the Docuwallahs2 network on documentary film in India, and if you would like to join the same, check it out at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/docuwallahs2 -- FN Feb 1, 2006 14:39