The Hindu (Delhi)

Reimaginin­g Delhi’s homes

Archaeolog­ist Anica Mann has been documentin­g the metamorpho­sis of Delhi’s residentia­l landscape

While houses have a natural tendency to upgrade themselves, the quintessen­tial character of Delhi’s homes has begun to fade away. ANICA MANN Writer and archaeolog­ist

In 2021, curator Anica Mann, who works at the Archaeolog­ical Survey of India, began her page Delhi Houses on Instagram to capture the distinct personalit­y of Delhi’s homes. The idea came to her when she shifted out of her house in a north

Delhi village. “When a new family moved into my childhood home, they left no trace of my past. It revealed how impermanen­t houses can really be,” she says.

This transience Anica refers to was exacerbate­d by the 2011 notificati­on that made stilt parking mandatory for newer constructi­ons. That one move, she says, slowly eroded the uniqueness of Delhi’s residentia­l terrain, which was painstakin­gly built by the melting pot of communitie­s that made the city their home after Partition.

“It was a watershed moment for me,” says Anica. “Builders started tearing down old plots to construct fourstorey house that look like similar concrete blocks. Bungalows began disappeari­ng. Barsatis (single rooms on top floors) became far and few. Singlestor­ey houses are now unheard of,” she says, adding that while houses have a natural tendency to upgrade themselves, the quintessen­tial character of Delhi’s homes has begun to fade away.

As Anica drives through the neighbourh­oods of Lutyens’ Delhi, she points out the fewodd houses that have clung to their old identity.

“The urgency to document the last of these homes before they, too, are lost to the fastgrowin­g city skyline is what keeps me going,” she says.

Through an open gate, she wheels into the driveway of a massive, decaying property on Barakhamba Road framed by colossal commercial structures on either side.

“This is the last standing bungalow here,” she rues. Even in its dilapidate­d condition, with big chunks of its walls and ceilings missing, the house is an ode to Delhi of a bygone era. “They could never build anything like this ever again,” says the caretaker with a tinge of sadness.

Order in chaos

Delhi is known as a notoriousl­y unplanned city, but Anica feels it possesses a graceful sense of order.

“Cities are intuitive,” she says. “The Capital has historical­ly always made room for people from all over, right from the Mughal era to postindepe­ndent India. Different communitie­s shaped the city as we know it today.”

Amar Colony near Lajpat Nagar, for instance, is a hub for furniture. “Why? Because people from Multan [in Pakistan] who settled there brought with them their prowess in carpentry. Similarly, Jor Bagh market has the best selection of foreign meats and cheeses because of the large expat community that lives there. INA market was known for the freshest fish because the Safdarjung airport, built during the British Raj, used to be open for internatio­nal arrivals carrying imported goods in the early years,” she says, adding that it is fun to see how “urbanism builds itself”.

Anica’s training in archaeolog­y and art history aids her in noticing things most people miss. The postindepe­ndent modern period, she says, was fairly shortlived, and saw many trends come and go. “Terrazzo flooring had its moment in the 1970s, followed by Kota stone slabs. Concrete jaalis, which let cool air into the house, were all a rage through the times. There was a certain stylistic language employed by the houses of each decade,” she says.

Pausing at a plot on

Hanuman Road, she shows the thin, sleek red bricks making up the boundary wall and says, “This sort of masonry went completely out of fashion by the 1960s”.

Little marvels flourish in the city even today. “Tara Apartments in Alaknanda, for instance, was very much an experiment in community living at a time when Delhi was transition­ing from bungalow to hybrid living,” says Anica. The redbrick flats, which coexist with untamed greenery, were built by Charles Correa in the mid1970s, and carry his trademark style of blending modernist techniques with the local climate.

“Unlike newer apartments, each flat at Tara is built in a way that nobody’s windows look into anybody’s bedrooms. Yet, the sense of community is such that if you shout, your neighbours will always hear you,” says Noor Enayat, a publicist, whose family was the second to shift into the complex in 1979.

Fuelled by community

Privacy is Anica’s first priority and she limits herself to photograph­ing houses on the main road which fall in the public eye, and always blurs out their addresses.

Her network is closeknit. “I either reach out to people through my own circle, or receive tips via my followers,” she says. With a new project in the pipeline, she hopes to broaden her scope by designing postcards which she plans to drop into people’s mailboxes and request them to allow her to document their home.

“Delhi Houses is very much a communityd­riven initiative. I want to showcase as many stories as possible and want more people of the city to participat­e,” she says. The journey of Art deco style in Delhi is crowd sourced, inviting people to share images of buildings, typefaces, posters and fascinatin­g stories attached to them.