Foggy Aesthetics

Looking the same is a major crisis, especially when people have money. The first response is to differentiate in lifestyle. For industry, differentiation in deliverables is essential to increase net worth. The culprit in making all the world’s bricks look alike is digital technology. That’s when a sense of aesthetics can make a difference.

Indian women have had an inherent, exceptional sense of beauty from time immemorial. Their ornamentation is the most spectacular, from the nose ring,bindi, alta, mehendi on the feet and hands, anklets, finger rings with chains ending in bracelets, bangles matching every dress, ear rings that reach up to accentuate hairstyles and jewellery on the hips. Women’s hips are so universal in aesthetics that strokes from Western masters, from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso, have eulogised them in paintings. I’ve never found two women on Indian roads to have the same design of saris. Chewing pan was an ancient culture used by women to give sensual appeal to their lips. Even today’s young local Indian girls fuse Eastern and Western wear to make beautiful fashion statements. However, there are a few of the very affluent who distinguish themselves from this cultural fiber with hotchpotch combinations, and lose the glamour of Indian women. In general, it’s amazing how Indian women from all walks of life are conscious about aesthetic art in their looks.

But for most Indian men, aesthetics is “wot’s dat?” Earlier this week, waiting for flight confirmation at Mumbai airport during Mumbai’s cyclone I was just opposite a toilet when suddenly a man in a white lungi emerged wet from the toilet, shivering as though he’d taken a dip in the Ganges. In the corridor between him and me, travellers were passing by, beautiful air hostesses pulling trolley bags, foreign tourists and Indian executives all proceeding for security check. In full view of this traffic, the man lifted his lungi, took out blue boxer underwear from his bag, and jumped around alternatively on either foot trying to draw them up. When successful, he swung the lungi away in a flourish, and in swift movements continued to use it as a towel to wipe his body and hair. He then wore a shirt and trousers, took out a mirror, combed his hair getting ready to take the plane. As I enjoyed this scene, I was reminded of rural railway platforms with only a tap, and was surprised that even the security guard failed to send him inside the toilet. What a contrast in aesthetics, the man was totally oblivious to everyone’s curiosity!

Take a look at a man’s shirt pocket: all kinds of papers bulge from it plus modernity participating with the mobile phone. Hand set aesthetics have undergone a sea change, becoming sophisticated and trendy, as also the retail outlets of service providers. But check out how they are junking public eye space with ugly telephone towers in the city or outskirts, no maintenance, other electric and telephone wires hanging out, sometimes becoming like a net on the road.

Mushrooming real estate in cities and small towns may have presentable décor inside, but its public view has no character, just unbecoming sanitary pipes and exposed electrical transformer gadgetry. Old skyscrapers with cracks filled with putty create designs. Is that because most of society’s decisions are taken by men?

Western Europe after the World Wars had to go for quick habitation to bring immigrants to make their roads and buildings. These badly constructed 1950s and 1960s buildings with poor aesthetics and sanitation became horrible ghettos that created problems of corruption and delinquency. So they were ceremoniously bulldozed in the 1980s. India’s current architecture may face this same problem 20 years hence.

Paris is considered the world’s most beautiful city, attracting the world’s largest numbers of tourists, 82 million in 2007, larger than France’s population of 62 million. The tourism revenue France got that year was 37 billion Euros. In contrast, just 5 million tourists came to India of 1.2 billion people, and spent 7.26 billion Euros (Rs 50,730 crores) in 2008. This statistic also proves that per capita tourist spend in India was approximately 1450 Euros, higher than France’s 450 Euros. Culturally and historically I don’t see that we have any deficiency that we cannot attract tourists like France does.

Paris was planned to become beautiful and modernized. Napoleon III commissioned George-Eugene Haussmann to renovate the city. Through 1852 to 1870, the Haussmann Plan redesigned Paris with broad streets for trains and better traffic flow, public utilities like water, drainage and sanitation, and buildings in homogeneous architectural wholes that unified the urban landscape. Over 20,000 houses were destroyed, slums cleared away and over 40,000 rebuilt. Huge controversy was raised by writers like Emile Zola accusing Haussmann of corruption and architects like Charles Garnier deploring the ‘suffocating monotony’ of monumental architecture. But 140 years later, Haussmann’s work is the most valued heritage property and his buildings the most expensive in the world. In fact the city plans of London, Moscow and Chicago have borrowed liberally from Haussmann.

India does not have a renovating culture. If you come from south Mumbai on the Santa Cruz flyover, just look to your left. Below eye level are unfortunate slums (this always bothers me as I too was under privileged in early life and wish for this terrible situation to end in the 21^st century). Just move your eye up, and you will miss the building balconies for all the people’s dirty linen washed in public, or rather, clean linen, shirts, trousers, bras, panties and saris hung out to dry for public viewing. Actually building aesthetics have totally given way to rods, grills, air conditioner boxes, moulded paint. Without renovating all these buildings you suddenly find new construction sold at exorbitant prices.

Since a few years I’ve started frequenting Mumbai for my work in India, I’ve found a new type of décor in apartment building staircases, pictures of gods and goddesses in ceramic. I admired this very interesting move until my client told me it was to prevent people from spitting pan juice in staircase corners. What a clever idea, I thought, as god is highly respected in the country. But lo and behold! In another public staircase, the gods were stained with thick red spit. What is it that can instill the aesthetic sense in us as a people?

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