FROM DECO BY THE BEACH TO DECO ON THE OVAL

The evening of Saturday, the 12th of November, 2016 at Fort Lauderdale was an occasion for a Patna get- together, yet another round of election- result talk, a couple of  bottles of fantastic IPAs or Indian Pale Ale, and Trinidadian cuisine ( courtesy my Trinidadian sister-in-law). Trinidadian Indian food- mutton curry,  thin rotis of maida stuffed lightly with lentils, a few vegetarian dishes and huge parathas   rolled up and smashed parathas ( also called Bussup Shirt because a paratha can be rolled to sizes of a shirt) is very mildly spicy.  Sharat Bhaiya guessed that people who went there from India were average peasants from Bihar and UP  could have ill- afforded the spices found in the kitchens of Rajas or Nawabs- after all, the relocation of the Indian indentured labour to many parts of the Caribbean's was not quite like that of Wajid Ali Shah's to  Metiaburz or even Tipu’s children to  Kolkata when the chefs of royal kitchen accompanied.

Sunday we started at 830 am  for Miami. We went past the Biscayne Bay, marvelling at the downtown Miami skyline and then the huge line of cruise ships.  I was told that  Miami is the cruise capital of the world- cities on the move they looked, and like most things American, are developed on a huge canvas - and sometimes , by converting a couple of floors exclusively for Indian tourists, a few cruises are even touted as Maharaja Cruises ( it will be interesting to see how many Maharaja cruises ply post- demonetization of the two big bucks !). We were in a bit of a rush as the guided tour conducted by the Miami Design Preservation League of its famous Art Deco district was to begin at 1030 hours.

After the over hour and a half walk with a group led by Sandy, a passionate and knowledgeable guide, it was time for Cuban lunch at Versailles whose menu jacket claimed it as  The World’s Most Famous Cuban Restaurant. The service was fairly quick for such a rush hour time and plenty of Trump supporters, and very quickly we finished a sumptuous meal of fried pork chunks, ¼ roasted chicken, shrimp “al ajillo” black beans, boiled cassava “yuca” with cuban mojo, garlic bread, plenty of rice and  fried plantains , washing them down with St Pauli Girl, a Bremen- brewed beer.

The week following this Sunday, which was largely in New York, I had occasions to further try different cuisines- with Bunu Di the Korean at Wonjo not very far from Penn Station, with my nephew Yash a sushi debut, yet another culinary first time on the 2nd Avenue  of the Turkish at Ali Baba with my colleague Robert Haslinger and finally the Shrimp Fajita at a Spanish joint not far from the UN HQ. The only disappointment was in inability to savour Ethiopian food. The culinary juggernaut  is continuing in Rome, and will till I reach Bissau on 27th instant, but more on it some other time.

We hurried back from Versailles for a Swamp Ride in Fort Lauderdale, the Everglades Airboat ride. Not many know that Fort Lauderdale, in south eastern part of Florida, is also known as Venice of America. The town is famous for the sawgrass marshes with a complex system of interdependent ecosystems that include cypress swamps, estuarine mangrove forests, tropical hardwood hammocks, etc.The one hour ride is on airboats fitted with airplane turbines at the rear as shallow water with thick undergrowth would jam the rudder and motor of the conventional motorboats we see in the usual touristy marine sites. The siting of a large number of iguanas, red crested vultures and a lone alligator made the trip worthwhile.

Now I must return to the Art Deco walk, which is the main reason for this  account.Miami’s Beach Art Deco district is the first 20th century Historic District, consisting of over 500 houses around the Miami Ocean Beach front, thanks to the untiring effort of a Communist Jewish widow Barbara Capitman, who teamed up with a gay doorman Leonard Horowitz in the passion to save the buildings built between 1920s to 1940s to the condomania of behemothic realtors from around 1970s.

The fanciful pastel buildings with maritime elements (  porthole windows , ship deck style railings, waves and sleek curves), glass blocks, geometric patterns ( saucer like turrets, zigzags), rounded balconies , obsession with symmetry, and terrazo floors  that characterize these buildings are a treat to watch - see the basic schematic guide captured from the Art Deco Welcome Centre at Miami.

Even though the term Art Deco came from the 1925 Exposition International des arts decoratifs industriels et moderne held in Paris, and was an architectural style influenced by Egyptian artefacts, cubism and futurism, its famous signatures on cityscapes were grand edifices like the Chrysler and Empire State building or the Metro theatres of Kolkata and Mumbai, Art Deco was profusely borrowed for building a large number of cinema halls in many cities, hotels and most important, the private houses of hundred of self employed professionals and businessmen between the third and fifth decades of the last century. And this is primarily the reason  that most of us can identify with them, having seen them in different places in our childhood. When I saw the Congress Hotel in Miami, I was left dumbstruck. I thought I must have seen this kind of building in many Indian cities,  including one Hotel Everest in Dhanbad which is now converted into a Nursing Home.

I was first drawn to  the term “art deco” when I read a string of columns by writer Amit Choudhary and a few others , making an impassioned plea to save the buildings constructed by middle class Bengali professionals in Bhowanipore, Sarat Bose Road, Lake Road, Southern Avenue, Hindustan Park, Paddapukkur in which a few confirmed to the Art Deco style, though most were were a typically Bengali modernist evolution combining the Victorian with Bengali zamindari kothi styles ( red oxide floors , sleepy green-shuttered windows, spacious porches , intricate cornices , elaborate wrought-iron grills, etc). Actually, Mumbai has the second largest concentration of Art Deco houses after Miami, the majority designed by a Hungarian architect Laszlo Hudec and a walk along the Marine Drive, Oval Maidan, Churchgate, Malabar Hills, Peddar Road will help illustrate this claim.

But to me , the most important call from within was because I hail from a locality called New Kadamkuan in Patna, an area developed post 1934 earthquake, the first instance of town planning in Patna in the British era, carved out of  mouza Muharrampur that had changed hands from the Mughal Empire to the Company to opium growers, and leased to a large number of lawyers, a few doctors and some career politicians like Anugrah Narayan Sinha, later on the Deputy CM of Bihar.

It was in this Kadamkuan Mohalla of  rows of 8/6/5/2 cottahs plots, separated by broad metalled roads( the Bihari cottah is almost double the Bengali),  that huge houses came up, about a hundred, built by masons from Midnapur and Murshidabad, probably introduced  or recommended by a large number of Bengali professionals who held high positions in Patna’s society those days, in yes, you guessed it, the Art Deco style. Of course, I did not know the name of that style, nor for sure many of the owners of these Kadamkuan houses, as the term itself was popularized as broadly applied stylistic label only in the 1960s when historian Bevis Hiller published the first major academic book on the style : Art Deco of the 20s and 30s.

What makes the Art Deco buildings of Bombay, Patna, Kolkata or the Bengali- European houses of Calcutta so unique is that the era represents these towns’ first expression of “modernity and modernism” - in Calcutta they were neither the British created space nor the “aristocratic Bengali mansions of North Kolkata, in Patna the new professional classes, buoyant from  creation of Bihar Province came out of its Patna City, Naya Tola closet as it were, while in Bombay the emerging Parsis, film personalities spearheaded the construction of these houses.

Art Deco could well have been one of the first major thing Indians borrowed from America, probably as a political message as well since these were also the years of  popular nationalism in India and America was an example of successful independence from Britain. It was also India’s first expression of cosmopolitanism in that various Art Deco features were seen not only in exterior design but also the grand interiors of the cinema halls , the new form and places of public gathering - Roxy, Metro, Elite, in Calcutta, Hind and Pearl in Patna, Relief Ahmedabad, Mayfair in Lucknow and of course a whole lot in Bombay.

But I doubt Amit Choudhari’s team can hope for much success. He rues the fact that well -heeled Bengali NRI could invest millions to buy a heritage house in London or Marakech but not in Kolkata where he would like a new flat instead. The concept of heritage is itself  quite unique in this country. For a young country like America, probably 1920s and 1930s is old enough to attach the label of antiquity, in India with over five thousand years of history, the same period is not so back in history to justify the honour and consideration we give to age. Besides, a house not lived in by a great personality is not considered sufficiently heritage-ed, there is no quarter given to a style of architecture of anonymous professionals and the only architectural effort which is gaining traction in Kolkata is the dichromic painting of government buildings, housing estates !  I also doubt very much Amit and his team can muster the razzle dazzle support of fashion designers, gay activists  and artists to the cause of Art Deco preservation as successfully as  Barbara Capitman was able to- afer all Versace bought a house in this Art Deco district,  the Casa Casaurina, where he was later on murdered.

A large number of Kadamkuan Art Deco buildings have survived, but only because of the statutory provision of leased out Khas Mahal plots prohibited any changes to the original structures. But I wonder for how long , my own grandfather’s house wears an ugly look with the covering of open verandahs, while in several plots  in this mohalla, new houses have come up in the vast front lawns and driveways. One after the other, old cinema halls are being converted to shopping malls, and a similar fate awaits a large number of Art Deco private houses.

The Bombay enthusiasts have probably the best chance. They have, around the Oval Maidan, a ground that separates two contrasting styles of architecture separated by almost 50 years, have applied for UNESCO World Heritage site for an ensemle of Art Deco buildings on its western side and the Victorian Gothic structures on its eastern. But then "Bombay is Bombay, rest is India".