BV Doshi, a visionary ‘flame’

Maj Gen Raj Mehta (Retd)

Charming, kind, soft-spoken — BV Doshi, a recipient of the Royal Gold Medal and the Pritzker Architecture Prize, initially earned recognition as Le Corbusier’s brilliant shishya. He, however, good-naturedly cribbed while recalling those days: ‘Corb didn’t pay me the first eight months I was his senior designer in Paris (1951-54). I’d little money; didn’t know French; ate just olives-cheese-baguettes; became sick with colitis... but something held me back....’

BV, who died recently, would smile wryly sipping coffee after a ‘tiffin’ lunch at client Parag Shah’s Kirkee Cantt bungalow/workplace. ‘That’s what keeps me going. This idea that I’ve to do something which is right. What happens if Corbusier asks me a question? Corbusier once told me: “Remember there’s somebody standing behind you and you’re answerable to him”.’

This recall is culled from the documentary, Doshi. He was perhaps suggesting that the client’s needs/aspirations should make the architect answerable to him. That’s where BV and his Ahmedabad-based Sangath studio architects/collaborators/clients, which included his son-in-law Rajeev Kathpalia, a graduate of the Chandigarh College of Architecture, and architect-daughter Radhika, would pore over sketches and designs, brainstorming till sunset.

When BV spoke, everyone listened, especially Parag, who’d dubbed himself a failure as he couldn’t clear MBA. A businessman, he wanted to get ‘BV sir’ to visualise a ‘liberal education university’ on 60 acres at Lavale Valley in the Sahyadri foothills off the Mumbai-Pune highway. It would impart cross-discipline learning, which would follow ancient pathways evolved at Taxila/Sharada Peeth/Nalanda.

Providence sent me to Pune within days of hanging up my uniform in 2006. My need to learn, teach and earn using my military pedagogy had me joining Flame (Foundation of Liberal and Management Education). Then, Lavale Valley was just wild grass, desolate ponds, mud tracks and the detritus of off-track mobike rendezvous by teens seeking privacy. Two years later, Flame had crystallised into delivering liberal education in nature’s lap.

During the six years I observed BV, I believed him when he said : ‘I consider every building I make a temple for God, even if it’s low-cost housing. For a poor man, the house is his temple and for him you represent God... make sure he isn’t abused by your mistakes.’

On influences and work ethic, he’d call himself a composite. ‘I was influenced by Corbusier’s modernism, Kahn’s structural clarity and attitude... fused my learning with our architectural traditions, climate, local culture, art and craft...’ Philosopher Will Durant possibly had BV in mind when he mused that men of wisdom see a flame as a light, not a fire.