Imagined landscapes
Ravi Agarwal
Artist’s note, 2008
“Where did you learn to cut the tree like that, in a perfect shape?”
“My father taught me. The army sir who lives across, he had it all planned out, he tells me how and I do it. Previously this was wild, with grass and shrubs. Very messy and dirty. Children played here all the time, and others came and took a nap and hung around. Now I keep it closed, only for those who want to walk and enjoy.”
(Park Maali)
IN the pleasant green Garden
We sat down to tea;
"Do you take sugar?" and
"Do you take milk?"
She'd got a new gown on–
A smart one of silk.
We all were so happy
As happy could be,
On that bright Summer's day
When she asked us to tea.
(The Tea Party by Kate Greenway)
“The Defence Colony is basically a residential area of well-to-do inhabitants, secured inside a surrounding wall with multiple gates restricting the entry and exit, especially at night, thus making it one of the safest locales in Delhi. Several flyovers recently constructed at the busy junctions around the colony had eased the traffic and the resulting waiting period. The colony also has several green parks, houses the prestigious Defence Club, Defence Colony market and scores of galleries and fashion design houses.
Monthly house rents in the colony stands as high as Rs 90,000 while an apartment bought would set one back by not less than Rs 100 lakhs”
(real estate website in New Delhi)
One crucial aspect of historical change often neglected, is the ecological part of the story: when, why and how particular human interventions led to major transformations in the natural world. (Fencing the Forest, Mahesh Rangarajan, OUP, 1996)
How nature is shaped, imagined, or what ‘use’ it is put to, are questions which become present when nature enters into the human domain. As distinct from nature in its ‘wild’ state, as part of the human domain, nature becomes culture. The parks in my colony are reminiscent of British and Persian gardens, but also of a contemporary aesthetic which is difficult to pin down. Parks are green areas, but they also fence and exclude those who may be unwanted in society, and these green spaces are sanitized like the city is itself. Separations of all sorts are part of the nature – culture landscape. The separation is also more fundamental, and rooted in the assertion of an active power by the human being over a more passive life form. The aesthetic representation of/in nature is like an endless, maybe futile search for Utopia.
