If we'd had sunshades and gloves, we could have been a group of ladies from the last century. We had gathered for a short cultural walk through the neighbourhood of Alkapuri, the oldest suburb and the most exclusive in Vadodara. Largely dating from the 1930s, most of the old houses in the street, were in the style of Art Deco. Keeping strictly to the point of our 'cultural walk', we looked at the typical geometric shapes and colours of the buildings, talked about the influence of cubism and futurism and pondered the history of India at this time. Our conversation drifted to Gandhi and his Salt March in 1930, the growing Nationalism in India, the rise of Bollywood and talking movies, the influence of modernism in the world at large and the optimism which arose after the First World War and then went global. After Miami and Shanghai, Mumbai has the most examples of Art Deco architecture in the world.
Pausing to look at a garden, made up largely of bonsai trees, we watched as the owner grafted different coloured flowers onto a 'desert rose', so that it would bloom in a variety of shades ! Our next stop was the Bishop's House. A lovely shady garden and in the centre a marble Madonna and Child protected by a canopy and economy light bulb, for nighttime illumination ! Outside a sign said 'God is Love'. We knocked and asked if the Bishop was at home. Leaving our shoes at the front door, we were shown into his living room. He told us of the difficulties of being Christian in a largely Hindu State - he talked of persecution & the difficulties of conversion, which requires special permission from local authorities and is not simply a matter of faith. We sipped our glasses of water - the house was built in the 1950s - they had bought it for a song in the 1960s and it is now very valuable, as land prices escalate, and India forges ahead with its double digit growth rate.
Our final stop was the home of a local lady, who had lived in the area for 40 years. Our hostess offered glasses of fresh orange juice, as we sank down gratefully on her soft sofas, under a large ceiling fan. It was winter but the temperature outside was 36C. She told us about the way the property developers were buying up land to build multi storey apartment blocks, trees were being cut down and replaced by a concrete jungle. The large homes of 40 years ago, had been torn down and converted into shopping malls in the last 10 years and now the smaller homes were similarly being torn down to provide housing for many.
The riots in 2002, when there was terrible bloodshed and violence between Hindus and Moslems, seemed hard to believe, sitting in her serene sitting room, the cries of terror which came from the nearby slums and the curfew which was imposed on everyone at the time, seemed an alien idea. "The curfew brought us together as a neighbourhood" she said "we couldn't go out at all and getting milk and eggs was very difficult".
Our two-hour walk had brought into focus, the past, the present and the future - shaped by ideology, politics and most of all, economics.
Pausing to look at a garden, made up largely of bonsai trees, we watched as the owner grafted different coloured flowers onto a 'desert rose', so that it would bloom in a variety of shades ! Our next stop was the Bishop's House. A lovely shady garden and in the centre a marble Madonna and Child protected by a canopy and economy light bulb, for nighttime illumination ! Outside a sign said 'God is Love'. We knocked and asked if the Bishop was at home. Leaving our shoes at the front door, we were shown into his living room. He told us of the difficulties of being Christian in a largely Hindu State - he talked of persecution & the difficulties of conversion, which requires special permission from local authorities and is not simply a matter of faith. We sipped our glasses of water - the house was built in the 1950s - they had bought it for a song in the 1960s and it is now very valuable, as land prices escalate, and India forges ahead with its double digit growth rate.
Our final stop was the home of a local lady, who had lived in the area for 40 years. Our hostess offered glasses of fresh orange juice, as we sank down gratefully on her soft sofas, under a large ceiling fan. It was winter but the temperature outside was 36C. She told us about the way the property developers were buying up land to build multi storey apartment blocks, trees were being cut down and replaced by a concrete jungle. The large homes of 40 years ago, had been torn down and converted into shopping malls in the last 10 years and now the smaller homes were similarly being torn down to provide housing for many.
The riots in 2002, when there was terrible bloodshed and violence between Hindus and Moslems, seemed hard to believe, sitting in her serene sitting room, the cries of terror which came from the nearby slums and the curfew which was imposed on everyone at the time, seemed an alien idea. "The curfew brought us together as a neighbourhood" she said "we couldn't go out at all and getting milk and eggs was very difficult".
Our two-hour walk had brought into focus, the past, the present and the future - shaped by ideology, politics and most of all, economics.
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