Oct 17, 2024 09:33 PM IST
As the sun sets over Charles Correa’s Jeevan Bharti in Connaught Place, the building transforms into a breathtaking spectacle of light and shadow.
That’s a Charles Correa. The Connaught Place edifice, Jeevan Bharti, is gigantic, and the front facade looks like a dizzying complex network of grids. The late architect designed the capital’s many other noteworthy complexes as well–Tara Apartments, Crafts Museum, and the British Council.
But this evening the CP building has transmogrified into something profounder, almost supernatural. The cause is the extraordinary pre-winter sunset that faithfully returns to Delhi skies at this time of the year, just before the annual arrival of the extreme smog.
It is half past five and the mid-October sun is dipping behind the Correa creation. The building is partly glowing in gold, though most of the panorama (including the rush-hour road) is more dark than light, like an oil painting by Dutch master Rembrandt, that great manipular of light and shadows.
The real vantage point to investigate this magical view is from a pave, just outside the ECE House, at the turning to KG Marg. From this position, the distant building appears to be a site of some sacred rite, involving a havan-kund of glowing embers. The strong surge of red emanating from the corner is intense. On walking closer to the building, the palette alters, and the gold colour in the corner pans out unevenly across most of the canvas (see other photo).
Actually, there’s another interesting view of the same sunset. It is to be experienced if you cross under the underground subway to N Block—just a minute-long walk from the ECE House. Here, the blaze of the twilight sun is melting into a leaky liquid-like texture, staining parts of the colonial-era block. Soon enough, the walls and columns lose their hard tangibility, as though they were mere optical illusions. Its surreal. The surprise is that this evening at least our CP shoppers aren’t taking note of the visual extravaganza. They are too busy with their mobile phones.
On reaching closer to Jeevan Bharti, towards the westernmost tip of N Block, the hallowed light around the edifice quickly loses its creative powers. Even the beautiful ember-tinted sky is starting to look dull. And Charles Correa building is back to being just one of the many buildings in CP. The show is over.
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