The Home We Call Vasant Vihar – By Vinita Ranade, 50 Vasant Marg, Vasant Vihar

My father signed up for a plot in Vasant Vihar sometime in the late 1950s. We were living on Satya Marg at the time, in what was then known as Diplomatic Enclave, the first occupants of the newly built homes which had come up for a UNESCO meeting in Delhi. A thin wire fence lay between our house and Safdarjung airport, and we children would run freely inside to watch the gliders take off and land. The Ashoka hotel had just been built on land donated by the Maharaja of Kashmir, and Vasant Vihar lay well beyond the city limits, where jackals howled and all sorts of dangers were thought to abound.

It was a fortuitous turn of fate that brought my parents to this new colony. Like many officers of his time, my father far preferred to be out in the field than holed up in an office in Delhi. But, in one of those strange coincidences of life, it was in the one year that he spent in Delhi as a deputy secretary in the ministry of commerce that the land was placed on offer to government servants. Nor would he have opted for a plot so early in his career had it not been for his faithful under-secretary, who virtually forced him to do so. Years later, writing to Mr. Dev, my father expressed his deep gratitude. “I cannot think of what would have been my plight but for the foresight you then displayed.” The gods had truly smiled on this partition displaced family, and my father never forgot the good that Mr. Dev had done for him.

It was in 1971 – more than a decade after the land was first allotted – that my parents began to build the house they planned to retire to. The area had a feel of a frontier town, with just a handful of houses dotting the barren, treeless landscape. As my father was posted in Calcutta at the time, my mother and I camped it out in the first few rooms to be built, surrounded by sand and soil, from where she supervised the rest of the house, brick by brick, pillar by pillar, nail by nail.

Cooking was done on a small stove, and the thin, spindly chowkidar, our sole protector in these wilds, would turn out thick rotis on a makeshift fire, as we sat on mooras under the stars. Modern Bazaar was then a small shop selling bread and eggs in C block market, and Sawan hardware store and National Marble were our frequent haunts for building materials.

We would spend the evenings walking around the colony, savoring our neighbours’ flights of architectural fancy, where Spanish haciendas vied for attention with Swedish log cabins, and every style in between.
It may sound romantic now, but the living was difficult. The summer heat was unbearable, and every penny went towards the epic house-building exercise. Until then, the women had all led sheltered lives, ensconced in the comforts of position and home, yet they soldiered on, umbrella in hand, braving all manner of hardship to build the one abode they could call their own.

That was the time of the Bangladesh war and the era of tight controls, and cement and steel were hard to come by. We used to take the 14 B bus into Connaught Place to plead with the ACC office to spare us a bag or two of cement. Often, we returned disappointed. That was also the era when people locked their telephones and making those urgent calls for cement and steel proved to be another nightmare.

After being buffeted around in the cement office, we would sometimes lift our spirits at the Bankura café, nestled under a thatch outside Cottage Emporium, and feast on cheese omelettes and coffee, before trudging on to Plaza terminus to catch the bus back to Malai Mandir. Those simple moments away from the grind of house building – few and far between as they were – were the highlight of our lives.

Yet, the ladies who built Vasant Vihar found camaraderie in each other, sharing their trials and tribulations as they waged their daily battles. Half in jest, my mother would say, “When Vasant Vihar is built, they should put up a statue of a woman holding her umbrella aloft as a reminder to those who come after us of the enormous hardships we have endured.” No such statue exists today, but it is with these words that I wish to pay tribute to all the women who undertook this labour of love to build the homes that we now have the privilege to enjoy.

As it happened, by 1978, when my father retired, the house they had so lovingly built was too big for them to live in. So, once again, they set about house building, this time for a smaller cottage on the lawns of the earlier one. It was on this very lawn that I got married in 1978, and in the fullness of time, my children were born into the house that came up on its green expanse.

The house has seen several generations grow, filled with laughter, warmth and happiness. It was the home where the family congregated, to which we always returned after our postings abroad, the place where my grandmothers shelled peas together in the winter sun reminiscing of old Punjab, where neighbours dropped easily by, where the garden, so lovingly tended, was always abloom, and where my parents lived out their lives and breathed their last.

Today, the Ashoka trees they planted have grown tall, but the house, standing strong for almost 50 years, is no more. One thing, however, gives me hope. And that is the old shatoot tree that, having withstood many an onslaught by man and beast, still stands sentinel at the gate, the self-appointed guardian of the house and all those who are enveloped by it. It reminds us of life’s infinite ability to renew itself, despite the unexpected twists and turns that fate can hold in store for us, playing out to a grand plan which our mortal eyes cannot see.

I hope that generations to come recognize that the good that we do lives on after us, wafting across the winds of time in many an unexpected way, and value the sacrifices their forefathers have made to bestow this wonderful legacy upon us, the home we call Vasant Vihar.