VULTURES OVER THE BUNGALOWS

William Dalrymple describes

the passing of the New Delhi which Lutyens created

ONE of the great pleasures of living in New Delhi is that it is quite possible to forget that the second half of the 20th century ever happened. Sitting in the garden of one of the great Lutyens bunga- lows, a glass to hand, your legs raised up on a Bombay Fornicator (one of those wickerwork chairs with extended arms, essential to every Raj verandah), in front of you lies a long lawn dotted with croquet hoops; behind, the white bow-front of one this century's happiest residential designs. Over the treetops there is not a skyscraper to be seen. You are not in some leafy suburb, but in the very centre of New Delhi. Its low-rise townscape is unique among modern capitals, the last surviving reminder of the town planning of a more relaxed and elegant age.

Sadly, it now seems as if the days of Lutyens's Delhi are numbered. The des- truction has already begun. Ravi Bedi, a hawk-eyed Punjabi businessman, was one of the first to grasp the money-making possibilities inherent in its demise. In February 1984 he called in the demolition heavies. It took only two weeks to smash down the white neo-classical bungalow that his father had bought from the British. The two acres of garden went under concrete, to provide space for car-parking. The 42 identical concrete flats (christened Marble Arch Apartments) were ready by the summer of 1987. The going rate was then about $100,000 for a small flat, double that for a large one. Since 1987 the price of Mr Bedi's flats has risen by 100 per cent. Each flat is now worth as much as his entire bungalow was worth ten years ago.

Money on this scale cannot be kept quiet. Mr Bedi's neighbours have followed his lead, and the demolition bug has now spread all the way down Prithviraj Road and into the neighbouring streets. Most of the planners and architects I talked to agree that it now looks extremely unlikely that there will be a single private Lutyens bungalow left undemolished in New Delhi by the middle of this decade.

New Delhi is still one of the most elegant capitals in the world. With its undeviating geometrical layout and solid neo-classical buildings, Lutyens believed that he had built a 'symbol of the spirit and perma- nence of British rule'. And although it is the great monumental structures Lutyens's Viceroy's House and Baker's two Secretariats — which are justly the most famous buildings in New Delhi, it is the smaller domestic buildings which give the city its character. From wide avenues shaded by neem, tamarind and arjuna, low red-brick walls give on to rambling white bungalows supported by broken pediments and tall Ionic pillars. Most of these domes- tic buildings went to senior government and military office holders and these still remain government property. The remain- ing 40 per cent were given away in perpe- tuity to the maharajahs, to the contractors who had helped build the new city and to some very senior Indian civil servants. It is these buildings, now the property of the original owners' children and grandchil- dren, which are currently being de- molished.

Behind the demolitions lies the pheno- menal growth of Delhi's population and the dramatic real-estate boom that this has brought. When Lutyens was planning New Delhi he envisaged a population of no more than 500,000. The mass influx of refugees from Pakistan following Partition put an end to such cosy schemes. By 1951 the population had grown to 1.3 million, and 30 years after that New Delhi was the home of nearly six million people. Planners expect the population to top 15 million by the end of the century. These people all have to be housed.

Already there have been some tragic losses. On Kasturba Gandhi Marg (née Curzon Road) only a couple of the original villas still survive. As was appropriate for a road named after Curzon, the houses here were of a most superior design: large, spacious two-storey buildings with lovely shady balconies covered with climbing jasmine and bougainvillaea. The backs of the buildings had bow-fronts, and gave on to spacious four-acre gardens. Of the two survivors, one is now in severe disrepair. Its plaster is peeling, its garden overgrown and in front of the gate stands a huge sign: A PROJECT FROM THE HOUSE OF EROS ULTRAMODERN DELUXE MULTI- STOREYED RESIDENCE APTS. COMPLETION DATE 1992 Sadder still is the loss of one very modest cottage in Aurangazeb Road. This is the house where Lutyens lived when he was first planning, then building, New Delhi. In any other country such a place would be a national monument, even a place of pilgrimage. In India the building was re- garded as old-fashioned and uneconomic. When the cottage and its adjoining build- ings changed hands five years ago, the bulldozers were called in. Along with it went a delightful two-storey folly, the remains of an early Mogul hunting lodge. The site is now occupied by one of the ugliest tower blocks in New Delhi.

Most conservationists now regard the battle to save the remaining private bunga- lows as lost, despite a temporary freeze on new applications for development. The question is for how long the government bungalows can be saved from a similar fate. The trouble is that the bungalows themselves strengthen the hands of the developers. When New Delhi was built the residential areas were considered to be a very uncertain investment. The Raj could easily have decided to move its capital back to Calcutta — after all new cities have a very bad track record in India: look at Fatehpur Sikri. As a result the contractors who built the city tended to economise on materials, just in case. Now, 70 years after the first of them went up, they are all beginning to rot. Many people in New Delhi have stories of how they left the bedroom/bathroom/sitting-room just seconds before the ceiling fell in.

The other day I visited the house of a friend of mine. It is a massive, rambling affair, with long lawns and jungly shrub- beries — but it is badly maintained, and rapidly falling to bits. After a couple of drinks, I plucked up the courage to suggest that she should consider renovating the house.

`You can't have had it repainted for 20 years,' I said.

`Wrong,' she replied; 'we completely renovated, replastered and repainted it eight months ago.'

According to my friend it's not only the old buildings that are going to pass away within the next few years: the trees, all planted within a few months of each other in the early 1920s, have also come to the end of their life.

Meanwhile the vultures are gathering. Mr Kailash Nath is the father of high-rise Delhi. In 1966 he built Himalaya House, Delhi's first multi-storeyed building. Since then he has been ceaselessly campaigning for the lifting of all planning restrictions. `Lutyens's Delhi is a passing phase,' he told me, sipping his imported whisky. 'You cannot allow people to have four-acre gardens while others are sleeping in the streets. At last people are beginning to see sense. By 2050 — at the very latest — it will all have gone.'

He rubbed his fingers in anticipation. `The lot. Delhi will be a modern, multi- storeyed city at long last.'

Lutyens's Delhi: a bungalow designed or an officer in the Indian Civil Service.