Walk Past

“I was shocked and ashamed of how little I knew my birthplace,” said Nayak,in Lucknow to implement here his programme on the invitation of UP Tourism department. Nayak’s shock and shame gave rise to CRUTA Foundation (Foundation for Conservation and Research of Urban Traditional Architecture),which organised local walks,tours and slide shows in North Calcutta,making citizens aware and proud of their city.

When he came out of Kolkata to Ahmedabad,where he ran an NGO,he saw here the same lack of awareness about the city among natives and decided to implement the Kolkata model in the Gujarat city.

“We identified an area in the old city between two landmarks,a temple and a masjid,and a group of volunteers walked the distance. We named it the Heritage Walk. Along the way we discussed every nook and corner we passed and its historical relevance. It also gave us a view of what old structures or areas required renovation or restoration. The result: even onlookers got interested and the neighbourhood got a fresh way to look at what they had taken for granted,” said Nayak,recalling the beginning of the movement,which began to show instant results. The walk began to scale various diametres of the city and the people’s movement sensitised the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation towards meeting out special treatment towards the city’s heritage.

All this was in 1996. Quite like the love and awareness for the city,word spread about the movement and soon enough there were invitations from other cities to implement the programme.

“Heritage Walk is a success in Jaipur,Amritsar and Pondicherry,besides other cities across the country.

The trend has visibly changed in 15 cities,from looking woefully at the fall from grace of the glorious monuments to feeling a sense of possessiveness and belonging and doing one’s bit to preserve the proud heritage,” says Nayak,who began working on the Lucknow project procuring as many as 32 century-old maps of the Walled City from the Lucknow Development Authority.

“These maps made in the British Raj are meticulously etched to the minutest detail of which building in an area faced which direction and had how many floors,” says Nayak,adding that he would initiate the project here armed with the history of Lucknow.