Architect and visionary Rajiv Sethi first encountered the kalakars as a child, eventually designing ‘Anandgram’ for this community in the 1970s.
Anandgram was an ideal, self-sustaining artist village to be built in the center of Delhi.
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The design pulled from centuries of folk wisdom, common-sense design, and cultural cohesion around an identity as artists whose skills come from God.
Sethi just wanted to make a permanent colony for this gathering of artists - what they call the mythical sect of 12’ or 'barah pal' - a brotherhood of tribes.
Sethi knew that every detail here had to connect with what how the kalakars actually lived:
The cooking activity
A space for animals
A space for prayer
According to Sethi, the kalakars have a saying:
‘I do not read, but I sing...
my hands do not write, but they create magic...
a people scattered and homeless…
yet everywhere we find three stones to mark a hearth.'
A simple fire on three stones in the heart of the city was not just an act of defiance against urban living, but a sustained conjuring of the old nomadic way of life.
Anandgram almost happened. Land was promised, and then abruptly taken away.
The exact reasons for this un-realized vision are murky, but amount to something Sethi referred to as ‘spilled milk.’
Today, the vast scrapbook of designs and architectural renderings that Sethi developed by hand are with the Asian Heritage Foundation, kept like old love letters in what is referred to as the 'Black Box'.