Piloo Mody the infamous thorn in Indira Gandhi’s side, was a visionary architect and Swatantra Party pillar who contributed honestly and openly to the country’s artistic and political discourse.
“I am a CIA agent,” he proudly declared in the Lok Sabha, his demeanour bordering on glee. The bait thrown at the Indira Gandhi government was delectable retaliatory action for the Congress’s repeated dismissal of him as “a Washington parrot.”
Piloo Mody was the maverick architect-politician who was sometimes witty, sometimes wacky, but always topical and trenchant. Sir Homi Mody’s youngest son, following the highly esteemed brothers Russi and Kali, attended the JJ School of Architecture and the University of California, Berkeley. Piloo was romantic but realistic. The combination drew him to the liberal Swatantra Party, led by C Rajagopalachari, of which he was a founding member.
In today’s hyper-jingoist rant and caste combat, pertinent Piloo-isms ring is chillingly accurate. Consider the said March of the Nation quote from 1973: “It would be disgraceful enough if looking down on humans was limited to avoiding them or denying them entry to temples. What cannot be tolerated is when bigotry erupts in vicious, senseless cruelty, which society allows or condones.” Furthermore, and more positively, “The entire universe revolves around an idea. Given a clean heart, good intention, and determination, every problem has a solution.”
“Nothing has transformed; Piloo’s writings are still appropriate after over 40 years,” agreed his wife, Vina.
Piloo Mody and Lavina (Vina) Colgan were Berkeley students. Long tables were lined up in the architecture department’s studios to accommodate drawings. “There was a vacant space beside Piloo, so I parked myself,” Vina says with a smile.
When Piloo returned to India, he vividly described his two years working on the Chandigarh Capital Project: “Apparently, France produced Le Grand Charles de Gaulle and Le Grand Charles Corbusier in the same generation… I let him work uninterrupted while I rested in an easy chair. This prompted him to give me the moniker L’homme Horizontal.”
Piloo and Vina established Mody and Colgan in 1953 at Stadium House in Churchgate. “We sat for six months until our first assignment, flats for senior Tata Iron and Steel Company employees in Marine Lines. Then, because the air conditioning was still relatively new in Bombay, we designed the front casing of Voltas’ one-ton machine.”
The Modys grew close to the acknowledged pioneer in that field. Mohan T Advani, who founded Blue Star Refrigeration and Air-conditioning in 1943, envisioned an ultra-modern residential block where his mother and siblings could live in Bombay after partition. “The Greek gods lived on Mount Olympus,” he declared. “That’s what I’m going to build.”
He did, along with Piloo. “When Olympus on Altamont Road was built, Blue Star was a sole proprietorship, self-sufficient with a dhobi, tailor, seven elevators in two wings, car spots, and a provision store,” says Advani’s daughter Suneeta Vaswani. “Dad connected with Piloo, who understood his urge for the extraordinary, and Vina, who understood her American concepts. They were an ideal match. I followed them, listening and learning about different finishes and colours. Vina assisted in selecting Vitrum mosaic for bathroom counters and designed the tile clock seen at Olympus’ entrance.”
Three TELCO offices, the headquarters of Bharat Bijlee, Mukand Iron and Steel, Sandoz, Voltas, Diners Club, and Business Service Centres, are among the city buildings Piloo contoured. Vina says of his work, “Piloo was practical, curious, and eager to try new ideas. The Oberoi in Delhi, possibly India’s first multi-story precast building, was a fun project. The beams were delivered to the site while suspended between bullock carts illuminated by a lantern.”
Piloo’s political priorities were unmistakable. He was a member of the Swatantra Party from 1960 until 1983. The Swatantra Party and its supporters were staunch opponents of the Congress regime when public discourse revolved around socialism. They rejected the Nehruvian consensus of the time. “With the country going to the dogs via the socialistic road,” Vina explains, “Piloo found designing pretty buildings unsatisfying.”
He was a passionate parliamentarian elected from Godhra in 1967 and pushed for the passing of a significant bill that resulted in The Architects Act of 1972. The legislation formally recognized his profession, securing it with sanctions and regulations. Previously, architects and engineers were grouped.
Songs of praise to Mrs Gandhi were expected when India launched its first satellite, Aryabhata, in April 1975. “Madam Prime Minister, we know our scientists have made great strides in technology; I’d be grateful if you could enlighten us as to why our telephones don’t work,” Piloo exclaimed sternly. That was gentle sarcasm. Piloo’s characteristic honesty on behalf of the largest opposition party surged when the Modys moved to Delhi. As a result, he was among the first people arrested in 1975. On the fateful June night, he was arrested and taken to a Rohtak jail under MISA for 15 months; his Swatantra Party colleague Madhu Mehta called an Ahmedabad reporter. It was one of the first leaks from the Emergency.
Piloo managed to balance public life and a design career with equal zeal. His style of drawing building plans was distinctive. Shirish Patel, a civil engineer, recalls how inspiring it was to watch the iconoclast at work. The collaborators were also neighbours. The Mody mansion, Spiro Spero (as from the Latin “Dum spiro, Spero — While I breathe, I hope”) that faced Patel’s Nanda Deep is now the Japanese Consulate.
“Unlike any other architect, Piloo would not put pencil to paper without first consulting with the structural engineer,” Patel recalls. “You were called to a smoke-filled cigarette room, where you spent hours with your eyes watering. He’d talk about dimensions and spans, which would become great sketches.” When Piloo tasked Patel with designing his Delhi home, the plan he scribbled down was strewn with elaborate designs. He explained, “These are my carpets.” The house was built around his carpets.
Patel emphasizes Piloo’s intelligence in a unique project they began in 1977 while Piloo was still a Member of Parliament. Engineering Construction Corporation’s Chennai headquarters, a former subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro and the country’s sole winner of the Federation Internationale de la Precontrainte prize for excellence in pre-stressed concrete. When Patel suggested Piloo as the architect, L&T President Nicky Desai asked, “Won’t he be busy?”. “But architecture was a break from Parliament for Piloo,” Patel says. “From the construction site, we went to the boardroom, where we met the suited-and-booted ECC Joint Managing Director, CR Ramakrishnan.” Piloo began sketching on a small envelope while he and I discussed ideas. After our meeting, he opened the envelope and said, Whether you believe it or not, Mr Ramakrishnan, this is how your building is envisioned.
According to Noman Fatehi, an architect with the firm in the 1960s, “Piloo being a connoisseur influenced not just our work ethic but theatre and music choices too. I should mention that the zeal Vina sought out artefacts for CAC revealed her to be more Indian than anyone we knew.” “Thoroughly in tune with our traditions, even how she draped her sari daily was beautiful,” he says of her founding the legendary Contemporary Arts and Crafts (CAC), the country’s first such wonderfully curated home store, on November 29, 1962, the birthday of her mother-in-law Lady Jerbai Mody.
Amy Irani introduced them to Fatehi, whose husband, Mody, and Colgan senior associate Rashid Irani, specialized in dressing home interiors with Vina. The duo also decorated restaurants such as the Ritz at Churchgate and Bistro at Flora Fountain, as well as the Rhythm House store in Kala Ghoda. Amy, Bhutto’s secretary since 1959, typed drafts of her boss’s 1970s cult books, Zulfi My Friend (Piloo was in Bhutto’s class at Cathedral Boys’ School before moving to Doon) and Democracy Means Bread and Freedom. “Nobody can have bosses like mine. That we functioned as one happy family is not a cliche, but the truth, “she says.” Mr Mody treated us in the office to celebrate our birthdays. We were all invited home for brunch twice a year. In her kitchenette, Mrs Mody made scrambled eggs and pancakes.”
Amy believes that every project was handled aesthetically — “Piloo Mody moulded client taste with his convincing way of putting forth a point of view.” Fatehi highlights an exceptional feature of the original Juhu Hotel, created in collaboration with Shirish Patel. Piloo designed it as a low, chalet-style structure with a wooden roof truss of varying structural calculations. He hung the bar on the mezzanine level from the trusses.
“Mody and Colgan were concerned of client values,” Industrialist Rajen Kilachand says. “My father relocated from Girgaon to the Bakhtawar building (in Colaba) to find Vina, who was considerate of the needs of a joint family. We could open a door and rush into our grandmother’s room to hear her incredible stories about our ancestors. Vina designed our living and dining rooms ahead of their time, and my father had a sophisticated black and white marble crescent-shaped desk. Piloo and Vina struck a delicate balance between international sensibility and respect for Indian culture.”
Swapan Dasgupta, an author and parliamentarian, recalls Piloo Mody visiting the prestigious St Stephen’s College to address the student body. His witty rebuttal to the dominant socialist narrative would draw a standing ovation. Unfortunately, Mody didn’t dabble much in writing for such an unusual politician by Indian standards. While in prison, he worked on the book Democracy Means Bread and Freedom. According to one reviewer, the book was his attempt to define the meaning of democracy. In the book, Piloo Mody argued for the state to play a limited role in strengthening democracy. Decentralization, in his opinion, was the way to deepen Indian democracy.
In one of his last interviews, he discussed his plans to form a new political party. Nav Nirman aimed to be a political organization of truthful and devoted individuals who would take time out of their schedules to serve citizens at the booth level in a constituency. However, his utopian vision of decentralized political activism has yet to fruition. Due to his death, the project was abandoned midway.
His name is commemorated by the Piloo Mody College of Architecture in Cuttack, Orissa, and a FIDE chess tournament.
References:
- Piloo Mody: Swatantra’s Witty Parliamentarian [online], (no date). Spontaneous Order. [Viewed 19 November 2022]. Available from: https://spontaneousorder.in/piloo-mody/
- About Piloo Mody: Indian politician | Biography, Facts, Information, Career, Wiki, Life [online], (no date). peoplepill.com. [Viewed 19 November 2022]. Available from: https://peoplepill.com/people/piloo-mody
- Members Bioprofile [online], (no date). Parliament of India, Lok Sabha. [Viewed 19 November 2022]. Available from: https://loksabhaph.nic.in/writereaddata/biodata_1_12/1858.htm
- Marfatia, M., (2019). ‘The world revolves around an idea’ [online]. Mid-day. [Viewed 19 November 2022]. Available from: https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/-The-world-revolves-around-an-idea–21110172
