No one noticed heritage crumbling
Amarjot Kaur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, July 11
Yesterday, while praising Pierre Jeanneret’s sculpture, 89-year-old SD Sharma, who was part of Le Corbusier’s core team of architects and worked with Jeanneret on several buildings, said: “I visited the school to see Jeanneret’s sculpture and the building, which is a sculpture in itself, a year and a half ago, just before the pandemic. Even then, the sculpture was in a neglected state.”
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His statement raised a pertinent question – when did the sculpture break?
In a quest to find this out, The Tribune correspondent called several people who served as principals and teachers at the school. Turns out, till about five years ago, none of the teachers or principals saw this sculpture in one piece. Also, none of them was willing to come on record.
Have you seen this sculpture?
The only pictures of this sculpture were clicked in an era when digitisation was only a far-fetched dream. And now as we look for the city’s heritage sculpture through the one-click-away digital view, it leaves with no clue on its present, unfortunate fate.
When the correspondent sent pictures of the sculpture, which is estimated to have been clicked in 1955, from ID Mirchandani’s collection, none of the employees was able to recognise it.
“I just saw two blocks of cement lying in the ground ever since I worked here, not quite aware of what it was,” said a former employee while jogging his/her memory to 2016, on the condition of anonymity. Three more employees too refused having seen the sculpture as a whole.
As of now, the only available pictures of the sculpture date between years 1955 and 1961. All through 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, there seems to be no available pictorial record of this sculpture.
