Sangath, where we are now sitting, I think was the turning point of my career. And the turning took place because of two situations. One is that I was searching for my roots and also trying to reinterpret what I learned from Le Corbusier, in whose office I spent more than three years and subsequently supervised his buildings in India. And I continued to meet him often, so my contact with Corbusier was almost twelve years, close contact. So his influence has been great and so was my traditional cultural background. And I think this was something which was very important to fuse together. How does one look for oneself, find an identity, absorb something which was alien to the culture and looking both future and past simultaneously? And I think this is really what I am struggling.

From 1951 when I joined Corbusier and now it's almost like sixty one years. So the struggle is going on for almost sixty years or maybe fifty eight years. Because in his office when I worked I did not know much of architecture nor French nor the language. And so he taught me by speaking as if to a student who is far away from everything. So line drawing and saying so and so and this and that and what it is. So he really described to me the life he saw in the building. So not having any baggage of history and not having any baggage of architecture. Whether it is the big scale of the High Court or the complexity of the Assembly or the Governor's Palace or a small house of the Chauhan or the Sarabhai. I think I learned from him that every material has different tones. Every material can be different. Every family lives differently. Their cultures are different. And every situation demands a new solution. But then there are certain constants, the constants of climate. Like heat, monsoon, winter. And so the whole question was absorbing culture, climate, heritage and a new discovery. For him also it was a new discovery. He broke himself completely. He studied miniatures, he studied Indian Vastu Shastra, he studied life here. And he was writing always in his diaries all this and making sketches.