Review: The Boy Who Built a Secret Garden by Lavanya Karthik

Long before “upcycling” became a buzzword among Indians who like to repurpose discarded objects, there lived Nek Chand Saini who began building the rock garden in Chandigarh in 1957. His labour of love, which sits beside the serene Sukhna Lake in the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, is spread over 40 acres, and is truly a salute to human creativity.

The Boy Who Built a Secret Garden by Lavanya Karthik is a heartwarming biography of Saini — the man whose creation is a crown jewel in the built heritage of post-independence India, the pride of Chandigarh, and a big contributor to the city’s tourism revenue, drawing as it does visitors from across the country and the world.

But how did Chandigarh — which “was meant to be a symbol of a new India, one made of rules and order, straight lines and hard edges” — make room for Saini’s vision when India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had famously commissioned French architect Le Corbusier to design this planned city? After all, as the author points out, “his (Le Corbusier’s) plans for the city did not allow for any gardens or sculptures other than the ones he had designed”. This book tells the inspiring story of how Saini — a self-taught sculptor, road inspector, and Partition refugee — nourished his dream.

The story begins in the village of Barian Kalan in undivided Punjab under British rule. We first encounter Saini — born in 1924 — as a boy growing and tending to a garden filled with “unusual things — sticks and stones from the fields, clay from the stream by his house, bits of shattered pots and cups from Ma’s kitchen and slivers of bangles his sisters love to wear”.

Through his ingenuity, the child is able to refashion these castaway items into “the kings and queens in his father’s stories, the gods of his mother’s songs, the monsters from the tales his friends tell in school and the animals he sees in the fields”.

The writing is a bit dreamy and poetic, well-suited to the subject, and held together with a quiet sense of control. No word seems superfluous. For this, the unnamed editor too deserves kudos. Editing with care is, in a metaphorical sense, akin to gardening and sculpting. The beauty that the reader is struck by emerges only after the work of pruning and chipping away.

The author writes, “In 1947, Punjab is ripped apart by partition. New borders spring up, turning neighbours into strangers and friends into foes. Forced to leave their home, Nek and his family make a long, dangerous journey to safety.” With deep feeling but few words, this book presents the Partition as a historical event that changed the subcontinent forever. The protagonist’s family walked to Kathua near Jammu and then go to Qadian near Gurdaspur.

Apart from the emotional upheaval caused by the loss of home, they had to deal with immense physical challenges while crossing the river Ravi in heavy rain. The illustrations help us appreciate how each displaced family found a temporary sense of belonging while walking together in caravans.

When Saini’s family settled down in Qadian, he lent a hand to those who were rebuilding mud huts washed away by the river. He also returned to school to complete his education. The garden of his childhood became a precious memory tucked away safely in his heart. When he grew older, and villages were being demolished to make way for the new city of Chandigarh, he was employed as a young road inspector. Walking through the debris, he saw what the city had failed to utilize and thrown away as scrap material. Those unwanted objects reminded him of the treasures he had left behind in his pre-Partition home. He began to collect things from waste heaps and riverbeds before work and on weekends, and stored them in a hut he had constructed on a patch of forest land by the Sukhna lake.

The author notes, “Seasons pass, years flow by. Nek works alone, shaping, carving and moulding. He brings leftover cement and sand from work to build with, sorts tiles and bangles to decorate with.” Saini managed to keep the garden a secret. He named it Sukhrani.

The illustrations, which draw inspiration from Saini’s sculptures, made this reviewer nostalgic about a childhood filled with patchwork quilts, pillow covers and rugs made out of old bits of tattered garments that were creatively used by elders who treated frugality as a virtue. They may not have had much but certainly had the wisdom to save and stretch their resources; part of the inheritance that they wanted to leave behind was this resourcefulness.

Instead of reducing this book to a tutorial on how to create wealth out of waste, the author celebrates the protagonist as a symbol of resilience. This is not his story alone; he represents millions of individuals who took the shards of their lives after the horrors of Partition and made a fresh start. They did not have the time to sit and brood; they had to take care of their families, put food on the table, and keep their chins up though they were crumbling inside. Amidst the grief in the book, Saini’s garden blooms and proclaims the triumph of the human spirit.

While the book does convey that Saini encountered opposition when the sacred garden was discovered, it does not provide any details on who wanted to destroy the place and why. The city is personified, and we are allowed to witness a conversation between it and Saini. “Who has done this?” the city hisses. “Who dares to break my rules and disrupt my order?” Saini replies, “A garden grows to its own rules.” The city, enraged, says, “It disobeys mine. It steals from me!” Saini, ready with a rejoinder, says, “But these were things you threw away. And this is land you were never going to use.” This inventively written dialogue between the untamed creativity of the artist and the homogenizing impulse of modernization is profound.

Saini was lucky that the city’s inhabitants spoke up in solidarity. The book captures this beautifully as a medley of voices. Admiring the sculptures in his rock garden, one of them says, “My old home had tiles like these.” Another person says, “My little sisters loved bangles like these.” Yet another recalls his own village that had paths like the ones in the garden. Saini’s garden is a house of delight. As the author points out, “One by one, each man and woman becomes a child again.” And that is the experience that visitors have to this day.

While this book is written for children, it is a must-read for people of all ages as we all need to nourish our inner child, make things with our hands, and soak in the simple joys of life.

Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer.