Dear Gurudev, whose concept, design and architecture is the Visalakshi Mantap? It is like a vanilla strawberry cake and it looks yummy. It gives me so much peace just by looking at it.
Yes, we used to have a thatched roof for all our programs and courses. When it rained people had to shift their seats and cushions and sit where it was not wet. If it rained really hard then you had to wind up everything. This is what it used to be like in the old campus. Then one gentleman from Hong Kong came and said, 'Gurudev, we need to build a hall. People from all over the world are coming and you don't want them to get wet, or be uncomfortable'. Then I just drew a picture and said let's do it like this. And then they built it. Then I said, for every pillar we build we must give a free home for the poor people around the village.
In those days we built one home for every pillar for the poor people in the surrounding villages. It (Visalakshi Mantap) is about 12 years old now, and still if you look at it, it feels so nice! The shape is soothing to the eyes, so something is there!
One gentleman came from Dubai, he said, 'I am going to do the lighting for this'.
I said, 'Fine, do it'.
Today everyone does the modern type of building with aluminum frames, glass roofs, glass panels and not this type of architecture. The masons who were doing this sort of architecture, they never had work for so many years. Because seldom people build buildings like this. So 7000 workers worked on this at different times to complete this.
It took almost two and half to three years, and it was work for them. They were very happy. They were out of work and nobody does this type of masonry. They used to do this kind of work in ancient India and temples. Nobody is building all those big temples or homes in this fashion.
Since then we have put almost all the buildings in the petal style like this, so that these masons get some employment.
It is a skill, isn't it, making what they know about this type of architecture.