Newspaper Article

Nek Chand obituary

Maizels, John

2015

Overview

[Nek Chand] began his vast creation in secrecy. From 1952 he was working as a roads inspector as part of Le Corbusier 's huge construction project of Chandigarh, the new capital of the half of Punjab remaining in independent India after partition in 1947. Outside that work, however, he had begun to build his clandestine garden in a forest clearing in 1958. Hardly anyone knew about it until, after 15 years, it was discovered by the city authorities. He was potentially in serious trouble: he had been building illegally on city land in an area under strict control, and he was a city employee to boot. While he was on a visit to his exhibitions in the US in 1996, his few remaining staff were taken away, leaving the garden unattended. As a result, vandals damaged many of the sculptures. Eventually Chand's international admirers formed the Nek Chand Foundation and sent volunteers to work at the garden. The attraction is now as popular as it has ever been. Chand was the first person in his village to go to high school, and after studies in Lahore returned to work on the family farm, where he built huge scarecrows out of cloth and rag. But his peaceful existence received an almighty jolt with partition, when sectarian violence forced his family to leave the ancestral home. They trekked in a refugee column for three weeks before finding safety, and Chand eventually found employment in Chandigarh, supervising road construction.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Chand, Nek