John Ullman uses bricks and mortar to build a dream for Tawang

Some of us are blighted because the journey home just gets longer as we grow older. For me, it first meant rattling down the hills from boarding school in Darjeeling to a tea estate in Assam.

Then the journey became longer from Assam to college in Delhi. Now, New York to Assam is an endurance test in plane-hopping. Very few metropolitan Indians in New York appreciate how backbreaking the journey is since they touch down at “home” in Mumbai or Delhi in 18 hours, so it just knocked my socks off when an American started rattling off pit-stops in the heart of Assam’s tea country.

“How can this American guy know so much about Indian Airlines flight itineraries and be giving me tips about the fastest route home?” I blinked as I listened to him rattling off familiar names like Tezpur and Bomdila.

As it turns out New York architect John Ullman knows the North
East like the back of his hand as he has a project perched high up in Tawang, a remote corner of north-east India which is every bit the frontier town. He is building an academic centre for the Manjushree Orphanage in Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh which is just 22 miles from the India-China border.

Ullman’s love affair with Tawang had an unusual start. He graduated from the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute and needed to log in weeks of community service to earn his architecture license. “Most people picked New York to do their community service but I decided to do it in India since I had planned a vacation in India. I Googled “India” and “volunteer” and the Manjushree Orphanage website popped up,” said Ullman.

“I telephoned the head of the orphanage, Lama Thupten Phuntsok, an inspiring Tibetan Buddhist Lama who invited me to Tawang. I thought why not? I was interested in meditation,” says Ullman who ended up teaching the older children in the Manjushree Orphanage engineering. Ullman’s ties with the orphanage run by maroon-robed Lama Phuntsok should have ended after he had completed his community service in March 2007 but Tawang was like an old song stuck in his head.

“I worked with an architect on expensive Manhattan townhouses, but I quit that job in 2008 to concentrate full time on designing and raising funds for a new academic centre for the Manjushree Orphanage,” said Ullman, who started a non-profit organisation called Architecture for Tibet.

“I knew, as a poor Brooklyn boy, that I would absorb all of my savings, but that was the point in a way: This would force me to redouble my efforts in order to garner the support necessary to complete this project,” Ullman said with cheery insouciance. On May 25, Architecture for Tibet is hosting a ticketed fund-raiser in the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan with a silent auction of goodies donated by New York’s travel, food and fashion industries.

“We have a goal of raising $100,000 (Rs 46 lakhs) at this event and I am optimistic,” said Ullman. “Our building plans are ready and we are breaking ground this summer,” he added.

The two-storey light-filled academic centre with classrooms, a library, a computer and language lab will be a gift for the 182 children who live in the orphanage run by Lama Phuntsok who was awarded the Padma Shri by the government in 2007. New York construction consultants are ensuring Tawang gets a “green building.” The architectural designs have factored in Tawang’s creaky infrastructure and erratic power supply to ensure the children enjoy some heating. During winter the air in Tawang is thin and temperatures are well below zero.

“Temperature will be regulated in the green building through a combination of geo-thermal and solar-based technologies creating warmth during the winters and a dry, airy environment in summer when Tawang receives heavy rain for three months,” said Ullman.

Ullman has been like a dog with a bone in sticking to the Tawang project. Despite the north-east being wracked by insurgency he travels to Tawang often. The drive to Tawang is breathtaking but backbreaking over the rugged terrain and the dirt tracks which pass for roads.

“The 13-hour drive from Guwahati to Tawang can be tough if you miss the helicopter to Tawang. I have done it — taken a bus to Tezpur and then hitched a ride with a group of lamas in a Tata Sumo to Tawang,” says Ullman.

Architect Daniel Libeskind who is batting for the project says;
“Tawang is a part of the world which has been in the news a lot with conflicts and clashes in the region. What gets lost is a small girl carrying a backpack that probably weighs more than she does, going to a school which has virtually no amenities. Education is her only door to escaping poverty. That is why architecture — and building a school — is so important.”