A city institution.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Discreet daylight streaming through green vines, music percolating through painting… and Delhi fellows soaked in artistic pursuits. Triveni Kala Sangam marks its 75th jubilee this year. It was established in 1950 by Sundari K. Shridharani, who had launched her career as a dancer in the troupe of the legendary Uday Shankar. Its name, meaning the confluence of three streams, is said to have been coined by artist and musicologist Vijay Raghav Rao.

That said, the Triveni Kala Sangam that we know today dates from the 1960s, when the institution was moved from its two-room status in Connaught Place to its present four-storey locale in the art district of Mandi House, on a road named after the immortal Tansen. Here the complex slowly-slowly built up its reputation as the capital’s premier cultural destination. Triveni traditionally hosts classes on music, dance, painting and photography. This June, one of the summer courses on offer is “portraiture workshop,” that purports to teach clay modelling with “live model.” The centre also houses some of Delhi’s landmark art galleries, including the one called Art Heritage, co-founded in 1977 by theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi.

However, if Triveni were a cake, the icing on the cake would be its architecture. It was the first major structure in the capital designed by modern Delhi’s greatest architect. Like most other garden-buildings by Joseph Stein, Triveni’s brick-and-mortar concrete imperceptibly unite with trees and grass. Flowers and climbers effortlessly wound about the walls. The walls in turn frequently split into lattice screens. The pores of these screens gently let in the light from the exterior.

Then there is the heart-core of the place, the Triveni Terrace Cafe. For more than four decades, this shaded but open seating lounge, overlooking a garden amphitheatre, has played a creative role in the lives of artistic citizens. Painter M.F. Husain was a regular. So was Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, who, the then influential journal Seminar noted, would be sighted with “his small compact figure and square-jawed face furrowed in concentrated silence.” Delhiwale who dated each other decades ago in this cafe—it was earlier unpretentiously referred as ‘canteen’— now have their children coming here with their own dating partners. Over the years, much has changed about this eating place, but some favourites of those long-ago “canteen” regulars continue to connect to the “cafe” gentry of our times, such as the much-loved spiced carrot cake.

Sometimes, people snacking in the cafe see their conversations disrupted by the strum of a sitar, or the chhan-chhan of an anklet. Upstairs, one of Triveni’s many music or dance classes is in progress. The interruption is always welcomed.

PS: The photo shows the winter scene when visitors tend to sun themselves in the amphitheatre.