Just five months before independence I was appointed Senior Architect in the Bengal PWD. My first assignment was the prestigious and extremely challenging one of designing a memorial for Gandhiji – only a few weeks after his assassination – on the banks of the Hooghly, near Calcutta, where his ashes were immersed. The brief was very sketchy and vague. The memorial had to be elegant and modest, reflecting the personality and philosophy of the Mahatma, with a bathing ghat attached to it. There was a budgetary limit of five lakh rupees and the deadline stipulated was January 30, 1949, Gandhiji's first death anniversary.
Gandhi Ghat. Barrackpore, 1949.