Ahmedabad: The city’s heritage is seeing a rare double revival. As the civic body restores Ellis Bridge into the new avatar of a pedestrian pathway, a few streets away in the Walled City, its maker’s home is being brought back to life after more than a century. Together, they resurrect a piece of the city’s engineering and cultural history. “The bridge was designed in 1892 by my great-great-grandfather, Himmatlal Bhachech,” says Vedas Engineer. “He built the 480-m bowstring arch truss bridge for Rs 4.07 lakh, almost Rs 1 lakh below the sanctioned budget of Rs 5 lakh. The British were suspicious and ordered an inquiry, which proved the construction was actually of superior quality. That’s when he famously said, ‘London Bridge will fall before this one falls’.“Vedas, meanwhile, is renovating the family’s 250-year-old ancestral haveli in Lakha Patel ni Pol. “I lived in the US for 17 years, but I always wanted a home in a heritage precinct,” he says. “I sold a property in the French Quarter of New Orleans to fund this restoration. This place reminds me who we are and where we come from.” The project, he says, could only begin after a prolonged legal struggle. “The house had been occupied by tenants for nearly a century. My father, Rajiv Engineer, fought extremely difficult court cases to get the property vacated. That legal battle was the toughest part of the entire process. Only after winning it could we even think of restoring the house.”The structure was in severe disrepair. “The foundation had collapsed, there was water seepage and bat infestation,” Vedas says. “We restored the entire haveli without using even a pinch of cement, relying only on traditional lime. Original wooden elements were carefully numbered and reinstalled, and Burmese teak was sourced where needed. Skilled artisans had to be brought in from Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand because such craftsmanship is now rare.“During the restoration, the family made an unexpected discovery. “We found original pencil blueprints of Ellis Bridge showing how my ancestor calculated the arches and load. That was extraordinary.”One of the haveli’s highlights is artwork by a partially blind painter showing Bhachech and the bridge. “That image later appeared in ‘The London Times’, introducing Ellisbridge to Britain.”
