The Marine Drive flyover, Belvedere Court at Mahalaxmi, Godrej Platinum at Vikhroli, Mindspace at Malad are but a few examples of architect Tehmasp Khareghat’s concrete legacy for Bombay. During the 60 years he built up a reputation as an architect he always attached great value to simplicity. The affable architect who passed away at the age of 90 on October 25, 2023 would say, "It is very easy to be complicated… Anyone can do that, but simplicity is the most difficult thing.”
Top: Tehmasp Khareghat; (above, from l): with children Farhad and Dhun; with wife Zarin
"Always simple and straightforward, disciplined and honest, never pompous, when work would come, he would start on it right away… His only indulgence was to keep track of the stock market for a few minutes in the morning,” recalled his younger cousin and protégé Hafeez Contractor, an equally renowned architect, who acknowledged, "Whatever I am today is because he inculcated good habits in me and directed me to this path.” Khareghat literally served as a father figure to Contractor who was a posthumous child.
Whether paying for the junior’s school excursion or spotting his aptitude for drawing and architecture, ensuring that he secured admission and graduated from an architecture college and joined him in the profession, Khareghat served as Contractor’s mentor and guide. "I had all the independence in the office… We both worked till very late” at the architecture firm set up by Khareghat in 1963, stated Contractor when speaking to Parsiana. They differed only on one score. The younger man wanted Khareghat’s firm to expand quickly and wished to buy out a neighboring office. The senior did not agree. "I finally separated from him on a simple matter… A choice of color schemes for a client… The client took my side… He did not like that.” After separating, Khareghat was "a little cut up for about three years, but right up to the end we were very, very good friends,” revealed Contractor.
Khareghat’s son Farhad, also an architect, told Parsiana that his father came from a humble background. The loss of Tehmasp’s father when he was only four years old had deeply impacted his life. "He used to tell us a lot of stories about his younger days, how he accidently stumbled into architecture… How his whole life was always guided by higher forces.” A devotee of Kamu Baba, it was on his spiritual guide’s "instructions that he came back from England where he had studied and was well settled.” Describing his father as a family man, Farhad stated "he was a philosopher and a painter.”
A man of few needs, Tehmasp was usually attired in dark trousers, a white shirt and a red tie. Farhad recalled how "he would talk to everyone he met with an easy affableness and concern for their joys and their sorrows. Old students of his, work associates of his down the decades, would stay in touch with him, ask him for advice and he would share of himself willingly and openheartedly in his interactions with them.” F. J.