Veena Garella was born in 1943  in Lahore. In 1948, she moved to Calcutta spending a total of 7 years there. Her father moved back to Chandigarh with the family in 1953 and pursued electric work. She received scholarships in school and went on to rank at the College of Architecture, Punjab University in 1961 on the first batch graduated. She remembers when Vasudev Shah gifted her ‘The Fountainhead’ and immediately loved it and describes the little conversations she shared with Le Corbusier. She was the only other of the two girls in her class and she graduated with honors and soon was offered the role of lecturer at CCA, at the request of the principal, A R Prabhawalkar. Soon she requested the principal to be able to draw more from field experience in her lectures, which led to being offered a position at the Haryana state department in 1967 by the same principal turned Chief Architect – which she remembers as an intense experience, and speaks of the scale and designs of many memorable projects she was involved in – including structures at the Kurukshetra University, Haryana Bhavan in Delhi, and the integrated projects at the Brahma Sarovar Dam. 

After she got married, she left for Chandigarh where she joined the New Delhi Municipal (NDMC) Committee in 1969. She shares the personal dynamics she shared then with her new husband. She remembers the energetic senior members at NDMC and the many projects she took up.