Monday, June 24, 2019

Anecdotes to ponder

"What will the chair be for a frog?"

"If I and chair are the same thing, what can I afford for the chair?"

"How do you live in a house with three husbands?"

"Having your own room means being private or being in isolation? Does being private mean being isolated?"

- Prasad Shetty


Construction Sites - II




Decolonizing Architecture

"It's like the person who had good handwriting was made the leader of Gram Panchayat."
- Prasad Shetty on the attitude in which architects were taught and imagined in the first few decades of the introduction of the profession in India.

"They were expected to execute the drawings to accuracy on site - so a person who could read drawings well and supervise sites was a good architect. But any good engineer can make a building. The architect must realise that his/her task is to craft space."



Wednesday, June 12, 2019

The Scattered Present

In the past few months, I have probably upset so many people around me, close, not so close, for reasons known or unknown, for aspects valid or invalid. My silences, utterances, all have failed me, all worked against my intentions. Neither did my actions bring me peace, nor did they resolve my dissatisfactions. Everything seemed to entangle more than before with every succeeding day. One problem resolved into another. How does one make sense of the situation, I don't know?

I shouldn't get into describing these events. The blog may have no longer remained a space for speaking aloud. I had always thought of it as a personal diary, but what a fallacy it was! Someone has said very aptly, that we all write to be read by someone. I wrote primarily to record, out of instinct, for myself, as much to be read, of course by someone. To be sure, this "someone" was an evolving version of the self, more than any other. Anyway, social media's publicness often leads you to strange forms of repression through self censorship, and as I write this, I am already worried of so many (mis) interpretations it might pose for some. But one is not ill-intended, as often construed of products and producers of social media when they go against an opinion or person. I don't even know how, and if I must begin to even elaborate it, because it will complicate so many problem-ridden affairs that pushed me to an outpour.

These days, I wonder how, if I were to, begin to resolve problems one by one; set equations straight again, rejoin cracking ends, crease crumpled edges, rework relationships...the imaginary dialogues roll in the head, and suddenly in a flash of negativity, things fall apart. I laugh at myself to the extent of disarray that I myself seem to have created, through my own distancing. But this moving away from things, was perhaps only to come closer to myself. Have I been so wrong that I can not enter myself even in bypassing the other? Or had I gotten too close to someone to make it too difficult for them to lose me? And could this conscious process of movement towards the self be labelled as "ego"?

I wondered for a long time on what is identity without ego, and how does one claim agency without having a sense of identity? Often, ego is seen in a pejorative way. But can a historically identity-striken person give up the pursuit of self definition when he/she achieves enough clarity to discern the feeling of right from wrong? How does one resist power that possibly could overrun certain unexplored dimensions of a productive ego? Such questions still seek their root, their location, for it is the place which will help address the means through which reconciliation may be sought out. Which hidden repressions have played out in the past to ruffle so much, so rapidly? Are these just circumstances that have conspired a difficult environment? How can so many forces and energies go wrong at the same time that they seem to make a world so disharmonious?

How would things change? Does one need to work on them, or wait for time to heal? If only I could foresee, I could make an intervention. I am tied into the existing circumstantial pattern that holds me back from taking new steps towards repair. What if situations worsen in my intervention, what if experiments fail, what if I lose more? Perhaps these need psychological attention? I remain unsure.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Undoing a Screw

Of the many phenomenal experiences, the first one I want to list is that of opening a screw that is tightened into anything. Unless you don't use force against it, the screw doesn't release itself out of the substratum. Thus, only while you push it in, the screw brings itself out. I have always found this oppositional nature of intent and action paradoxically profound.

Shall list more over time.