Ageing

Sonal (Sunderarajan)once said, ageing feels so good. I think I agree to her!

Lost stories

I must say that I lose so many of my posts to time. As they say, thoughts run faster than light. Every morning, my mind thinks excellently well, when thoughts come to me quite structured, on different issues, different things, intense debates! however, I am never in a position to record them. They almost evaporate during the day itself! I dont know how to revive them! I have therefore started to maintain a separate diary for my thoughts which shall become papers at some time in my life. But i wonder if that will happen anytime soon.

As more and more people start reading the blog, the lesser it remains private. Although I am happy that there a slight more readership, I am not sure if it must curtail the recording of my thoughts - because some of these thoughts are personal commentaries on some people around me! But those better not be shared. Otherwise, this space would become highly political.

On the other hand, some one must suggest me how can I record thoughts while I am travelling, or even how to record them especially when they are escaping at the speed of light!

there was a story I wanted to write long back, about a year back on the issue of heat in the city, made graphics for that, and now have no frame of mind to put it down. On the other hand, there are texts which are written but not posted, an almost 1500 word incomplete experience of my uncle's last days in the hospital... when i read it again after almost 1.5 years, it placed me back in time, in the tense moments that we as a family experience. Perhaps that is when writing becomes important to me, to relive these intense moments, that sometimes give a lot to learn...

so let me try if I can record any of my past/lost stories...

:)

Baghban II

Parents, even if they try to, cannot live without expectations from their progeny. This is perhaps a natural instinct – a give and take relationship. In ‘70s there were already films which raised the issue of children ignoring their parents while they grew old. The recent film was Baghban. Where does the problem actually lie? Every age is a generation, so there ought to be a generation gap in a parent and child span. 30 years. Very few of the older generations actually are able to connect to their children. There is a change in the value systems, in the way things are understood around them and even the priorities of children change. Then how are relationships understood and expected to remain ideal? Parents always expect their children to take care of them, to support them, to help them financially. Yes, they did that for us too when we were small. But didn’t they know they had to do it anyway before having a child? Are children investments - Social, moral, financial, emotional? And when they do not give expected returns, issues spring up.
I don’t think there has been any film constructed from the point of view of the children. There is a tremendous pressure on the children itself – balancing their own ambitions, managing the family (starting a new one, and keeping the old one), etc. The argument will be: “We did that too” – to which the counter argument is “then why don’t you understand the situation? The circumstances and the complexities of life today have increased, only because the number of options available have increased.” It’s infinitely difficult to communicate this to the parents. Communication has always been a tricky issue in conventional Indian families. Most of the children fear the head of the family. Hence, all talk is routed through someone.
When children grow older, able, and self dependent, they do not understand what kind of a relationship to maintain with the otherwise head of the family. This head of the family is generally a head primarily because he/she supports the family financially, according to me. Another is of course the political power that he has in the family. When this head retires, the power automatically transfers to the succeeding financial figure. But how does this new financial position get constructed? I mean, when does a son or daughter decide that he/she would start contributing money for household affairs? How are such decisions taken – these are extremely political, and what when the number of earning heads are more than one?
Education, although on one hand enables children to become more sensitive to parents, it also makes themselves more ambitious and rational. In the pursuit of rationality, children question most things – what they wear, eat, drink, live, use and even relationships. How must parents handle this? Or what should the parents expect out of such relationships? Parents try and educate their children as much as possible, but isn’t it hitting their own heads? Because children are going to be more self contained, self exploratory and self sufficient – perhaps a law of nature. Each time in each generation is a new individual constructed. This is bound to be different from the old one. But this new and old creates a lot of friction.
Someone told me that some friction is good. If a child chooses to keep his/her parents happy, is it necessary that his/her happiness too lies in that? These questions bother me all the time. My ethical stance is to keep everyone around me, related to me in any way, happy. How does that help me though? I wonder.

(more to come)

KRVIA Fellowship 2009-10

So it’s over now.

We started our fellowship on 1^st August, 2009. We submitted our papers exactly after a year in the last week of July, 2010. Today was the jury. We had almost one week for preparing the presentation. As always, I had thought of doing different things for the presentation. I wasted about 2 days in preparing an unsuccessful audio novel. I wondered the first three days about making a panel. I had made 10 postcard-photographs to hand over to my jury such that they could match the photos with the stories I presented in my paper, which doesnot contain any of them. Nothing materialized. But all for good.

The jury was quite different than what I imagined it to be. In the sense that it was to happen in an audio visual room, but ended up happening in the meeting room where there was a round table and about 15 people sitting (I was expecting the number to be quite high). It seemed like some elite privileged group is presiding over some secret research.

Somehow, I was very relaxed with the presentation – not nervous, not anxious, no growing heartbeats, not cold palms, no making rounds of the loo before the presentation – it was the same feeling as before the std X examination: I was excited to give it. Perhaps, when one has good work, one is all the more excited to present it. I feel my work was good, because it came up well as a book. I would like to have such a book in my library. My book was titled “Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki: Stories of Domesticity”

My research was a study of domestic spaces in the city, which offer different conditions of interior space as compared to what the profession of interior design offers. The study was large, and the massiveness of this research area is incomprehensible. Firstly, I have not found any document that talks about the domestic spaces in the city in an architectural, spatial way. Secondly, there is a range of house types in the city. Thirdly, there are a range of user groups in the city. Fourthly, there are multiple agencies which operate upon the making of home. Added to this, there are desires and aspirations of people that manifest in the home.  If I were to take all these parameters into consideration, I could have perhaps spent 3 years researching on this subject, and another two in detailing on each object that the interior space accommodates.

But for me, it has been more important to just open up an idea of domestic space. Did any one before talk about the domestic space in the city before? I did not embark upon any such study. Secondly, for me, this has been a way to learn the tools of research, taking a stance in a project and finding new ways of looking. Thirdly, being able to put any kind of material (collected information, data, pictures, etc.) together in a perspective was challenging. Deciding what to do with whatever you have – how do you work with material rather than a research question, how do you curate and make sense out of the information you have was something that I learnt during the past one year. Above all, although it was very difficult in the beginning to even understand what my guides were trying to bring out, it has been extremely enjoyable process putting the data together, writing stories and seeing at patterns of domesticity. Never did I see logical progression of ideas in domestic space, until I put it in a timeline perspective.

I had not rehearsed my presentation. But I kept reading my book again and again before the presentation such that my tongue gets used to the words that I would be using in the presentation. Somehow, it worked, and the presentation was glib. Although I couldnot keep time, there were two alarms that Rupali gave me during the presentation. It would have worked if we practiced our presentations, but there was almost no time for it.

Coming to the comments that the jury offered, perhaps most of them said that the presentation was good. But almost all felt that it should have been more conclusive. There should have been more conclusions that should have come out of the presentation. Amita Bhide said that the presentation touched upon a lot of extremely fascinating things, but did not follow them to the end. She made a nice observation about the aspect of how are ‘negotiations’ made inside the house, the ‘conflicts’ between various people involved in the making of the house  – how do they affect the final outcome. Also, she questioned with whose point of view is each story written, because a house is not made by ‘a’ person, but several people. The presentation did not bring up the idea of the house in changing budgets. She felt that although each story focused only on the idea that the title conveyed, there could have been a lot more going in each of the cases.

Abhay’s questions were different. He was firstly concerned about the selection of the methodology of the project – the stories; because he felt that it was a safe idea to work with them (ofcourse it was!). But he asked if there were also more ways of talking about the ‘experience’ of the house than only talking about the objects in the house. A question that had come long ago (perhaps the first presentation that we made to our internal faculty) came again: Why are there no people in any of your pictures. Kopytoff came to rescue then! Also, he questioned the idea of a ‘home’, the idea of living. I asserted that I was looking at the subject in the way I was going to use the study in my practice. Hence, for me, more important was to understand what happen of ideas inside the home. But Abhay did not push for any answers and was quite comfortable with my responses.

There were a lot of questions when the discussion was opened to the audience. Sandeep Sir’s question about “what is interiority”, or “what do you mean by internal?” was something that I felt was too theoretical question. One important thing that he said was not to “slot” these trends as phases, and rather talk about them as continuous – be more historical with them. He also raised the idea of duality in the domestic - where on one hand, domestic spaces are adjusted into (made more humanistic), and on the other hand they are tamed (controlled). It was too theoretical again. But maybe I can take this up if I am doing a phd on this!

It was a surprising to see Ateya, with whom I had spoken about a year ago on this project, when I was quite apprehensive – she said, “I am sure you will figure something out for yourself.” She sharply picked the angst in me about “what should be the role of an architect?” and she said that may be one needs to start working with the fevicol company, or be designing together finishes things like these. Basically she said that there need not be this strict notion of the role of an architect. She actually added to the value of the presentation by actually giving ideas of how one can start looking at these agencies.

The most important comment, I feel was that of Rohan. Rohan said, that the achievement of the thesis is the position that he has been able to take, and the thesis has jumped in a huge way from what it began with (having strict ideas of how things ought to be), about “why people don’t understand what I am giving them?”, to being able to acknowledge it. This comment from Rohan was precious for me, because it made me realize what I spent my past year doing. I just deconstructed my own architectural stereotypical notions of looking at things around me.

 Rupali since the last month has been fascinated with the sudden turn that the thesis took in the way of Robert Venturi’s “Learning from Las Vegas”. She pointed out that how the study actually claims to learn from existing situations (rather than being pessimistic about the conditions we see). I did not actually get a chance to talk to any one later because all ran for lunch after the session after kairavi’s presentation.

Two particular names and comments: Sandeep sir said that, “the presentation was very nice, we will talk about it when we meet” and George said that, “we shall talk about it in detail later”. So perhaps these are pointers for the next step.

I missed Sonal Sunderrajan and Prasad Shetty during the presentation. It would have been really nice to have them comment on my work (infact the presentation).

More technology

Right now, for the first time, I used Daemon softwares and torrent download. Sometimes technology is overwhelming. Perhaps everything is overwhelming until you put your hand into it. My brother keeps on scaring me that torrent downloads get viruses in the computer. Under this scare, I have not tried hundreds of thins on the net/computer. Perhaps, this time, its a pressing need. I need to download the sound editing software urgently to make an audio novel. Stupidly, my friend gave me another software, instead of Nuendo, which i only realized when i installed it using Daemon tools. Daemon tools creates a virtual drive through which we can extract data from 'images' of discs instead of discs themselves. Seems too technical. But i can not elaborate on this further, because i dont know how it works conceptually!

On the other hand, torrent is perhaps an ftp where peers share files. So you just share large files over the net.

All this reminds me of my Computer Science subject in the high school. I wonder how dumb I must have been (and still am) in the technology scene. I exploit my devices much less than today's generation. Am wondering if my experiments with all this will allow me to complete my presentation in time. In any case, i will have learnt two new things today!