Monday, April 11, 2011

Things yet to be Introduced

When I was about 12 years old, I used to maintain this book called "Things yet to be introduced". In this book, I used to sketch out things that might be useful, but not yet been made. I don't remember what was the inspiration for all of them? The cartoons perhaps. Also sometimes they came out of strong concerns of energy crisis. My maternal native place being Bihar (now Jharkhand), there were massive power cuts, sometimes for 5 days in a row or telephone lines would not be there for months. We used to visit our native place in summers when it would be terribly hot and without electricity, the place would be as good as hell. Some of these techniques were therefore a resolution towards these issues. Others came out of pure fascination for mechanics, or techniques or some science fundas. I used to draw them out, in plans, sections, elevations or even views. Today when I look back at them, I wonder how did I ever understand, at that age, "top view", "Section". At any stage in my drawing, I do not call them so...

Notice also the dotted lines that show displaced positions of moving parts...the nature of hard lines versus the soft (wires, cables, etc.). All of these contraptions were accompanied by a short writeup about what all they perform. Some things here might have even been introduced or been there in some other part of the world! They were only not exposed to me then!

And why would I so neatly keep them, archive them? It was the Diary of Anne Frank I guess. In 11th standard, we studied about Anne Frank and how she maintained her Diary during the Nazi war. And later all her writings were published by her father's efforts. I kept maintaining my things after that, thinking that one day all of my work will be published!!

However, what I do not understand is that why did I decide to draw (and not write)? And so accurately? And I wonder if all this was building up towards my choice to be an architect?







2 comments:

Manish Mishra said...

you had-have one hell of imagination to not only try to draw intuitively the things...
but also foresee and dream one day they might get true to be published...I am compelled to relate and bring back my age 12 or I wont be able to understand your mindset, and the pink feelings you must be having in your mind seeing that book...wow..

but anyways If anything I used to do at age of 12 was daydreaming of what ifs...what if i could wish, and what I'll wish...then I used to feel smart and say, I'll wish an unlimited amount of wishes...

Or I used to daw wave diagrams in very hazy way and wonder I might have cracked a code, and it'll become an amazing invention and so on and on...

and this habit of day dreaming helped me escape many things...I dreamt all the time, and one day I read somewhere that anything stronger than aspirin is dangerous for me to get addicted, and day dreaming is the drug I might get addicted to most and it may prove dangerous...

and slowly I changed myself in later years...

your documentation is amazing, and it only comes from a lonely childhood of amelie...I am awaiting eagerly to see more in this series...please do share...

Anuj said...

thanks for your comment, manish.
Yes, there is definitely more to come.