Design Ashram, Calicut (Kozhikode)

I entered Design Ashram in the music of a violin player who was also the keeper of the premises. He was sitting in his room behind the courtyard making his evening practice session playing traditional Carnatic tunes and then switching over to some more popular hindi music from the 90s. The sun had set and the lighting was mellow. A girl sitting under the tree with a book in her hand, waiting for the next line of her poetry, across two friends discussing over a book chapter. A young entrepreneur came and sat besides me. We exchanged smiles in the soft background violin music, triggering a conversation. He was a businessman dealing in steelware from Kerala and I was an architect-curator from Mumbai. Our conversation melted eventually in the fading music of the day.

Designed by architect Birjesh Shaijal in Calicut, Design Ashram is a uniquely programmed place for a range of creative people including designers, architects, performers, makers, readers and passers by in the old part of Calicut. This community space, rather, a space that produces a sense of community - is located on the Gujarati street - a neighbourhood which is fast transforming into a cultural space. Spatially, this place is planned around an open courtyard that consists of an old peepal tree. It holds together an architect's office, residences, hostel, reading space, library, an art gallery and a performance space. 

The place is intimately scaled in a manner that it immediately embraces one or many. It has a unique quality of timelessness, with the large peepal tree in its central courtyard creating mad and magical shadows on the circumscribing inner facades of the building. I visited the place in February when the weather was much better, but I am sure that the place is as endearing during rains or summers. The courtyard feels active and lively even if there's no one around. At other times, it is occupied by gatherings for cultural events, performances, open mics, book reading or so on. Even if not so, the hostel space always keeps intersecting the various passers by with each other.

The hostel space offers retirement for 12 people. These are arranged in a large spacious volume with bunk beds and ample space for one person's storage. A mezzanine attic space has two beds without hampering the head-room, and creates a cozy, yet scaled environment. This mezzanine is created over the slab of the two washrooms below. The overall hostel beds are not segregated between genders meanwhile. The openness of the format offers opportunities for interaction, as well as privacy. Each bed is installed with a private reading light for the night time, and a lockable storage and side table besides. 

The next morning as I came back from a walk of the neighbourhood, the dear violinist kindly asked me to share my documents for registration. Of the very few, he spoke to me in Hindi, realising that I was from Mumbai. I gently told him how I enjoyed his practice session over the earlier evening. He said he's learning hindi songs because he plays in weddings where he can keep the classical Carnatic tunes until the audience is filling in, but when the gathering is full, people expect more popular songs that they can connect to! When I expressed my expectation for the day to be woken up by his music in the morning, he said that it would only be on Sundays and Mondays, "Other days I only practice in the evening!" Packing my bags, I left the space soon after when he left me with a big smile. "I hope to meet you soon again...". "Zaroor wapas aa-jaiye", (Definitely come back) he said in his warm Malayali accent.