Revisiting Student-hood

To become a student again after four years of graduating is a strange feeling. It's like a constant battle between the freedom one can take and the forces of institution that tie you down. This time, the feeling of being a student is a different one - something between the states of being confident and the underconfidence that you wish to fill up through your further study. As against the undergraduate study course where all is welcome and acceptable as a part of your learning, graduate studies are about foucsing, chanelling, tuning, fine tuning and sharpening your skills into one area for specialization. This process calls for a lot of discarding of what may be apparently interesting for you to know, but not necessary for you to learn. Thus, the probability of things you should be doing reduces.

On the other hand, being an 'alien' student in a distant country, I can now relate to experiences that students going to cities from small places for education undergo. I am sure that my present difficulty would help me appreicate and empathize with what outstation students undergo when they come to a new place, especially a city. The exprience of a city is overwhelming, since it gets you landed in an extremely complex web of rules, regulations and unfamiliarity at once. Inspite of the fact that I am not in a big city in US - infact I am in a very small town (not even a city) - I can feel the friction of unfamiliarity.

Unfamiliarity with history, culture and people; with systems, regulations and ethics of the place makes me quiet and feel secluded. Being a town, one doesnot see much activity here. And soon, when it becomes cold, streets will be laden with snow and there will be nothing to look out through my large window! The disconnect with a place due to your cultural roots being somewhere else can be distracting. My mind is preoccupied by thought of what can be done of this distance that I feel with this new culture. I generally try to fill this distance through writing and recording. In the recent days, I have found myself too distracted to record too...

And I absolutely dislike the fact that my experiences are following the trajectory of 'culture shock theory'. Where on one hand it comforts me, it also makes me feel quintessential...

But I am managing. Quiteness helps looking inwards. And perhaps it is one big aspect of learning.

First Sunday in the US

Culture Tickle

I have been in the US for two weeks and what people call 'the difference' is sinking in now. There are both - pros and cons of this difference which is what I am going to attempt noting down here. I have been wondering since the first week if I  wanted to just 'travel' this new country or 'be here' for two years. Cultural adaptation becomes an important issue when you are going to spend a considerable amount of time in a new place - which means a new geography, new ethnography, new ethics and new climate. The constant struggle of rationalizing a future - or perhaps resolving a future creates further complication with the notion of cultural adaptation. What I essentially mean is that it may be as difficult to get into a culture as getting out of it. Meanwhile, this conflict has arisen between the culture that I assumably must leave behind and that which I am in geographically / ethnographically etc. There are simultaneously two aspects that I need to think of - my original roots and my new ground. If I remain in the middle, I would be losing out much of both the worlds - or at least that it what it seems right now.

In one's attempt to keep peace with both these worlds - there is a mental friction. In the beginning, this is pronounced since one is trying to catch up with two different time zones - and at the same time, switching between cultures while communicating, adjusting to accommodate both these worlds into the same time frame. Imagine being awake at the end of the day to talk back at home when your parents want to and being fresh yourself in the morning to attend to your work in the morning. Or vice versa. When you can not cope up these two worlds within a single time cycle, it creates irritation and frustration; making you feel inefficient. The comparison of this inefficiency with your recent past when you were able to manage much more in the given time makes you feel even worse. This coupled with a lot more activities that you need to balance yourself which were once taken care of by your family members makes you almost vulnerable.

Although, managing a lot more activities is an anticipated phenomena. A more crucial thing is the loss of friends, family or room mates with whom you can share these things. Some people are lucky to move in to a same course or program together with a known friend to a same country. Other people who like things harder make a choice like me - completely isolated from any familiarity. Building this new familiarity almost feels like responsibility. Otherwise, there is no social security or space that you look forward to. The construction of this social space  is really important and essentially you do not know the limits of it - you therefore constantly try to limit it, often to just a single person or two. That may not always be healthy.

On the other side, there are beautiful things that you encounter too. Here, I would become more specific and talk about my experiences.

I never thought Mumbai - the place where I come from is such an important dot on the map. As soon as you introduce yourself as a resident of Mumbai, you can almost see a sparkle in their eye. Mumbai has perhaps become more popular because of Rahul Mehrotra being the Dean of Harvard's Urban Planning Department. However, as more and more students from western countries are being taken to India, Mumbai for studying urban space, I am generally able to find common ground to initiate a conversation. On the other hand, India still remains an exotic location for people to travel. My background in architecture and therefore knowing places helps in connecting further with people  where I am generally familiar with Indian cities that they have visited. Talking about idiosyncratic ideas on India is interesting and I find it fascinating to know peoples' impressions of the East.

Architects are highly regarded here and that is another positive dimension. But in general, all people are highly respected, as long as they are involved in any kind of education. Since systems here are so liberal, many people also do not pursue education seriously.

Lastly, in an orientation, one of the speakers said a very sensitive thing: "You may think that back in your school, you were the best and you would always be amongst the top five; and in the initial semesters, your performance may go down. Many people take it as a challenge to their egos. But remember that you are in a University like Yale, and thus in a class of no. 1s from all across the world. So remind yourself that you are competing with the best of the best, and you are one of them. Don't prejudge. Give yourselves time."

And that quite sums up the feeling right now...

Four years at AOA - Part 4

As I look back at this journey of my life, I feel I did take initiatives within my scope to bring potential reforms in the school. However very few, or perhaps nothing saw the light of the day. One could count many reasons - ranging from faculties to students to staff. The biggest that I cite is the lack of enough enthusiasm and support from the students. Although there are students who are seriously interested in doing things, their strength is almost dwarfed when a large mass doesnot support them. On multiple occasions, I relied too much on my students to take my ideas further. But I think relying on students in the current scenario is a mistake. I think we must realize that students who come for this course are interested in areas which they don't even know. Some are good in management, some in visual composition, some in arrangement and some in verbal presentation and articulation. We as faculty must identify these student skills and put them to correct use / develop the remaining. But even to this, one has to have student participation. Students have to have the will to do things, to contribute and learn from handling events. They have to have love for their work, space and institution. Above all, they have to have love for the field they have chosen. Varying degrees of such interest affects the quality of final production. But I may be underestimating them - perhaps I expected too much out of them. I am over ambitious. As a student, I took a number of initiatives to organize and participate in events happening at the college.

When students do not see quality production, the standard of what they can themselves achieve goes down. In today's age of the Internet , students seldom go out to exhibition spaces and art galleries to look at ways in which people speak, present and display work. In turn, they are not able to positively contribute ideas towards events that may be organised. Moreover, they also lack innovation. I immensely learnt to speak, think and present in public from the public functions I attended outside of school. Ways of talking, addressing or even responding in public is something the school never really taught me. That I learnt from observation. What I imbibed from my teachers is the attitude of an architect and how to talk about design confidently. 

The second arena was the lack of enthusiasm in faculty. In order to realise programs I wrote multiple concept notes, and ideated things. But all those things could not be realised without a mass faculty support. Thus these ideas remained limited to classroom lectures and smaller class projects. The maximum that I could achieve as a coordinator was to combine, inter relate some subject assignments to increase the production and efficacy of work. For example, I tried to incorporate the process of making the newsletter in graphics class or took up documentation / digitization of study trips in computers class. I hardly saw student initiative to produce work - even when the work timing was limited to class hours. In addition, hegemonic ideas passed on by mediocre seniors about those subjects being redundant affected the seriousness of understanding as well as quantity of production. Students never thought these classes could be effectively used for reflection on their own ways of working and developing their visual communication skills.

Teachers come in with their own set of problems and issues. It is difficult, but may be interesting to map their intentions behind teaching. For most, teaching has become a convenient option to spend time and earn a quick buck. That is why most people opt for a design subject. Crit based evaluation allows them to reduce a design project to a set of dos and donts. What then, must one count as an input in the design course? According to me, a design tutor is supposed to evolve a small idea that a student brings to class using his / her theorectical and practical skills. Theories are important for the designer to understand and develop ways in which they can develop their thinking. Most of our teachers have no idea of theory. Theories from disciplines different from architecture are farfetched to imagine.  Professors of design have to offer students tools of thinking, which I seldom received during my architectural education. If I was to re look at my 5 years of architectural education, I would largely tag myself as 'self taught'. Many a times I have observed that fresh graduates opt for teaching because it is assumably the seat of the intellect. But they seldom contribute to the growth of knowledge. This, they can do by writing, talking and duscussing about architectural issues. Crit based evaluation system flattens the depth of architectural education. I have always remained deeply concerned regarding this.

I thought I would be able to mobilise students using the great internet connectivity that mr. Punde facilitated for us. However it was extremely disappointing to see that there were hardly students responding, participating or using this facility towards their positive development. Since I briefly controlled the AOA E Mail Server admin, I could see the status of usage of each of the members accounts. It was disheartening to find that there were a good amount of students who never even logged in to their accounts. The faculties disregarded this portal and chose to remain archaic. They were not motivated at all to advance.

Multiple forms were sent off at some periods like the Course evaluation form. I developed and refined it from an existing form provided by prof. Punde. Only 180 out of 450 students responded. These instances make me realise failure of the system inspite of hard work and time spent in refining or tightening the system.

I prepared the AOA research fellowship brief, which never saw the light of the day. I don't know what really went wrong. The manifesto I prepared with Atul was never realised since he chose to leave the full time post in the immediate next year. His contributions went down drastically till he finally left this college this year. Subsequently, along with Arjun Sharma, I prepared a research proposal to study the history of Academy of Architecture. We could never really take that project ahead to the next level. I think I realized that it would require a lot of time and effort and doing it without any funding would not be feasible. Lots of such work that was initiated and never saw the light of the day....

Now that I prepare to go for my masters, I am being suggested to look into what my faculties at my new University are doing and whether I find any research parallels to join them. I never saw it happening at Academy. The most public aspect of my being at Academy - the dagagiri blog just remained a passive mirror of sorts that reflected the everyday at AOA. It did not become a discussion space inspite of posting provocative and activist posts. I used to regularly review projects and methodologies over this portal. I wonder if students ever reflected upon their work... All this makes me feel if the architecture audience at Academy is dead...

The streamlined processes of archival were meant for documentation and preservation for knowledge production. I had to struggle a lot to get students contribute equally and with interest. To give an example, marrying machines project was the first student work blog (www.marryingmachines.blogspot.com) Academy ever had. We scanned sheets of documentation work of studies in the city and outside. I got students to start writing a 100 word summary at the end of their projects....many such smaller things were never a part of academy culture.

I recently found myself explaining to a co faculty how academy has still not realised the importance and urgency of investing in a physical as well as virtual archival space. A school's value are its archives. We have absolutely negligible archive mechanisms. Neiher do we have space, nor do we have people who produce good publications.

However, I hope this body of work, this culture of reflection helps me at my graduate school. I am sure to find enthusiastic people at my new school where I can look forward to write, discuss, think, publish, design....and a host of things...I am sure it will be exciting...


END

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POSTSCRIPT:

I carry a heavy burden of AOA. I realise how much I care for the reputation of this school, because I consider myself as a representative of the school. At the same time, this school represents me too. I would like to believe that I studied in an excellent architecture school in india. However, when I look back, I find myself how easily I surpassed the school...how then, must one define this relationship? I tried to pull this elephant, trying to make it stand and race. And I know how much energy I put into it. Sometimes I feel if I only tried a little more, I could have moved this elephant enough to tickle it and make it run. But then it was already time to leave.


I don't know if I will have to start all over again once I come back, or will the elephant have taken a completely new turn. Will this elephant recognize me? Will it listen to me? I have all these insecurities. But I do realize the strong bond that has developed between me and this institution....What is the logical direction this journey will make? This question keeps me occupied and distracted...


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Links to thread
part 1
part 2
part 3

The feeling of restlessness

I have yet not begun counting my days towards my journey to US. I feel trapped in a time bubble. The time bubble is something that distorts the relative experience I have with the outside world. This period makes me feel I am not moving at all. I feel what a floating bubble would feel in air - where it constantly negates any reference with the moving world. The bubble waits to burst to take in more air, to lose itself... Similarly, there's a momentum frozen within, waiting to explode.

I have lost any experience of the outside world. I have lost any sense of time and space. I have forgotten mathematics, I have not counted minutes for a long time now. I do not know when the new day begins - I stare at the watch for hours to feel no change in time. I can not feel the time biologically. 

My every day schedule too has become amorphous. I wonder if I operated similarly some days before. Yesterday when I went to get some pages binded, I had 5 sets for which the shop keeper quoted Rs. 15/- per set. I wanted to bargain to lower the price - and combined 5 sets into 4 and told him to charge me Rs. 60/- for 4 sets. He agreed and I felt I made a good deal. Calculating the cost of per binding today, I still arrived at a figure of 15/-! What does such an act reveal of my mental condition?

Was I was completely lost? What was happening?

There are so many things in the head. Is it accumulated energy or is it apprehension? Is it fear or is it excitement? Am I being prepared or am I over-preparing? I do not understand what is happening to me. I feel like my bones are pushing my body - I keep stretching my muscles. Do I want to grow out of myself? I do not react to movement in the city. I do not react to the change in my everyday. Is it anxiety? 

But I do know I have felt this earlier. Similar impatience, restlessness. It was when I decided that I wanted to do architecture. I waited to finish my 12th studies as soon as possible. I was so hungry to consume architecture. I remember ranked 6th in the merit list for Academy of Architecture. I waited impatiently to begin my new world then. It's similar now. 

I had said this earlier over my blog - "winning after a lot of hard work is a great feeling". Two years ago I was rejected in all colleges I applied to. This year, I got selected in a University (Yale), the best in the world and the field of theory that I applied for, that rejects 90% of the applications it receives, further, for a course which admits only 3, maximum 4 people over the world - and I just don't know how to express this feeling. Perhaps expressing this is a difficult thing. But I am not trying to be boastful. If it reads that way, it's only because I just do not know how else to express it. It has raised my expectations of myself altogether. And I am not sure if I will be able to cope up with it. I think I am worried.

I am worried to be floating, to have lost my referentiality. I am struggling to frame sentences. I cant frame it through conventional language. I often gaze at the sugarcane crushing machine and wonder about the biography of the sugarcane. I can feel myself between the two cylinders. And I would also like to believe that the result would be sweet.

Conversation in an Auto Rickshaw

Today while traveling back home with Paul (Aniruddha), I had an interesting conversation on how he started his career and his perceptions of the city. I am not too sure with sharing his biography here, (without his consent), but I shall definitely like to put down his perceptions of the cities he has been closely associated with over his life by far. I shall try to objectively put them down here:

Aniruddha was born in Jamshedpur, studied in Kolkata, did his postgraduate studies in Delhi and has been practicing in Mumbai since the last 20 years. Thus he has extensively spent time in all these cities. Talking of them one by one he says

"Jamshedpur was a fairly cosmopolitan city, due to the presence of Tata Industries. The city was fairly well developed and you had everything around. Wilderness edged the city so outsikirts was a perfect place for recreation. It has one of the best ICSE schools in the country. Infact, students were so competitive. Competition was like madness. Most of my friends went to IIT or did IAS. Although many of them may not be pursuing engineering now. But competition is so high that everyone wants to end up in engineering or medical. There is nothing else that they look at..."

"I studied in Kolkata, and although it was an industrial city because of jute and other, people there are extremely laid-back. The leftist ideology of labour class has not allowed them to grow. The labour there does not believe in working. They don't work hard. They are not motivated, even if you give them more money, they are not willing to work.Most people want to get work done through political connection."

"When I first came to Mumbai, I liked the city, because I felt the same kind of cosmopolitanism as in Jamshedpur. I had come here earlier for an internship. That time, I had liked the city. There is some kind of positive feeling with this city. You get a feeling of emancipation. People have aspirations and the positive will to achieve them. For example, each person you meet has a desire, and he works towards it. You can find people discussing their desires in trains, roads - even when you travel by an auto. The rickshaw driver strives to go to the next level of life. The street hawker wishes that he will have his own hotel one day. And many of them realize these dreams too. There is this positive emancipation of Mumbai. The best aspect of the city is that it respects your work. People are ready to work for more money. You can get more work out of people if you are willing to give more money. The city is professional. I like this city...I can not stay in any other city, I start feeling uneasy if I am out of Mumbai for too long..."

"Delhi is a horrible city - its a city of cheats. In Delhi, people don't believe in working, they believe in networking. They can not just see you working harder. I don't like Delhi at all - it is contrived. It is a very hard city - in its comparison, Mumbai is really soft..."

Somewhere in his discussion on Mumbai, he mentioned something that I felt was quite interesting. He said, "I have seen that mobility makes people human. Movement makes a space acceptable. It gives you a kind of access to things. There is a feeling of palpability through movement..."

I am not exactly able to remember his ideas on the last aspect in detail. However, I am glad I was able to know so much about how one synthesizes and analyzes cities. These impressions are valuable and I think they come with age. That is one reason again, why I perhaps like growing old. I am a collector of my experiences and I can't wait enough to be able to put them in a perspective that allows me to negotiate my life across space and time.

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Aniruddha Paul is the Dean of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture.
The conversation above has been recorded purely to suggest one of the many opinions people have on cities and is in no way meant to demean any city or people staying in these cities. The above chat was informal and is to be taken light hearted-ly.

My first letter

My mother says this was my first letter to her when I was away from her at my native place.
Dated: 28th April 1994,
During Summer vacations.

I was in Class 3. Hindi wasnt officially a subject then. It was home-taught.

A translation:


Dear Respected Mummy and Papa,

Warm regards. I hope you are keeping well. I remember you a lot. The pain in my tooth has receded. Now I don't need to take any medecine. I am keeping well here. I and Lalu (my brother) reached Dhanbad on the 27th. Here, I go to the temple with Bai (my grandmother) everyday. Lalu, Keshav and Harsh (my cousins) play a lot of mischiefs. Here, in Dhanbad too, they have taken a fridge. In Calcutta, we were put up at Mandir Talla. In Calcutta we visited Soni House, B. K. Pal, Shivpur and at Giriraj bhaiya's place. Sushil mama (uncle) brought us here to Calcutta. In this letter, you will find a lot of mistakes.

Yours
Anuj.


(the last line says: 
इस  पत्र में आपको बहुत गलितयाँ नजर आएगी .

meaning 

"In this letter, you will find a lot of mistakes - Although I guess I wasn't referring to the content, but the amount of strike-offs as mistakes)

And for a change,
this time the archivist was my mother :)

Baghban VI

There comes a time often when we think critically of our relationships. It's a time when we ponder over what more can we draw out of the relationship that we nurture. We mostly fall into a relation because we need it - socially, psychologically or physically...but there comes a time when this 'use value' of the bond is over. 


However, on the other hand, relationships can grow with time. Maturing relationships are satisfying and keep things going, since there is something to gain from it all the time. If nothing, one can look forward to sharing vulnerabilities in a maturing relationship. Our relationships with parents seldom grow with time - or atleast it happens so in my case? Or I am not really sure. For example, I think a boy doesnot need a father after a certain age - say about 25 years, or may be it varies from person to person. But at that age, one looks for a new dimension in that relationship. This new dimension allows to explore life from a new standpoint. A relationship has to be able to offer a lens that allows such perspective. Otherwise it can become hindering. Two issues are involved here - one is the condition of a maturing mind and the othr is the hegemonic parental purview.


Children are often looking up to find people to discuss their newer problems, and newer dimensions of life with someone, during their changing or liminal ages. Parents seldom become mediators in such ages. That's why we take on to friends - whom we believe to be in the same boat as ourselves and who seem to be equally concerned and affected by the circumstances that influence us. Contrastingly, parents are always wanting to 'show us the way' implicitly commanding a hold over the 'moral' ways of dealing with a situation rather than exploring it. Exploration of a situation is important to be able to learn from it. Exploration is the very nature of an evolving mind - just like we explore objects as toddlers. The exploration of the intangible becomes more fascinating in our young years like the tangible during infancy. We want to deduce our own results or formulas of dealing with the kinds of situations we fall in. We also experiment ourselves with putting ourselves in new kinds of situations.


But the instituion of parenting is about getting the end results of all the situations 'right'. Although we need to understand that our elders too may have gone through such situations. What one needs to extract is the mental landscape of our elders during fresh situations of their times. In the realm of the intangible, often the basic nature and structure of interrelationships between people remain unchanges. The manifestations they result from and result into may be different. Parents could do a great deal if they share their life with heir children. This helps the children to feel about their parents as their friends. It also gives the children confidence to share internal conflicts with them.


This again brings me to my age old theory on expression. It may be difficult to express for a lot of people - into words. Many people write, very few draw. Most people express through the tangible world. It may be very difficult for some people to articulate their experiences. There exists no institutions on releasing formula for expressing oneself. Expression in our society gets suppressed to an extent that it may manifest into material life. The material life around us thus gets coded with such values and expression. Therefore it becomes very difficult to detach from the material life. This kind of relationship with the material is complete contrast of the consumerist. It is a relationship similar to that we develop with a certificate or a medal. But in our real lives, would materials be able to hold us down to our relationships?


I do not know. But larger ideas with maintaining relationships are related to ideas of freedom and independence. I do not feel mature enough to deal with it. Hence it will be only wise to stop here.

Earlier threads of 'baghban' can be searched at "Search This Blog" Section (Type Baghban)

Appliances and Music

I found out today that the musical pitch the exhaust fan in my bathroom produces due to its vibration is 'E'.

For a long time I wondered how I could perfectly attune myself to any song in my bathroom. Why would I feel so comfortable singing any song in the drone of my bathroom? Today, it occurred to me that I must try and tally it with the notes on the Tanpura app that I downloaded on my mobile some time ago. And to my surprise, the resonance was the same!!

Although I am not a bathroom singer, bathroom almost becomes my singing room - not only for the bathroom tenor, but also due to the drone of the exhaust fan - Every space has a frequency! Similarly, the tubelight at Opolis architects where I used to work used to make a distinct hum. I would occassionally reach office early, and switch on the tubelights without the fans to have that resonance in the space. In the absence of any one, I would be humming along songs comfortably. I am sure it too must be on a similar pitch. 

Chaitanya had helped me find out my pitch recently when we met for a singing session. He suggested me to sing at E, which is generally the pitch for male voices. It was E! 

How interesting it is to find out such trivialities around our everyday lives. Some great coincidences! I will try to record the hum of my exhaust fan and put it here. Some great intersections of men and machines.

Till then, happy singing!

Unfinished Poems

The following examples trace how it became more and more difficult for me to write poems as I indulged more and more into architecture. 

After finishing first year of Architecture, 2004

Rajasthan Study tour, 2006-7; On the sand dunes, Jaisalmer.

But there are many examples and I shall be embarrassed if I put them all here.
I shifted to prose over the last 8 years, gradually.
Poetry now translated into architecture.

PDF Trial

I am trying to look at options to transferring this blog to wordpress. I am bored of the formats of Blogger. I tried and found out ways to do that too, and I might do it some day. But, today I thought I must try out if I could do things that I want to do in wordpress, in blogger itself. One of them was attaching a pdf document. I did find some makeshift solution. Although I am not really happy with this ugly baby window, it serves the purpose.Try out making a sketch book by printing these papers. These grids will never let your falter in your 3d drawings!

Fore more, go to www.printablepaper.net
Grid Papers

Camera Fun

These days I am just going berserk with the photo tools I have downloaded on my phone. The camera(s) gives me so many possibilities and great effects that it has become almost a compulsive habit to check how something that I see in real would look through a particular effect! Most of the times, the camera makes the scene automatically look interesting. As if photography happened automatically! The black and white, the sepia tones, the old effects - all are so engrossing. I keep taking pictures just for amusement of the self! Following are pictures in different sizes, borders, shapes, colours, effects and what not! I just told to myself - rather than running away from the plethora of choices available, lets indulge! It's giving me pleasure!

I have added a lot to my photo-archive. In the past two months, the amount of photos that I have clicked have almost doubled or tripled! I don't know if this is the new camera phenomenon or the need to document. I don't think it's the latter! These photographs seldom have any documentation value. The value they may be counted for is aesthetic. But I did not create the aesthetic! It's the software at work!!

So with these effects, I started strategising. I speculate what effect would suit what kind of environment and try out various possibilities of the same frame. I haven't mastered it though! Thus I have multiple versions of the same photo! I keep them and study what goes wrong in each of them. Most of the times, it is the screw up of light. Light conditions are terrible. Sometimes, it feels to capture the frame as the eye sees it, but the camera does not see exactly like that! That is when one wonders to have a professional camera! Meanwhile, here are experiments from handy software cameras:

Socio cultural issues in Academic projects

These days Aniruddha (Mahale) and I keep poking fun at each other on being elitist - We keep blaming each other to be more elite (quite reverse Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai phenomenon). Not going much into the hows, I think we are just reacting to a situation where we end up interacting with extremely high class students and star kids!

However, such situations have compelled us to relook at our past and the kind of projects we did in our past. Chaitanya maintains that the profession of architecture can only cater to the elites. Architecture is a regimental profession, which orders / structures other peoples lives according to what architects think is right for the world. The great masters did that - and we enforce the students to think of the last detail, only following the Mies-an quote: "God is in Detail". We train students to think even of the hairpin that the client would put in order to suit the inhabited space.

Architecture sees the slums as a nuisance, the popular aesthetic as kitsch, the domestic decoration as middle-class and rejects ornament in its current modernist hangover. Infact, these are the most basic design sensibilities from where students develop a liking for design - for the aspirants, design is about decoration, arrangement and creativity. Most students come with a strong humble sensibility of the middle class. Architecture severely insults this sensibility, or at least it does not respect these or channel these as potential design drivers. However, I must caution myself here to be specific of my experiences and my college - Academy of Architecture, Mumbai.

I came to Academy of Architecture with a heavy creative cultural baggage - I learnt to 'create' things from my mother - she taught me how to make things out of waste, of giving domestic waste an aesthetic value, she taught me how to make rakhees, I saw her paint, embroider, knit - all of it that fascinated me. I came to the architecture with this 'creative' interest. The beginning of the course was interesting, but it took a weird cultural twist by the second year when we were introduced to Interior Design. I never understood the subject - I just couldnot comprehend the idea of laying out an interior. Coming from a background where a house was a collection of utilitarian objects, sprinkled with artistic pieces here and there, I wondered what to put in a large living room plan apart from a diwan and a TV case?

I never dined on a dining table - eating was still a family activity - circling in the living room where food was served turn by turn to all. There was no question of understanding the concept of a dining table / dining space. The bed was more importantly a storage object, than a sleeping one - to the extent where height didnot respond to anthropometrics, but to the height of objects to be stored / amount of material to be stored in the bed hollow. Cupboards were not about hangers, but about the safe vault and safety. Study table was always a dream - I never had one. It was only pillows which became the table when kept on my lap... In interior design, we were expected to 'design' for these 'everyday' activities. In my home, objects for these activities happened over a period of time - as and when my father could afford it - so we had a steel cupboard, a wheel table, then some teepoys, diwan later, bed even later... So all of them were incoherent (speaking from a designer aesthetic). Apparently, that is not what ID expected us to do. I struggled and struggled and wondered what I could 'design' in an interior space other than the life i lived.

We had projects like interpretation centre in the same year - a word that I had never heard of. Our faculty, in the guise of explaining the concept of an interpretation centre, ended up telling us the programs that we needed to provide. Later in the course we were expected to design large centres - a naturopathy centre for some people who would come to these places for a few weeks. As outings, we always stayed in dharamshalas (inns). This stretch of imagination from an inn to individual cottages was far too much to grasp then. Further in the course were were asked to design more elitist and polished projects -in the guise of 'large scale projects'.

One of the first questions the faculty asked our class: "So how many of you have been to a five star hotel?" (seems a very humble question, but the medium of writing doesnot allow me to explain the intonation / delivery of speech). The obvious well-to-do people raised hands. A huge bunch of us looked at each other - perplexed. A social class of students for whom, once a month food at a local restaurant was a luxury, were expected to think of being to a five star hotel. The professor continued to share more experiences of five stars while all of us kept drowning ourselves in an imagined bubble of shame. We were expected to visit such places as case studies - buildings which do not allow you in without shoes and shun you by your appearance. Convention centres, hotels, residential towers, townships - all kinds of projects which were then farfetched for a class of people like us to imagine.

I am perhaps trying to draw attention to the completely insensitive ways in which elitism was thrown upon students without understanding the socio cultural backgrounds we came from. I wonder what others thought when they were asked whether or not they had been to a five star hotel. Isn't it too personal and sharp a question that makes you conscious of your own social status? What socio-mental traumas does it create for all such people who are completely shy and may never be able to admit their insecurities due to their backgrounds? And for those who have never been to such places, how does the curriculum ever expect, in 3 months, a design which suits an elitist taste and works absolutely efficiently?

These are sensitive issues. The academia has to deal with them very carefully and study cultural patterns to be able to slowly open up students to various aspects of design, so that they do not hurt the cultural sentiments of students from socially sensitive backgrounds. The academics have to think and rethink of projects they give students to handle. In the fellowship I did with KRVIA after my graduation, I realized how   hegemonic design could be, and how soft, other systems are. We can creatively engage with these softer systems to be able to learn more about life in general instead of superimposing on ourselves a completely foreign order of living.

However, we face quite a reverse problem right now. We have a large set of elitist brats within whom a handful of people who can not afford quite many things have gotten embedded. This elitism reflects in the way they waste all kinds of resources, the general lack of concern for others, the tantrums they throw, the for-granted attitude towards their teachers, the stupid reasons they argue for, the lack of discipline - and I could go on...!

However, when Aniruddha told me how he gave over all his architecture stationery to one of such 'embedded' students, I really felt touched. If only the elitist, instead of wasting resources helped their friends who can not afford luxuries that they tend to waste, it would make such a larger difference...

Of shrinking personal space

Two things that have subconsciously held me back from doing a lot of things that I would have liked to do are issues of space and lack of company. I have only come to realise about these two now - wonder why?

The issue of space clearey appeared to me when I realized how one of my professors invested in physical books. Involuntarily I asked him - where do you store them? But this question was in disguise an answer to my lack of productivity. Why don't I produce - physical models, installations, objects, craft - all things that I once engaged in so deeply, to an extent where this physical engagement with material and the skill to handle it gave me he confidence to pursue architecture. The answer is the limitation of space. If only i had the space to store books, the models, craft objects, installations that i made, would there be a drivr to create. Creativity is always physical - since you create. could one of the reasons for my switch over to a 'person of ideas' be because of the lack of physical space!? The space of ideas and the mind is limitless. It allows you to record, preserve and maintain your thoughts without external interference or objection.

My mother is always worried of storage - of all sorts of things that make up her domestic life, her dwelling. Her insecurity with this limited shrinking physical space has subconsciously taken over me. To avoid disturbances in the physical setting of my home, I have almost stopped te process of real creation. I donot like to discard my creations. I preserve them because they inspire me to make more. Logically this chain would result into accumulation of more and more physical stuff. I donot have any space to store them. Neither does my family understand my need to create an nor do they encourage me to make, since things that I make would occupy space. I shall have to soon find a way to overcome this nonforceful hegemony.

In the recent days I realized that while i went for so many talks, discussions, seminars in the past, those have reduced to barely a few now. Thinking over it, what makes the idea of attending academic events boring in the first place is the lack of company now. Earlier i had a group of friend amongst whom, someone or the other would be willing to join or vice versa. Gradually we started dispersing. After graduation, close friends went on to study abdoad, some got married, some got busy wih their jobs....this issue seemed to resolve itself when I made new friends with whom i almost set a new culture of engagement. Soon, they also moved away - for studies, work or found partners. Prasad shetty keeps pointing out very correctly perhaps - "he needs a partner". Sometimes I like to doubt him, but i know he is probably right. I have not being going out since i do not have any company to go out with, further i donot have people who share my kind of temperament to discuss my ideas wih. This has started having conssquences on my space of ideas too...

With shrinking physical and intellectual space, I feel choked. I must resolve these issues and come to a middle ground solution soon which shall free me of these things that are pulling me back. I must grow, only because I can. And i must find alternatives of growing too.

Naiharwa / Kabir

Note the Lyrics. Personally, I like the Kailash Kher version more from his first album Kailasa.

To be read with this post on dagagiri

Internal aggressions

Why does one look to move away from one's own context? What is the need to travel? Why does this occasional internal desire of fleeing away occur? Which kind of space constructs such circumstances? Are these implications of social space? One of the prime reasons i want to go away from my place is because it has remained too conservative for a very long time. From parents to seniors to friends to students to most colleagues, all are so narrow minded and so closed to the world that this place seems almost suffocating. The social institutions bask in their own rotting principles and it is almost impossible to overturn the educational instituions anytime soon. Hypocrisy is another large value, the inheritance of which always puts a fake mask on the name of progression. Everyone claims to be open, but want to be in their own comfortable positions. It is like a moving wheel just lifted slightly above the ground. Everything seems to be happening but we don't seem to be moving ahead.

We have hardly been productive, since we seldom commit. Commitment is a responsibility. Every responsibility has risk. Perhaps that is why we fear to commit. Being productive would mean opening up ourselves for judgement. If we become productive, we can look back and see we have created and thus can evaluate ourselves. We hardly leave such traces behind thus making ourselves difficult for interpretation. Perhaps that is why we are a land of mythology and poetries. We take a lot of pried in our history of non-building or the idea of nothingness. Everything is layered and open for interpretation. For some time, i too would have loved such layered past since it allows deep penetration. But it also makes us an extremely slippery and uncommitted race.

We take a great pride in this legacy of ours. I am fed up of such slipperiness. Perhaps this is not an age to afford slips. I can not slip now to damage my crucial bones. I need to stand and therefore develop a position to be able to open up different perspectives. Perspectives will allow multiple views. Poetry shall follow - after all, i began my life with it. I want to go out to become more rational to be able to appreciate my own context of irrationality. Irrationality perhaps may not be a correct word that exactly defines the spirit of this place.

Although they say that the grass on the other side is always greener, still at least from here, other developed countries seem to be much more progressive and receptive to different ideas. "My world" is only a construct of my own limited exposure. It is made up of people i know and things i am around. I need exposure to make comfort with the place i live in. I need to know if other contexts are as difficult to live. I want to test if i can stay with myself for long enough to produce ideas.

Update

For a long time I have not posted. This is not because I have not been involved in writing. Instead, I am writing all the more. I was very busy writing my personal statement and research proposals for various places. In this process, I had to really really think hard on myself to understand my interests. I think I have achieved a great extent of clarity on my trajectory now. Although it's not completely clear. But every time I think of a new project or research, I clarify my theoretical position. Thus, this process has been quite enriching. For a long time, I thought of uploading all such work on my blog, but I finally refrained, because I just wanted to keep all these things to myself.

On the other hand, I have been manually writing a lot of things - since the computer is a tool which makes me dwell too much on perfection. So i end up losing a lot of ideas. When I write manually, I am not thinking about the correctness of language or the use of words. I mix and match, and mostly I am translating from Hindi to English. So such write ups are really crude. But they help in vomitting a thought out. I take time later to refine them and make these ideas crisper. I have accumulated pages and pages of such text.

There were some other writings which started off really well and were interjected by circumstantial events. The link is lost, and so, once I reconsider them, I will be able to produce a lot more writings at once. Subjects come and go. Strong ideas and thoughts pass across the mind. Sometimes, student work in nascent stage makes me think a lot, and I am able to give a good feedback to a lot. But later, I feel all that thought must be recorded. Lectures must be transcribed. A lot of times, after I finish my lectures, I sit in my room and write what I spoke...It makes so much sense. Students ask questions which help to clarify concepts.

I will take time to collate all such writings and scribblings into tangible output. For the time being, I have made a good compilation of my earlier works into a portfolio, which I really like to gaze at. I keep flipping and feeling the pages and writing all the time. I hope it makes the same impact on others who see it. It's called "Idearchive" - a hint Siddharth (Nadkarny) gave me during an informal chat...

I want to write about the nature in which my phone has gone out of order. It has started behaving weirdly. Being a touch screen, 1/3rd of it has become insensitive. the middle 1/3rd is partially sensitive and the right most part is intact. So I have to constantly be very informed to press at the wrong place to press the right button and execute the right information. For example, the "yes" and "no" button are on right and left on the touch screen. But I end up saying "no" to every thing that occurs with the phone. The key pad types absolutely absurdly. If I have to say, "Sorry to have missed you", it writes "Sorry to have kissed you"! Messages are completely going for a toss!!  It's really funny and I am looking forward to theorize it...How? Imagine a skewed phone - like a man looking crooked, performing unexpected operations and landing you up in imaginary landscapes! One could construct an interesting story out of that! Of all unintended things one did, which opened up a new perspective of life...

Of all "no's" that became "yes" and vice versa. Of all messages that went to wrong people and did interesting connections. Of all unwanted cancellations, of all numbers you dialled wrong...It could be revealing...

I have always imagined such an exercise with archaeological space. When at the Sun temple Modhera, where we saw the intricately carved temple stone blocks numbered and lined up to be reset on the facade, I wondered if all those numbers mixed up, would it change relationships between people? Wouldnt it challenge our whole belief systems, mythology, and all those narratives...An exploratory exercise in challenging history could be fictitiously constructed.

However, there are other things going on. The vertical studio where we have too much to explore and only a few sincere, interested students. I could just indulge in writing about all the 10 areas that have been selected - there are so many stories out there, so much to learn and also produce knowledge. We just have a bunch of extremely lackadaisical students who do not want to do any thing. Either their futures are set, or they do not have futures. It's as black and white as that, perhaps...

I am handling the visual culture group and there is so much to talk about it that I can't contain within myself. I am just waiting for students to bring up some amount of enthusiasm and eagerness to work. Then, I am sure we will achieve something. So, finally, writing is going on. soon you will see a lot of it. It is in the process of cooking up, and it will be served soon. The application process is already over and I can get back to attack this space again!

State of Mind

These days, things are a bit crazy. I am writing this though my mind tells me I must not be spending time on this.

However, I am just wanting to express what I am going through physically versus mentally. When I work, I feel sleepy and when I close my eyes, I feel insomnia. I feel warm and I switch on the fan and switch it off only to realize I am feeling cold. I eat something and realize the taste only after it's almost over. Taste doesnot matter - it's for my health that I eat perhaps! I feel tired, but when I take rest, I feel restless. I feel I have a lot of work and when I work, I feel there is nothing to do, rather, I wonder where to start!? I feel immensely negative about something that is not, while have a gut feeling of positivity in something that I am underestimating! I start to read something and only realize later that I have been only staring at it for a long time. Ideas come to head and vanish as soon as I begin to note them. I want to draw and end up reproducing old things. Articulated sentences shout in my head but dont make way to the paper!

What is this state of mind I dont know. Nothing is happening, but still it seems I am brimming with work.

What is this? I wonder!

Baghban V

Parents, even if they try to, cannot live without expectations from their progeny. This is perhaps a natural instinct – a give and take relationship. There were already films in ’70s which raised the issue of children ignoring their parents while they grew old. Others sensitized the tension of difference in thought between the generations. Recent films like Baghban, Dil chahta hai, etc bring out several issues of this gap very sharply. 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. Ours is a patriarchal family system. This head of the family is generally a head primarily because he 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. But relationships are complex. And expression towards such relationships is very difficult. The generation gap is what perhaps makes the expression difficult. How must the parents deal with children to make them more comfortable to talk to them? May be, here I must get specific about certain kind of conventional families, where children in their formative years face this kind of extreme difficulty to convey their emotions to parents.

In traditional Indian family systems, the childhood is a period is which the child is trained in family values – social, moral, ethical codes of conduct. The aspect of communication within a family is never dealt with. The emphasis is on teaching – in a crude sense, giving. It is never believed that one could learn anything from kids. Kids are to be attuned to the society and in the process of training in social values, a lot is already lost. Moreover, while communication is not the agenda, it itself is institutionalized. Implied codes regarding what must be spoken and what not are inflicted. Sharing of emotions at a later age becomes a gestural act. Emotions are then to be understood through acts and are not really expressed. At a mature age, it is even embarrassing for most to publicly express happiness or sadness since it has either never been done before or it seems a socially misfit act.

It becomes very difficult for my father to acknowledge or appreciate me in public. He stumbles and doesnot know what to say. My mother ends up expressing her happiness by talking about it to as many people as possible – neighbours, friends, relatives, etc. On father’s promotion, a silent sweet is prepared at home. The tastefulness of this sweet is not orally acknowledged, but suggested by eating a bowl extra. During a festival, new clothes suggest happiness. Gifts on the table for success become ways to express happiness. All becomes suggestive. Such over-suggestion is repressive. It is implosive.  Objects, than something that was once emotive, become more important. This lack of communication suppresses a lot of expression.

On the other hand, during tough times, a maudlin silence pervades the atmosphere of the home. Behaviour becomes stricter. Television programmes are moderated, volume of talk is regulated. Eye contacts are stolen; everyone looks at the walls or dead vantage points. Low moods are never discussed – the feeling of vulnerability is seldom a part of the institution of the family.  The family always presumes an ideal role for itself. Perhaps it is due to its hegemonic social function of keeping all the state of affairs at home in a happy condition.

But I am very concerned about the how members of a family talk to each other. I believe that the hermetic way in which traditional Indian families behave is detrimental to furthering of social values and the problem lies in the training period of the child during early days.

This is a highly “under construction” post. Feedback is most welcome.
Earlier threads of 'baghban' can be searched at "Search This Blog" Section (Type Baghban)

Rolling thoughts / Roofs in Architecture