Toys

Since a long time now, I have been wanting to write a post on the kind of toys I played with in my childhood. This thought was triggered primarily by two things: the reading of Roland Barthes'  "Toys" from Mythologies and my discussion on the same some time ago with a students during the Humanities lecture. Rather, I wanted to test if my toys have really shaped me!? I thereby started to write on cartoons too. But that article is not complete yet. I  have to refine it further such that I can make it into a formal paper.

I hardly remember what were my childhood toys like! Perhaps I must have thrown them, chewed them or swallowed some of it - I dont know! The faintest memory of my first toys is a jumping chicken which my mother brought for me after I got my teeth extracted! It was a white furry chicken which lasted for a long time and needed to be keyed. Yes, there were a lot of toys which worked on keys. My uncle used to travel to foreign countries very frequently. He had then got us (my brother and me) a car each. Mine was an old style fiat! I loved it. I would keep rolling it around my axis! During 1990 we had the opportunity to go to Singapore. My parents got a lot of toys for us from there. They were mostly electronic. Electronic toys could be trusted being imported! But it was an eclectic mix - a golden robot, 2 fighting tanks, a set of cars - all of it worked on batteries! I don't remember but there must have been a lot more! We must have misplaced them here and there.

As we grew, our choice of toys became peculiar. I was drawn to more human toys, more subtle; while my brother to the  more destructive and aggressive! I had a distinct liking for teddy bears! They were quite expensive then. So my first and the only teddy bear was stitched by my mother. My aunt gifted me another one on my birthday some time later. I kept them for a long time! I also remember buying a doctor's set - I would see myself as one! It had plastic scissors, cotton, bandage, a fake thermometer - all that! I still remember it cost Rs. 28/-. We got toys only on two occasions: on getting a good result or on a birthday. There were no un-occasional toys. 

Further I invested more in the GI joes - they were really marketed well and I wanted to almost make a collection. Over 4 years, I could collect only 4 of them, through which I would weave stories and plays. Immediately then, the teddy bear became the monster due to its size...Cars were all half broken so they could carry the gi joes...I had enough material to create a setting.

Later, I invested in toys like the safari (cars going through a track), i also had "The Young Architect" and "The Mechanix". I took a game on cricket too, which i seldom played! But these were the toys through which I really experimented a lot! I would not stick only to the manuals, but would go on to make more exciting moving things. 

There is another aspect to the whole story - games: all sorts from board games to the virtual ones (video games and computer games). I had distinct liking for games. I would play games like Business or Ludo with my friend and I guess it informs my notions of 'circulation' that I use in my architectural work today. Computer games like Prince of Persia and Digger presented the world of 'sections' to me. Later as we played newer games, they appeared in perspective. Spaces revealing themselves in perspective were scary...sectional spaces were so much subtler! Games like Tetris on the video games probably taught me articulation - of fitting things together compactly. I had immense liking for racing games. I don't know if they really induced in me the idea of competition. But I developed immense amount of patience and perseverance through these games.

All such games and toys made a definite space around me - a very human like, mechanical environment. Gijoes were a great way to understand anthropometrics and mechanix taught me structure. I think these toys contributed to a lot of my architectural knowledge. I still have all my toys, well preserved - to an extent that my parents are fed up of me. I don't share them with my nephews since they would immediately break them into pieces! Although some of them have been destroyed.

But I am going to try to theorize the above! It's just a descriptive account meanwhile. Somewhere, it does make me different from my brother's aggressive nature coming from his toys like the gun, or the bat, or the WOLF or DOOM he played on computer...Hence the Barthes connect...

Don't our toys shape us!? I have been wanting to pull the idea of toys in studio, especially since Prasad Shetty mentioned it last year to which I refuted. But I guess I am going to think about it seriously to be able to understand and derive newer expressions from the idea of toys and games...lets see...

Taj - Mumbai

Practice

Any kind of artistic practice involves so much of manipulation. There is so much to and fro in achieving an end. Take water colour for example. The artist uses washes over and over again , sucks or drops more colour and keeps on repeating the process until the desired result is achieved.

The process of repetition is the key to a rich product. Repetition allows overlay and thus gives a lot of depth to work. Depth gives multiple readings of a single work and it creates different moods during different times. Oil painters keep on mixing colours till they achieve the desired result. This process is perhaps meditative.

Architects use tracings, through which they repeat processes. Through repetition and mixing, one may layer ideas. It also involves iteration of mistakes, then correcting them. One keeps going back and forth, revising the earlier thought at each step. Thus these processes are not linear, neither cyclic. They are like eddies, which keep micromanaging themselves. Such processes give rise to techniques, which can be used in varying scales of work. 

I work on my writing like above. I first write in the crudest possible way. Probably because I think in mixed languages. Then I try giving it coherence, by first putting it grammatically correctly, then polishing sentences, words and phrases. But I purposely delay all these steps since every time I read my text afresh, I am able to refine it further. At one go, all seems fine, but in another instance, it appears terribly wrong. Many a times, I find no relevance of a plenty of texts that I once began writing. Then I realize how convoluted my mind is. I discard a lot of such texts. I also preserve a lot of such texts, only to laugh at my silliness. But when I look back, I can estimate how far have I come. And this is the reason why archives are important. They allow to trace trajectories.

The Discourse of Form

"The discourse of architectural form has become obsolete...who talks of form today? The debate on form is an old issue now,"

"India has not entered, or even managed to enter the discourse of architectural form" - I discussed with the new team of Architecture Design first year. The debate was about the role of form in architecture.

India-trained architects immediately understand form as "iconic" and label it as pejorative. In Indian context, I think the idea of form itself is borrowed. The emphasis of space in Indian architecture is so strong that we fear to deal with ideas of form. Formal responses in architecture have never satisfied the community in India. They have only served the craving for aesthetic or beauty, or otherwise invited a lot of criticism for a-contextual responses. Indian architectural community has not successfully placed a form that generated a dialectic - an argument in a mature architectural sense. All bold forms here can be so easily classified as copied or adopted.

Vernacular has become a style, instead of a cultural manifest. Why doesn't present cultural condition fuel the design of form in architecture? Why don't cultural processes shape form? They are either expressionistic or reproductions of the past. Do buildings talk to each other in the city? We have not, in the real sense, explored the function of architecture as a formal message... Architecture has so much potential to communicate in space. How does Antilia talk to Kanchunjunga? How do buildings in the IIT campus talk to each other? How do the tall buildings respond to each other? Do our cultural institutions talk to each other? All architects are only writing off buildings. Statements is not the way I want to talk of form. In fact, I am talking of form as response in 3-dimensional space. What meanings do forms hold? Can we tap them? Can we play with the imagery, yet be spatial? Any debates, disconnects...post here...

Post buildings, we shall discuss...

Sketches - Ideas

Most of the above sketches are states of the mind. These are done over the last 2 years randomly and I am only putting them here as a memory of the past.
In order: (Sketch / Idea)

• Glass within a glass / Overflowing desire
• Branches / Directions
• Water Level Balance / Manipulation
• Balloon & Knot / Holding nothing
• Knot Study / Obstruction
• Street USB 
• A chance encounter between an umbrella and a sewing machine.
• Lemon Cut / Abstraction 

Of Cultural Movements

Globalization:
The process of globalization is characterized by 2 main concepts:

1. Idea
2. Computer & Technology

The process of globalization is characterized by the fact that it doesnot have boundaries - it is open to everyone. The fact that an idea can be explored and presented openly provided a greater opportunity to individuals.  For example, Sabeer Bhatia was just a drop out from his college when the idea of Hotmail struck to him. The idea was accepted in the market and it had many takers.

Globalization furthers easy exploration by making technology accessible to everyone. It thus assumes a democratic status. Computer and technology are the major factors providing momentum to globalization. The mantra of globalization is mobility, speed, dynamism and fast pace. The era of globalization sees an upward trend in movement. Movement of not only people, but funds, technology, ideas, income, etc.

Glocalisation:
The manifestation of global ideas into local environments is colloquially called glocalization. Glocalisation is the appropriation of the global into local.

Mc Donaldization:
The a-contextual prototyping of built forms is termed as Mc Donaldization. It is the establishment of visual identity of a built form in space which disregards specificities of a place.

Coca-colization:
It is a term used pejoratively to imply the rise in western consumerist culture and westernization (rather Americanization?) of all cultures in general.

Summarized over discussion with Padma Desai in 2007-8. The above explanations must not be taken as precise or accurate.

Economy & Social Relations

Economy restructures every aspect of life today. Right from the area you live to the friends you make. Your spending potential is something that strongly configures the choices you make. Why do we find that our friends (the ones whom we consider closer to us) are mostly within our own economic bracket? As students come in a mixed group in a class, we immediately find them flocking into their own 'secure' economic groups. I think the spending potential defines the way we are brought up, the way we think and the way we would eventually want to spend. However, how beneficial is that anyway?

Generally, it is very difficult to communicate on money matters or spending potentials with friends while studying. This is one area where friendship doesnot always succeed. Are our friends able to accept us beyond our monetary constraints? To critically look at the situation, we already define our friend circles within our own economic range. Many a times, we also end up spending irrationally...

The middle class is seldom confident with its economic status. It is a highly unstable, unsure and aspiring class of the society. Money, and only more money gives it confidence and stability. What kind of change will a confident middle class make? I am not sure. Education automatically distances people - historically, knowledge and money have always been related and these two factors eventually structured the society. 

Academic studies are very refined and primarily engage the middle class for its livelihood (learn > earn).

But it would be refreshing to see some inter-economic bracket strong friendship bonds. I haven't seen them in a while. Probably I haven't seen them ever except films! Does it mean that even films have failed to erase such economic differences? I am not sure if i am conveying what I want to say here clearly. Probably I am trying to understand how money structures social relations. The virtual world completely destroys it. It successfully challenges economic hierarchies. I like that about the virtual world. Something that I learnt during my thesis, on globalization, during my discussion with my guide Padma Desai. I shall digitize that conversation from my thesis diary here...

Hand gestures while singing?

Many people ask me what do singers do with their free hands while singing? Why do they make gestures which mean nothing? Does it affect their singing - make it worse or better? Is it a fashion to make such gestures to suggest supremacy over singing or the surs?

Although most of the times I escape the question saying I don't know, I will attempt an explanation as I perceive it. The hand gestures made by singers while singing may be understood as visual graphs of sound versus space. How do you visually explain sound? And more-so, when someone's life is only as non visual as sound, about its intricacies, how does it obtain a visual dimension? Hand gestures gives a visual meaning to sound. It almost objectifies sound to a playful thing.

Many a times, professional singers have explained singing as a play of /in sur or swars  (notations). When striking a high note, the hand and head goes high; and vice versa for a low note. That's simple to understand. but when the song is feasible, its more about the play of throwing a word in a desired manner. This 'throw' can  be perceived through the gesture. There is a treatment to each word, each line and the entire song. The hand-gesture thus shows the way performer treats the work - i e the song.

The hand gestures also capitalizes on the structure of the hand itself - in terms of the arm, palm and fingers. The movement of all symbolizes a 3-dimensional graph - much like the tantra, a diagram which only exists in the mind. The gesture probably, according to me is a manifest of such a diagram of music. The gesture grips the rhythm, the sur (tone), the swar (notation), the lyrics, the mood and thus the composition. It symbolizes abstract qualities of music like smoothness, softness, sharpness, etc. for a particular song. Bhaav is intrinsic to Indian Classical music as against the structure of a piece for the Western Classical. Hence, one finds a separate director for live music in western classical performances. In Indian Classical, it's more of a jugal-bandi, or an interplay - where all come together and improvise.

This improvisation will see improvised hand gestures. It is compulsive, not fashionable - it is a reflection of what those vibrations inside do to you. Sometimes, while singing, one closes ones eyes, or hints, suggests, smiles - all such actions primarily are involuntary.

Yes, when you find people who do not know much about music doing weird hand movements, you can easily point them out as forced or fashionable...

Sloping Landscapes*

Today morning, I decided to attend a lecture. I wanted to avoid the second year class and so I stepped into the third year! And perhaps it was the right decision to take. I entered a class of Landscape, where Arjun (Sharma) was lecturing on analyzing contoured sites. He went on to explain all about site analysis. And while he spoke, parallel images ran in my mind. He spoke of steepness of slopes and how we could map slopes of different gradients into a ratio map to understand which zones one could consider to build or traverse through. 

I had been thinking of what makes newer construction so out of place in interior sites of our states. I am referring to new constructions at places like Alibaug, Palghar or ourskirts of Pune. They invariably paint their houses white or bright pink or yellow from the exterior. I think that is the imagination of newness. White is a new colour for people in the interiors. However, bringing in the idea of local architecture, Arjun raised the question of what gives the local architecture its character? It is the colour of its built form. Most of it is built out of local material - which makes the entire place black or brown or grey. This is the colour of the local stone or material used for construction. White therefore makes you feel out of place. That is why, I think browns have become the colours for architects - to make one feel at home. Even in the interiors, brown is a safe and popular palette.

As Arjun went on to talk of ridges and valleys forming streams, I thought of the mythical story of Ganga descending on to the earth lead by bhagirathi. Of how the river follows the path Bhagirathi takes. Although it is a bit absurd, but to think that Bhagirathi took the path through the valleys such that the river could conveniently follow a path is interesting. It reminded me of Mahabharat's visualization of Ganga flowing through a mountain - forming streams and then a river. Later, I thought of Rishikesh and Benaras. Where the land form is gentle, the river becomes shallow and wide, where it is steep, the river is deep and narrow. On the other hand, I was reminded of a story we read in our primary school. The autobiography of the river- flowing through mountains and valleys. The rivers says that due to a mound in its path, it gets worried of how to go ahead. There are many obstacles in her way - the stones, trees, etc. She embraces all of it as she flows from the mountain. Later, she gives birth to her sister (distributary) due to a large mound. The separation is painful and the river feels pained. However, as it reaches a shallow bowl shaped area, the river gets to rest into a pond and meets back her sister.

Mythical and poetic stories crossed my mind and gently tickled me - all through a study of landscape. But also, I began to think how mapping landscapes (or even mapping in general) has become a strategy to control any land form. The idea of being able to conquer or build through its meticulous study has led to the generation of a huge amount of documentation. It has led to special agencies like surveyors who help plotting trees and all features on land. Opening up untraceable land through mapping allows human entry into natural territories. This has led to severe and undesirable results.

Later Arjun spoke about a lot of things including orientation of built form w.r.t. water drain off. But the best part of the lecture was when he led climatic analysis - sun-path, wind direction, amount of rainfall to the idea of vista  and sight lines. Drawing a mountain on the board, he drew a round rising smiling rising sun. He explained how it was important to understand where the sun rises on the site versus where it sets and how this information could be used as a design strategy. Of how one would never want to screen off a rising sun using trees or designing pathways in wrong areas. More interesting was his idea of looking at fog and using it as a positive landscape feature. It reminded me of impressionistic paintings of Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. Seeing blurred images of people approaching you - strangers whom you think you know - it becomes so interesting to use the concept of fog as an architectural strategy!

By the end, I was so overwhelmed with the lecture that I felt I must enroll for a course in Landscape Architecture. I wanted to tell Arjun what a fabulous session he took and how beautifully he conducted it. However, things are to always take unexpected turns. Arjun revealed to me about the incoherence in Landscape and AD studio and he was really dejected. Our conversation took a detour and I got no opportunity to tell him how well he spoke and how nice I felt as I saw him teach. 

But this is what I meant by circumstantial - life is so circumstantial. A lecture which I thought was brilliantly put up, was actually a reaction to the system. I thought the merger of AD and Landscape was planned, but it wasn't. If only the students took some charge...

*metaphorical (sloping = unstable, landscapes = scenarios)

Where do I go?

Suddenly I feel all has become so peaceful. I have reduced interacting too much with others. I don't look at too many things here and there. And it is really making me feel comfortable. I have started to think lesser and things bother me even lesser. The past few days were really bothering me too much. But I think the credit goes to Prakriti: She told me about the ancient Vedic strategy - "Let the thoughts come and go, don't hold them". And I am practicing it all the time. It seems to be working. Although I haven't mastered it yet.

Things happen around me, and I have learnt to let them happen even if I am feel they not ought to be so. Anuj tells me: "You can't change the world". I quietly agree to him.

Lots of things actually come and go, but these days, I am not finding the urge to note them down. Neha went for her masters and I really felt at loss - on one hand for missing a friend and on the other, something that ignites my own aspirations.

Writing is going on, but I am not so confident of it. Projects seem to build, but fall more instantly. The moment I open them out for discussion, the next moment, they collapse. No, I am not going to get into "why does this happen" mode. It just happens. Perhaps it is meant to just be like that. There are times when nothing seem to be heading anywhere. This is a similar feeling to that during my thesis. But things take their time. I am not sure what to wait for and how much to wait for. 

Sometimes I question even if teaching is meant for me? I don't know! Where will this inquiry lead? What is this inquiry for? Is it isolating me? Am I becoming too obscure? Why do I need to question? Where will all this culminate? Large questions. No answers.

But I keep doing; When I am doing, I am not thinking too many things. Its peaceful when I am not thinking. So I do. I write. I keep writing. So i feel less bothered by things around me. I record - all the time. I take pictures, everywhere. I look, re look at them, thinking of stories, which get lost in my mind...Eventually, i think they will be lost. Now have I contradicted myself again here?