Escalators / Elasticity

Elasticity

Rapidly modernizing with technology, cities like Mumbai constantly present their inhabitants with a range of new objects in urban space to interact with. Several infrastructure transit nodes are now installed with ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines), LCD indicators, air-conditioned coaches and other such automated paraphernalia. However, one of the most significant additions is that of escalators at all metro and train stations. Unlike in shopping malls, these escalators are open to be accessed by a completely different class of users. People of all kinds in the city - young, old, infants, men, women, villagers, migrants, rich, poor are subject to this new animated object that takes them from one floor level to another.

While plugged in as a relief to reduce friction of mobility, avoid stampedes during peak hours, making commute accessible and easy for all, the watching this piece of resilient machine in a public space like the railway station of Mumbai is pure entertainment. Every morning I see novel encounters of people with this machinic animal. Women in saris pull them high to avoid their flowing ends to get into the complicated machinery, children wait for their parents to land them on the rising steps, villagers look astonished and puzzled in deciding the right moment to step into the moving platform, they wait for others to hold hands and give them the confidence and assurance that the machine wouldn't overpower them, or many are confused where to keep the hands once on the moving treads - finally holding the shoulders of strangers standing besides them... It is pure joy to look at such first experiences with new technology. In their apprehension and curiosity, people begin to learn and discover a new city. The escalator becomes an elastic medium that gets people together in a unique way, resolving and releasing new tensions of the city. At the same time, does this not become art in public space - if one considers the pure function of art to amuse people in a way that they find their own selves?

This was an article written for a column on 'Urban Delight' to the theme of 'Resilience and Sustainability' for a magazine "My Liveable City". The small write-up didn't make up for the magazine because I could not provide photographic evidence to qualify it as urban delight. Given the unexpected nature of encountering the event, as well as the constraints of framing a natural shot of the techno-cultural human act, it would take a lot of work and thinking to get this done. However, I have also come to realise that a city like Mumbai cannot be proved to be visually delightful. Most Asian cities are about living and being - and it is challenging to capture its life visually.

Few days after I closed off on the writing, I went to a mall where I encountered what I wanted to share. Low light, lack of camera skill, limitation of technology - all the issues came back. Nevertheless I took a video. Perhaps, this would still work to get a sense of the kind of delight, and hesitation I aimed to talk about.

The article is a reworked version of "Escalators" post on this blog.

The Golden Pagoda, Gorai

Two days ago, Dipti (Bhaindarkar) and I decided to visit the Golden Pagoda that is right off Gorai - pretty close to our school. The plan was just to get a feel of vacation - something that all the other schools are having right now. After much procrastination and thinking about the heat, I gave in to Dipti's idea. 

Taking the boat from Gorai jetty and reaching the other end of the city was quite fun. I had quickly made myself aware of the location of the Golden Pagoda before we left - which is when I realised that it was right next to the site of Essel World. I was quite surprised. The first time I visited the Pagoda, I had taken a road route and it seemed to be quite far. When I saw on the map, I became more aware not only of the proximity of the place, but also the geography of Mumbai more closely!

When landing from the sea side, you have to walk about 800 metres from the jetty point until you reach the entrance. Basically, the pathway to the pagoda is a shoot off from that of the Essel World. The pathway is banked with gabien walls and almost zero foliage - and in addition you may not find any internal transport to reach the pagoda. Not that it requires one, but in excruciating heat, for old people and some emergency situations, it's just nicer to have some transportation to take up upto the entrance of the pagoda.

I was quite flustered walking in the hot sun and approaching the monument under the open burning sky. While one would assume that the positioning of the staircase frontally is supposed to take you inside the pagoda axially, in reality you have to walk all around the building to actually enter it. The entrance is discreet, and hardly noticeable, lost in scale. What is further disappointing is that no one apart from those who have done a 10-day Vipaasna course can enter the main dome of the Golden Pagoda. Thus, all we could do is enter a transparent tunnel from where we saw the large column-free domed space above which, the sacred relics of Buddha have supposedly been kept! In about a minute, this spectacle was over.

Dipti and I came out almost instantly, because we were already sweating and the interiors of this tunnel had no air circulation at all. Escaping from this suffocating space, we decided to sit down under one of the massive columns. I took a nap on its plinth while Dipti sat thinking nothing (or looking around). In my usual cynicism, I kept complaining about the poor detailing, the hollow flooring, the gaudy goldens and the cheap decorations onto the Pagoda. Everything seemed extremely patchy.

After our nap, we decided to visit the canteen. Located in the underbelly of the pagoda are some carelessly kept art galleries, and further, the canteen. A large flattened sweeping space, the canteen sucked at any kind of aesthetic. Should such an expensive pagoda deserve a canteen that has column-beam lowly ceiling and the cheapest of plastic chairs and tables? It had no view, no natural light or air, nothing! I wondered what spirit of space they wanted to create? But wait - did they even think about the spirit of this complex in the first place? On exit we saw the plan of the site, and it felt like the final year design project, something of the sort of a "Mediation Centre" of an average student from the architecture school.

The return journey was nicer. The sun had set and we took the boat, where although we couldn't find a seat, we saw the pagoda in soft light, along with the louder ones of its counterpart - the Essel World rides. At that moment, a new landscape revealed - on one hand was  the a place of entertainment, pleasure and earthly phenomenal delights. while just adjacent was the Vipaasna centre, the place to leave all of one's worldly desires. One was shouting out loud while the other was sitting quietly. One where life was bouncing from the ground, and other where life ideally retires. Seeing them sitting together side by side as we moved away from it on our boat on water was quite fascinating. Floating between the two ends, we kept taking pictures pondering at the absurd profundity of city life.

Architecture & Politics

A few months ago, a friend shared with me the announcement of a conference themed "Architecture and Emotions" that called for an investigation into how politics and governance come to frame the intellectual mood of any State and harness architecture a vehicle to translate such emotion in its physical environment. I keenly submitted my abstract since the topic interested me a lot, although, my paper wasn't selected. ‘The State of Architecture’ (SOA) exhibition that opened almost subsequently seemed to look at some linkages in how architecture was inscribed within the political developments of the country over the last 65 years. After some study and pondering although, I felt that SOA was quite unsuccessful in drawing attention to architecture as a function of politics through its recycled rhetorics. In addition, some of the political events like the Emergency of 1975, that the curators chose as marker of the exhibition, did not seem to integrally influence architecture within the country at all.

Thinking of a more nuanced analysis on politics, architecture and identity, I am reminded of Arindam Dutta, now the director of the PhD program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, who in his undergraduate thesis at CEPT culls out much more than what the exhibition could put together on the walls of NGMA. Dutta’s thesis charts how the idea of India was defined post independence by Government’s conscious and regular initiation of several cultural institutions that became the medium of infusing ideological and political thought within the intellectual sphere of the country. The interaction between art and architecture, and the role of political ideology in translating the ethos of the times into physical environment emerges softly in Dutta’s thesis. On the other hand, the material showcased at The State of Architecture exhibition made me wonder if contemporary architects in India, are in any way even able to grasp the political situation of their State, and able to find a language / method to translate the political impulses into their built works? Do architects realise the potential of architecture to be an object for cultural and political interrogation and investigation?

Right around the time of the exhibition planning, the Indian State had imposed several restrictions - including beef ban, pornography, and so on. Many such decisions have deeply affected human and spatial dynamics especially in the networked society of today. (Think of housing societies that do not allow muslims or non vegetarians, gated communities, ban on public display of affection, policing of public spaces, etc.) Without getting into details of how, (which would call for another long blogpost), I would like to mention that it was an excellent opportunity for the curators to play on the idea of “state” - 

a. as an integrated political community, 

b. as the architectural  condition with regard to its internal structure and its role to report, or 

c. to express something clearly and afresh.

I felt the pun on the word “State” was hardly emphasised in the execution. In fact, ignoring the questions of communal disturbances caused by some recent decision of the new BJP government in India that were still fresh during the inauguration of SOA, the curators inaugurated the SOA by the lighting of a lamp - a predominantly Hindu symbolic practice.

The end of this exhibition was seen by a yet another political upheaval. Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of Student Union at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) raised questions on the idea of nationalism, the issue of curtailed scholarships for students of the reserved category studying at government institutions in India. Kanhaiya Kumar’s episode was a snowballing of several other politically charged events within the country. Primarily, this event was only followed by the suicide of Rohit Vemula, a dalit student pursuing his PhD, whose stipend was stopped after he was found to be raising social issues under Ambedkar Students' Association on his campus at the Hyderabad university. Not to forget the award-returning by several intellectuals and prominent cultural figures in India also took place in protest of the government's moral and cultural policing.

Realised during such charged political and intellectual mood within the country, the SOA exhibition almost seemed to look away from questions of secularism, nationalism, casteism, free speech, constitution and many such cultural issues were raised by several intellectuals. SOA's curatorial endavour did not address or provoke the architects in responding to these charged political events within the country - those which shape our ideals, ideas and thereby our institutions in their intellectual and physical spirit. (I understand that it would have called for reorientation of some of their planning - but there was no attempt to even add a lecture in discussing these issues that frame the political mood in which cultural production of architecture is imagined).

How does architecture - one may ask - play a role in provoking political questions? What within the scope of architectural production, allows to stage and perform such inquiries? And how can architects participate actively in shaping the society?

A friend once aptly summarised: "Architecture is the manner in which politics takes form." To be sure, it is architecture through which questions of identity and memory take shape in the built form. It is only architecture that is able to preserve the ethos of a society in its material and spatial structure for the longest. It is through architecture that the political structuring of a society is often understood, interpreted and analysed. The Greek Forums, Roman Republics or German Reischtag - all buildings talk of the power dynamics of their times. Artists like Michelangelo or Ledoux (and so many others) have demonstrated how political situations of the time can be encoded into the built form of architecture.

The designed buildings in our surroundings today merely reflect their submissive tendencies to capital and the forces of market, eventually becoming more and more vulgar day by day. There is hardly any conscious attempt by architects to translate political ideas of their context within their built works. What we are left unfortunately with, however, are just ideas for building Shivaji and Ambedkar memorials. No one is even interested in debating what it would mean to build such monuments in the age of so much political disparity and technological advancement. If these expectations seem too idealised for architecture to address, the temporal nature of an exhibition can experiment them within its schema. Politics, after all, is performed (and constituted) through the institutionalised body - the everyday actions and gestures, the structure of language we use to communicate and the space that emerges through these. The modes of seeing, engaging, interacting, positioning, framing, displaying, revealing - essentially all architectural tactics - can be employed in the temporal space of an exhibition to provoke the user to challenge and question the existing power structures. In reworking these spatial gestures, the exhibition can destabilise the normative to pose fresh questions in thinking about space, body and politics.

Just a few days ago, filmmaker Madhusree Dutta quipped quite an important point. Quoting the example of her father, she went on to demonstrate how our everyday thoughts are completely governed by the political ideology of the State. Madhu’s story, the specifics of which I now forget, demonstrated how her father who never was extremely patriotic became extremely nationalistic towards the end of his life essentially because of the political mood created during that time by the Government. The fact shows how our moral values, codes of conduct, ethical principles, world view - everything is contained in the educative machinery put into action by the State. Change of such political ideology, resulting due to several reasons like change in leader, change in governing party, etc also has an effect on the individual’s imagination of immediate space and the world at large.

State Governments, in the policies they frame and execute, instill or deprive its people of certain sense of confidence with which they perform (in) and take decisions, in other words, think their everyday lives. Average people, who do not necessarily have the critical skills to question such policies quietly accept and establish such beliefs as normal. It is here that Madhusree added another important corollary. In the given societal structure that we live - namely that of the joint family or the nuclear family - a person is forever a constituent of the family - a small part of a large institutionalised machinery. How can the ‘individual’ survive in the (non-liberal) family?

Self criticality, a value that is often a function of independent liberal thought, can only be nurtured in self-questioning. Such inquiry of the self is not possible unless one is allowed enough space to experiment and test one’s own thought. The institution of the family works against any construction of the idea of the ‘self’ or the ‘individual’.  Individualistic endeavours within the family may be seen as disrespectful, or even selfish. In such a scenario, how do we expect the majority of a population to be self-critical, if the idea of the self, or the confidence in one’s individuality itself is absent? It is in these ways that the political mood of the country works itself out - an intricate mesh of macro and micro conditions.

Architecture in the country gets produced through such macro and micro conditions. Our architects lack individuality - and this is not to gesture that building styles don’t bear signature styles of architects. I mean to hint at individuality in terms of self-criticality that one ought to develop within this overwhelming political mood that the State creates for the average countrymen. Only when architects are able to rise above this political bubble, will they be able to create buildings that catalyse political action, as well as serve the society at large in the capacity of being public intellectuals.

RIP Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid at Yale during 2013, talking of her works.


The World Beyond Ideas

The Hastings Hall was full, so we had to move to the overflow area. I still remember - people queued up for long, and many still didn't manage to get a seat. Her talk was defiant, plain and direct. She kept flipping through her works without delving much into their process. It was all about the "experience" - leaving the audience with the potential of what architecture can achieve, as she says, beyond ideas.

A colleague from Yale once discussed, "I think she is depressed"
I asked, "really?"
She said, "Don't you think so?"

I felt it was an interesting proposition. Zaha was exceptionally different. When she moved around the studios at Yale, even the air around her would be under her command, but as if, she has made private friends with her own environment. From a distance, she seemed warm but guarded. Perhaps, it came from her own history - her being an iraqi woman architect. All these three identities constructed her into a distinct figure.

Anyway, I am glad I was able to see and hear her in person. It is always inspiring to see confident and famous people talk. You know the environment they command and create. And you also know how it makes you feel, and how you would want the world to feel around you.

Understanding Goa

It has been a month now since we visited Goa. This post may be quite late. It has become difficult to think of what exactly to write of trips? Unlike what popularly is perceived of people to do in Goa, our study trip to Goa with a group of 40 architecture students was very different. The trip looked at documenting traditional as well as contemporary architecture of Goa - panning a good radius of the geography. 

Unlike relaxing at beaches, indulging in pleasure or spending laid back afternoons, the 10 days of the tour were spent in rigorous work - shuttling from one site to another in the eight sites found after some amount of handwork. Divided into groups of five to ten, students split themselves to document buildings designed or otherwise. We were fortunate to have gained access to some excellent contemporary works including those of Dean D’cruz and Ini Chatterjee, along with Charles Correa. Much of this work can not be published due to reasons of privacy.

In the first two days, Rupali and I, along with Rutu made some surveys of the place, in order to choose the final list of buildings that can be considered for documentation. Goa is not a place that can be easily travelled through public transport. It is expensive to shuttle distances in rickshaws, and buses are quite infrequent. Bikes are a good way to move around, however, if you aren’t aware of the skill, you may be left with only expensive options. Thus most people have their own private means of transport.

One thing that I constantly remained confused of throughout my travel is about differentiating between the Mandovi river and the Arabian Sea. I wasn’t able to figure when were we facing the river versus the sea. The relationship of land to the water is not lost most of the time, however, as one goes to the interiors, the landscape is taken over by fields and greens. 

The experience of time in Goa is quite different. People respond slow, and work only enough to keep themselves in pleasure. Restaurants open late for the evenings, and may be happy to shun you off if you have arrived early. Postponing scheduled things is not considered unprofessional! Such is the work life in Goa!

The only artist Goa knows of perhaps in Mario Miranda. You will find Miranda sketches everywhere - in shops, museums, forts, marketplaces, book stores and so on. This is not to say that Miranda does not pick the pulse of the place in his work. His cartoons capture the spirit of the place quite sharply. I wasn’t able to see any thing else artistic that could speak of the culture of Goa. 

One of my biggest drawbacks was my vegetarianism. I wasn’t able to indulge in sea food at all. As Pankaj (Joshi) said - Goans don’t know how to cook vegetarian food! I wondered if this was the reason I enjoyed Goa less then everyone else. In one of the conversations, I ended up admitting that I couldn’t see myself in Goa for long - where everyone else was planning to retire here! 

The Goa Library, from where the images have been shared in this post, was quite informative. It was very encouraging to see a modern state of the art library facility in Goa. We browsed through books, periodicals, manuscripts, maps in an excellent environment. While the building wasn’t impressive, it was quite functional and spacious. It offered good environment for quiet study and engaged research. Looking at the collection, I was reminded once again of the libraries at Yale, and the way in which such environments foster writing and reading. 

The book I took photograph of records the physical, environmental and urban aspects of Goa. The sheer simplicity of talking about what existed and what transformed in this place helped me orient to two thing - first Goa as a place; and secondly to the age old benevolent form of reportage. I think just putting down all facts as they are for others to interpret and avail for a further analysis is a noble task. It creates a landscape within which more discussions can be inscribed. I like this idea of putting information together. I present here some bits of this data, spoken about with much care and effort.

Remaining stories of Goa when time comes!

The Practice of Learning

Every Friday at SEA, we hold an "Assembly" where we discuss current issues with the entire school. The topic is generally chosen a week in advance and two or more people are appointed to frame the context of the discussion. Often, readings are circulated - including articles, news, essays or other material in public domain. Students are expected to participate and respond to the issue at hand. Yesterday, we were to discuss Dr. B R Ambedkar's "Annihilation of Caste", written as a paper in 1944, however never presented. Students were not prepared (much like always), for they had not read the book or looked topically upon the subject. The dissatisfaction of the faculty rose to an extent that it ended up in setting up rules for compulsory readings as well as summary-writing for everyone, per week, for a session that was otherwise more voluntary and discursive in nature.

Pro-active students opposed, and debated the imposition. These were also students who were more attuned to current political affairs, were good in verbal and written expression, well trained in English. Amidst a gathering of about 80 students, the number of these students could be counted on fingertips. It was strange to see these students talking for the rest, loud and clear, while others seemed to have already submitted to both - either the opinion of their vocal counterparts or to the faculty who had just announced a strong imposition. Their eyes down, faces with blank expression or even the self imposed silence was worth observation.

Let me make the situation more vivid - the faculty's intrusion of this silence didn't seem appropriate, for it made him more and more agitated. Struggling to understand and at the same time remain with the students' restraint, he kept making allegations and suggestions: "Why don't you all read? Can you not read 20 pages in a week? You can certainly write 5000 words in 10 days. You people do not have any capacity to sit for one hour in a place and read. Do you realise that you all can not read any thing beyond fiction? (shouting) You have to make it a practice to read..."

Perhaps the students did not register the essence of any of his questions. Instead, the faculty's rising voice, as well as temper created an environment of intimidation. It did not allow the students to reflect and speak out, but silenced them further. Rather, his laments were received as instructions - "you have to read, you have to write, you have to increase your stamina to absorb..." Any rebuttal or attempt to argue personal difficulties by the student would have been engulfed in his anger and thrown back at him/her. It happened - when the so called vocal group refuted to the idea of writing, they faced strong back lash. Eventually the faculty realised this perhaps, and in wanting to cool down, began to divert the discussion into a more productive one - engaging the students in the kind of topics they would indeed like to discuss over the coming 10 weeks, ascertaining students who would head the seminars for SEA Assemblies.

Yet, I had an intrusion within the above drama - much earlier, trying to open up a dialogue (otherwise SEA Assemblies turn out to be monologues, with only the faculty speaking). I strongly believe that one can not begin to absorb instructions unless a prior experience has deeply affected, influenced and motivated a certain necessity for one to open oneself up to a particular kind of knowledge.  For example, unless one has personally experienced discrimination of any kind (body, gender, caste, class, etc.), he/she may not be able to relate to the discussion on minority politics or other-ing. Unless one has faced adversity, one may not realise how deeply economics is related to one's outlook (socio-economics) of everyday actions. Most middle class students, like I was, are fairly insular to these debates. They are socio-culturally trained and coated in a thick layer of perceived moral values which become the default mechanisms through which they rationalise actions in their life. Ready social acceptance of such acts within their own circles reinforces their conviction in these values, and prevent them from either interrogating the validity of their ways of seeing, or even allowing them to step in another's shoes to look the situation differently. There are no stakes involved, and such kind of moral coding also sets up their (unquestioned) ambitions - fairly linear with narrow ideas of a "successful" life.

While I would like to keep the frustration with the narrow moralities of the middle class lingering at the background of this writing (and not keeping myself out of this category, but looking at it from a skeptical lens), I would go back to the classroom, to put myself in the shoes of these 18/19-year olds by diving back into my own history.

I have to confess that I am still not very well versed with history, politics or political history. I was just a bit more averse and worse to these subjects when I was 18 myself. I had no idea about the world, no interest in global politics, no awareness about everyday happenings in the country or city. I could not stand news channels - for me they were monotonous speeches which I could not take in. I would listen to them with a deaf ear. I could register nothing, for I had no background of history to pose it against. Further, I wasn't able to relate to it and make it amenable for my own life in any way. I would ponder, for instance - How was the news affecting me? How was I a participant in the global affairs? What could I have possibly done for the world? Am I even important? These questions, in hindsight, had dual tendencies - on one hand, they repelled me from engaging in current affairs, but on the other hand, they kept getting stronger in opposition to what was going on around me - I was constructing a giant wall (of questions).

The fear of being ridiculed on my unawareness of basic facts kept me back from discussing my personal ambiguities with any one else - precisely that what can I do for the world? The question of one's relationship to the world (one's  "immediate" environment) is a deep one - for one is constantly trying to find methods to interpret, engage and connect to reality around them. However, instead of enabling learners with methods, questions like the above are often posed with more rhetorics. To look at my own situation back then might help relating to the students here (for they seem to have gone through the same education system). As a sufficiently bright student, I couldn't retain facts in my head for nuts. I couldn't remember capitals of countries, geographies of countries, leaders of the world, years in which events occurred, and so on. If one told me poetries and metaphors, I could build ideas upon them; but facts seemed utterly useless - they did not have any potential expandability, they did not offer any food for thought. Rather, one had to mobilise facts to make them useful. My inability to throw facts within a given discussion kept be back from even participating in any. I had not lived the facts in the first place, and since I had not experienced them, I wasn't ever able to trust their validity. After all, it wasn't as if history just had facts, but also that facts themselves had histories.

Memorising facts, or even concepts in the manner of facts (think of how we were taught Newton's laws of motion, or Einstein's laws of relativity, or theorems in mathematics) seemed important. These would enable one to participate in discussions. I tried hard - but much like a weak bond, I could never retain facts and information in my head. Memorising is a method that I attribute to a middle class pedagogy. The thrust of such pedagogy is to prepare pupils for the purpose of passing examinations. In this view, to remember is almost sacred. But the logic of remembering is almost never elaborated or discussed.

History is not a science after all, although historiography is. But while the "rationality" of science can be experienced universally, the "causality" in history is an act of individual experience and interpretation. I clearly remember the extent to which teaching in my environment was focused on "how to memorise". We were prescribed several methods to memorise -- "speak loudly so that you can hear your own words", "write the answer 3 times - two times by copying and the third time without seeing it", "get up early in the morning and read when your mind is fresh", "focus in silence, two hours everyday, keep reading". These unsolicited (or sometimes asked) advices were constantly received from parents, elders, teachers, and every person who was apparently involved or concerned about education. However, the concern of education was easily and often lost to the idea of scoring more marks - for that's how you could prove "good" education. This is precisely what my childhood was like, and I tried all of the above methods of memorising blindly, for I wanted to be a good student. It helped topically and momentarily, but as time passed, all things painstakingly memorised were forgotten and left behind, just to create fresh mental space for new stock coming ahead.

In the process of memorising, emphasis was on digesting the answer, not savouring it. (Do you remember the Digests you read from in school days?). Education unfortunately has been made functional by our system, moreso by our teachers. But in this process, what I had almost lost was my love for language. Years of practising memorising techniques had failed me in language - both English, Hindi and my mother tongue, for it was about knowing the arrangement of words and not their meaning...I couldn't ever connect to history because there were far too many conceptual terms that I could never go beyond. Terms like "reform", "revolution", "renaissance", "movement" - and hundreds - those that I had only understood in the context of science, did not make any sense in history. In addition, remembering names, dates, events and places took a toll on me. After all, I had no historical experience of any of them...I couldn't have articulated this problem back then, and even if I did, I wouldn't have possibly bothered to ask anyone - I don't think I related in an intellectual way to any one in my childhood (if one was to accept that there is an intellectual in the young mind). Since the emphasis was on how much the mind could retain, the method one adopted was mugging up. If one didn't mug up, one couldn't champion the normative social discussions, or the race for being a "good student".

However, that language could play an important role in deciphering knowledge was never acknowledged or even understood. I often accepted words without getting deeper into their meaning, usage or etymology. When I had nothing to associate the words (and their meanings) to my everyday life, I would just remember them as new words. I would refer to the dictionary, but it was a cumbersome affair, and interrupted far too much in the flow of reading or learning. I still could not situate a word in the context of the paragraph. Sometimes, I also associated a deviated charge to the word's actual meaning. I carried this on until much later when I was introduced to a book on vocabulary (Word Power Made Easy, by Norman Lewis) by my cousin, who identified my leanings to writing. It was this book that initiated in me a slow process of revisiting my entire education. While I moved forward with vocabulary and word-building, I kept going backward to reclaim all my time and knowledge lost in mugging up some of the most beautiful concepts, writings and ideas in humanity.

Yet, I was not prepared to take in history and politics because they seemed to be embroiled within each other so strongly that I felt intimidated. One had to know so much more to understand a single ongoing act of politics. To an extent, I was losing patience in going through tons of information. Every act had a long history, every history was deeply entrenched in ideologies and every ideology had several perspectives. This multiplicity of history, yet again was interesting, but kept me from sharpening my focus and thereby my position for any event at hand. It took great amount of  courage to fight the world who judged me (and perhaps still do) for not knowing a lot of things (facts/ideas/concepts). Such judgements can be demoralising and discouraging, but one has to still put in effort to be able to make it relevant for oneself, after which one is ready to have one's own reading of history.

I pulled this conversations back to history because we were talking about "Annihilation of Caste" - the designated reading that spurred this post. I am not sure if we are going to talk about it any longer. I read through the first few pages of the book which archives the undelivered lecture. It is interesting to read several succeeding prefaces by Ambedkar himself, emphasizing upon the multiple times the book has been published after its first print. Also, it was extremely fascinating to go through the letters that Ambedkar exchanged with the organizing committee - the inclusion of those letters conveyed a certain kind of immediacy, and made the reading more engaging and involving. I couldn't read through it further because of lack of time, but it is surely going to be on my reading list soon.

I would now like to divert this discussion to some points that this writing (which I have been writing over two days) made me think this morning. In writing the details of this incident, I have opened up to myself the self-initiated enterprise of learning. It is important to identify the processes and the methods in which one is able to learn, rather teach oneself. The question of "how do I learn" is an important one to ask. The emphasis on the 'I' is to draw attention to the subjectivities involved in the process of learning. Not that no one knows about it. But perhaps this aspect often slips off our mind. Moreso, in mass education, these subjectivities of learning are bound to be overlooked, hence lost.

Self-learning can reclaim the pleasure of savouring education. Self-learning involves much effort in identifying one's peculiar methods of accessing knowledge. Learning is thus a practice that one has to constantly undertake. The practice of learning shall open oneself to one's own interests, desires and disposition. This may help in constructing more confident and secure individuals, contrary to the ones that mass education systems produces.


(Perhaps the last two paragraphs are not exactly the way I wanted to bend this discussion. However, I will take the liberty of this blog as an experimental writing space to let out this work in public domain, and perhaps get more feedback to prepare a refined discussion)

Untitled

Have you every imagined how freesprited little children are? They do not have any biases, fears, inhibitions. They are confident, in taking their actions. Undisturbed by the impositions of right or wrong, they are assertive in most things they do. Little things make them happy. They find ways of keeping themselves engaged and busy in the world. The entire world is, for them. And the entire world for them is something to be engaged with, amenable and understandable like a toy. It is to taste, hear and smell, feel, see and play!

We kill it all in bringing them up - all sense of freedom, confidence, liberty, free thinking, curiosity - almost everything. Constantly subjecting them to fit the social codes of moral, behaviour, gender, sexuality, hierarchy, and everything controls being alive. We trap it, and then ask these very grown ups to fight for it. It's a shame.

I have many examples to demonstrate - those from my own family, things that I encounter everyday. Thoughts that are extremely sexist, conservative, bigoted - words from a family that thinks that it is progressive. The more I live in my home, the more I cringe - it is not the place. It is no longer my place.

Family is a disastrous institution - one that is busily knitting a trap, filtering all kinds of true expression, unwilling to accept dissent (seen as disrespect) and forever offering you an illusion of security. This security makes you weaker day by day, unfit to face the real world independently, failing you within a nest of bourgeoisie moral standards that prevent you from looking a world beyond the individual needs. The ambitions of a middle class family are so narrow that they may suffocate you for dreaming grand.

Yet they take pride in your so called ambition, the moral high order you set for yourself. A family in the contemporary conservative india is a failed institution. It produces babies and detaches it from all the values one is born with - those that essentially define one's ego. Those that need to be respected in an individual, those that make one an "individual". The family demands to fit into the social order, consume and succumb to a hierarchy. It kills babies, by killing its values. They dont bring up individuals, they kill them. They kill them to produce social robots - those that will forever feed into the never ending insecurities of their very own survival - survival of the body, their stinking morals and their long bygone outdated ethics.

If Heart was a Place

The last set of SEA interviews for its management seats were conducted through a drawing test, where applicants were asked to submit a drawing of a "Secret Space". While some attempted to draw physical spaces, many attempted to submit ideas more imaginative. To our surprise, more than 40% of the applicants submitted drawings of heart and the brain as secret spaces.

The "heart" as a secret space manifested in multiple forms. Two of the most dominant expressions were in the ideographic and the scientific drawing showing biological details of the pumping organ. Both such representations, essentially abstract, were seen as spaces, more specifically, places (for candidates spoke of them to be their own hearts). However, instead of the organ being inside us, this time humans were introduced within the organ - within the leaf-like boundary, or the arteries and veins of the heart. Both such drawing types suggested a navigation towards finding the secret space.

The "secret" found dimension in the supposition of heart as an irrational, unreasonable organ. Secrets are kept because they may not find acceptance within the normative everyday. While legitimate to oneself, secrets struggle to find place outside the self and hence remain close to the heart. The heart was clearly posed against the brain, represented as a maze (coinciding with its biological representation), or a fortress or closed and complicated entity. Nevertheless, one wonders how the imagination of heart as a place, as if it holds, contains, receives emotions became available so easily.


The Heart and The Secret

It is clear the the popular media became the agency to  manifest the keywords "secret" and "space" together into the figure of the heart. After all, numerous Bollywood songs articulating expressions of love and emotion use heart as an recurring ingredient. Song like "Zara si dil mein de jagah tu", "kabhi kahi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai", "dil ke jharokhe mein tujhko bithaakar" or those using phrases like "dil ki girah", "dil ki tijori", "dil ki khidki", "dil ka darwaza", "dil mein mere" -- and the numerous eternalized compositions clearly became an easy material for candidates to dwell upon for their drawings. Some of the above phrases frequently used in hindi songs clearly equate "dil" (heart) as "jagah" (place). Others songs imagine the heart as a space too in more metaphorical ways, within which you can call, allow, bring, host, rest or keep some one. The heart is even personified to experience emotions, feel situations and so on. Further, it also is understood as an assemblage of architectural elements like doors, windows, etc. that encapsulate a space.

That the heart is a "tijori" (locker), or parts of it can be closed "khidki" (window), "Darwaza" (door) hint at its domestic nature. It is clearly imagined as an entity that is more personal. It is here that the idea of secret manifests within the space of the heart. In their explanations, for applicants, the immediate categorisation  was the mood of the drawing to be happy or sad. This also concluded in the fact that such emotions are often to be kept to oneself - further that being sad is not a socially accepted emotion, that one (must) like to be alone when sad, and those feelings are only known by the heart...Such belief is sufficient to firmly link the heart with secret. And we now know clearly how the heart becomes a mediating diagram for secret space. If that is not enough, even some of the hindu deities are popularly depicted as such. The picture of Hanuman with Ram (and sometimes Sita) seen in his heart are quite accessible.


The Importance of Heart

Perhaps for the living body, heart is the force of life - it pulsates the body with rhythm and thus a sensation. It is the organ that physically makes us experience the life wave from within. In some sense, it orients the disposition for experiencing a phenomenon. In such perspective, the heart creates an environment. It prepares the condition for registering an event around us. However, does it itself become one?

In several media theories, the heart could probably become a conduit of emotions. Philosopher Marshall McLuhan in his sociological understanding of "hot" and "cold" media says that any media that signals out more data or information creates a sense of excitement and anxiousness which makes our heartbeat go faster, hence increasing the temperatures of our body. Such information is understood as "hot" (think of hot news, more popularly, news that sells like "hot cakes"). On the other hand media that slows down processes and takes you closer to observe your own sensation, in a phenomenological sense is "cold" - implied in the way in which your body eases out, relaxes due to the pacifying heart (eg. trans music, slow silent songs, etc.). Not only information, but even people in the way they respond, create space and operate are classified as hot or cold using similar analogy. If information is brought into consciousness (as well as expressed eventually) through the body though the vehicle of the heart, then it becomes a legitimate entity that even defines people and their characters. In such a scenario, we do reside within our hearts!

Plato, in expounding upon his theory of love emphasizes upon the feeling of "lack" of something, where the individual attempts to complete it. Once again, if the heart is assumed to mediate this lack, it becomes the container for love, fullness and well being. Culturally, the heart has remained an important part of folk tales, folk songs and expressions.


The Heart in Architectural Imagination
The Location of Heart

For many modern architects and planners, the biological understanding of the body became a framework through which cities could be imagined and designed. Corbusier, in planning Chandigarh, thought of placing different functions within the city through an idea of the body. The green spaces became lungs, the secretariat and high court became the brain (hence head) - and so on. The position of the heart - in a city plan - held the symbolic as well as central position. Efficient circulation of people, like blood through the heart (and thus the body), was believed to be the essential factor for efficient cities.

On the other hand, places located in such central locations within regions often become nodes for primary development. Delhi, the capital of India is often referred to as the heart of the country. Co-incidentally, it is also located in the centre top - superimposing with the heart of the figure of Bharatmata. To cheesily add, Delhi is colloquially pronounced as "Dilli", and by-lined as "Dil-walon ki Dil-li" (Dil = Heart).

The "heart" of Mumbai has always kept shifting. Presently, Dharavi, one of the largest informal settlements in India (and South Asia) is considered to be the heart of the city. It has become a nodal region which connects the south and north of the city. It is also a key connector of the east and west of Mumbai. It's centrality is as crucial as the heart - to be dealt with careful and thoughtful understanding. Every country has a heart thus, and so does every city and smaller neighbourhoods. While most of the above explanations come from popular perception, I am sure these could be substantiated with deeper cultural and historical documentation.

I think this discussion has helped understand both, heart and place as metaphors - both inter-mutable, both that affect and inform each other. However, this is an instance where both become lived metaphors - one inside the other, and vice versa. There is a dialectic relationship between the heart and a place. The suggestion of considering heart as a place attempts a possibility of evading the physicality of surroundings. It invites to find one's home within oneself, instead of the outside. If heart was a place, however, we may want to investigate what is its ecology? How does one care for it, how does one keep it and how does one occupy it? These are questions pulled from the interplay between the metaphorical and literal understanding that emerged within the drawings of secret space. Perhaps the questions themselves frame the place of heart, which may take time to find reveal their secret expression through a more sustained inquiry.