Baghban II

Parents, even if they try to, cannot live without expectations from their progeny. This is perhaps a natural instinct – a give and take relationship. In ‘70s there were already films which raised the issue of children ignoring their parents while they grew old. The recent film was Baghban. 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. This head of the family is generally a head primarily because he/she 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.

(more to come)

KRVIA Fellowship 2009-10

So it’s over now.

We started our fellowship on 1^st August, 2009. We submitted our papers exactly after a year in the last week of July, 2010. Today was the jury. We had almost one week for preparing the presentation. As always, I had thought of doing different things for the presentation. I wasted about 2 days in preparing an unsuccessful audio novel. I wondered the first three days about making a panel. I had made 10 postcard-photographs to hand over to my jury such that they could match the photos with the stories I presented in my paper, which doesnot contain any of them. Nothing materialized. But all for good.

The jury was quite different than what I imagined it to be. In the sense that it was to happen in an audio visual room, but ended up happening in the meeting room where there was a round table and about 15 people sitting (I was expecting the number to be quite high). It seemed like some elite privileged group is presiding over some secret research.

Somehow, I was very relaxed with the presentation – not nervous, not anxious, no growing heartbeats, not cold palms, no making rounds of the loo before the presentation – it was the same feeling as before the std X examination: I was excited to give it. Perhaps, when one has good work, one is all the more excited to present it. I feel my work was good, because it came up well as a book. I would like to have such a book in my library. My book was titled “Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki: Stories of Domesticity”

My research was a study of domestic spaces in the city, which offer different conditions of interior space as compared to what the profession of interior design offers. The study was large, and the massiveness of this research area is incomprehensible. Firstly, I have not found any document that talks about the domestic spaces in the city in an architectural, spatial way. Secondly, there is a range of house types in the city. Thirdly, there are a range of user groups in the city. Fourthly, there are multiple agencies which operate upon the making of home. Added to this, there are desires and aspirations of people that manifest in the home.  If I were to take all these parameters into consideration, I could have perhaps spent 3 years researching on this subject, and another two in detailing on each object that the interior space accommodates.

But for me, it has been more important to just open up an idea of domestic space. Did any one before talk about the domestic space in the city before? I did not embark upon any such study. Secondly, for me, this has been a way to learn the tools of research, taking a stance in a project and finding new ways of looking. Thirdly, being able to put any kind of material (collected information, data, pictures, etc.) together in a perspective was challenging. Deciding what to do with whatever you have – how do you work with material rather than a research question, how do you curate and make sense out of the information you have was something that I learnt during the past one year. Above all, although it was very difficult in the beginning to even understand what my guides were trying to bring out, it has been extremely enjoyable process putting the data together, writing stories and seeing at patterns of domesticity. Never did I see logical progression of ideas in domestic space, until I put it in a timeline perspective.

I had not rehearsed my presentation. But I kept reading my book again and again before the presentation such that my tongue gets used to the words that I would be using in the presentation. Somehow, it worked, and the presentation was glib. Although I couldnot keep time, there were two alarms that Rupali gave me during the presentation. It would have worked if we practiced our presentations, but there was almost no time for it.

Coming to the comments that the jury offered, perhaps most of them said that the presentation was good. But almost all felt that it should have been more conclusive. There should have been more conclusions that should have come out of the presentation. Amita Bhide said that the presentation touched upon a lot of extremely fascinating things, but did not follow them to the end. She made a nice observation about the aspect of how are ‘negotiations’ made inside the house, the ‘conflicts’ between various people involved in the making of the house  – how do they affect the final outcome. Also, she questioned with whose point of view is each story written, because a house is not made by ‘a’ person, but several people. The presentation did not bring up the idea of the house in changing budgets. She felt that although each story focused only on the idea that the title conveyed, there could have been a lot more going in each of the cases.

Abhay’s questions were different. He was firstly concerned about the selection of the methodology of the project – the stories; because he felt that it was a safe idea to work with them (ofcourse it was!). But he asked if there were also more ways of talking about the ‘experience’ of the house than only talking about the objects in the house. A question that had come long ago (perhaps the first presentation that we made to our internal faculty) came again: Why are there no people in any of your pictures. Kopytoff came to rescue then! Also, he questioned the idea of a ‘home’, the idea of living. I asserted that I was looking at the subject in the way I was going to use the study in my practice. Hence, for me, more important was to understand what happen of ideas inside the home. But Abhay did not push for any answers and was quite comfortable with my responses.

There were a lot of questions when the discussion was opened to the audience. Sandeep Sir’s question about “what is interiority”, or “what do you mean by internal?” was something that I felt was too theoretical question. One important thing that he said was not to “slot” these trends as phases, and rather talk about them as continuous – be more historical with them. He also raised the idea of duality in the domestic - where on one hand, domestic spaces are adjusted into (made more humanistic), and on the other hand they are tamed (controlled). It was too theoretical again. But maybe I can take this up if I am doing a phd on this!

It was a surprising to see Ateya, with whom I had spoken about a year ago on this project, when I was quite apprehensive – she said, “I am sure you will figure something out for yourself.” She sharply picked the angst in me about “what should be the role of an architect?” and she said that may be one needs to start working with the fevicol company, or be designing together finishes things like these. Basically she said that there need not be this strict notion of the role of an architect. She actually added to the value of the presentation by actually giving ideas of how one can start looking at these agencies.

The most important comment, I feel was that of Rohan. Rohan said, that the achievement of the thesis is the position that he has been able to take, and the thesis has jumped in a huge way from what it began with (having strict ideas of how things ought to be), about “why people don’t understand what I am giving them?”, to being able to acknowledge it. This comment from Rohan was precious for me, because it made me realize what I spent my past year doing. I just deconstructed my own architectural stereotypical notions of looking at things around me.

 Rupali since the last month has been fascinated with the sudden turn that the thesis took in the way of Robert Venturi’s “Learning from Las Vegas”. She pointed out that how the study actually claims to learn from existing situations (rather than being pessimistic about the conditions we see). I did not actually get a chance to talk to any one later because all ran for lunch after the session after kairavi’s presentation.

Two particular names and comments: Sandeep sir said that, “the presentation was very nice, we will talk about it when we meet” and George said that, “we shall talk about it in detail later”. So perhaps these are pointers for the next step.

I missed Sonal Sunderrajan and Prasad Shetty during the presentation. It would have been really nice to have them comment on my work (infact the presentation).

More technology

Right now, for the first time, I used Daemon softwares and torrent download. Sometimes technology is overwhelming. Perhaps everything is overwhelming until you put your hand into it. My brother keeps on scaring me that torrent downloads get viruses in the computer. Under this scare, I have not tried hundreds of thins on the net/computer. Perhaps, this time, its a pressing need. I need to download the sound editing software urgently to make an audio novel. Stupidly, my friend gave me another software, instead of Nuendo, which i only realized when i installed it using Daemon tools. Daemon tools creates a virtual drive through which we can extract data from 'images' of discs instead of discs themselves. Seems too technical. But i can not elaborate on this further, because i dont know how it works conceptually!

On the other hand, torrent is perhaps an ftp where peers share files. So you just share large files over the net.

All this reminds me of my Computer Science subject in the high school. I wonder how dumb I must have been (and still am) in the technology scene. I exploit my devices much less than today's generation. Am wondering if my experiments with all this will allow me to complete my presentation in time. In any case, i will have learnt two new things today!

Nandu

Our help, our peon Nandu is suffering from malaria. Nandu has just finished his 12th class exams. He is small in appearance and has curly hair. Since he has been absent for the past few days, we are experiencing extreme difficulties in the management of our department since there is no one who knows what things are kept where? Chalks, dusters, musters, files, blank papers, stationery, stamps, pads, keys phone numbers, intercom numbers - all are going haywire. Today, I decided to put my hand into it and understand his whole organization system. Little did I know that he kept the main keys in a common cupboard. This main key would open a locked drawer, in which the rest of the keys are preserved. Till some time, we were not able to locate the main keys itself! Today I found them. When I opened the first drawer, I was excited to see a big bunch of keys - which meant I could open almost anything in our area. But later, I realized, there were far too many keys and they were almost unmanagable. Apart from that, looking at the drawer was interesting: all things were scattered:

Drawer 1 - keys, papers, stamps, photos, stickers, batteries, chargers, wires, bills, PAN card, evelopes, letters, contracts, pens, pins, tapes - all together!
Drawer 2 - clips, rubber bands, calculators, pens, pencils, scales, rulers, markers, whitener, sharpeners, erasers, staple pins, U clips, keys, and what not!
Needless to say, everything was all over. I decided to organize this, as usual! Neatly putting things together - papers separate, stationery separate, diaries separate, Cds separate! I located them in secure places.




















But all this while, I was smiling. Why? I was wondering how a person like Nandu thinks? Nandu is almost able to manage everything without organization. He knows where has the pencil slipped in the drawer, where is the eraser lying, where is which CD - everything! And the amount of keys I found was mindblowing! about 50 keys - in deep recesses of the drawer. One could make a sculpture out of them. Imagine remembering which key opens what! I would have gone mad! Infact, I would sit down and make an chart! But Nandu doesnot require that! He is brilliant! We miss him.
But I dont know what he will feel like when he sees everything spik &span! I am eager to see his reaction when he returns - I have neatly spaced everything! I have organized some things even in the Godrej cupboard. I dont know if he will be able to manage with the new organized organization. Our idea (rather my idea) or organization is so visual, clean and orderly. But the purpose of organization is to get the right thing at the right time. This can be absolved without the visual cleanliness. Partly, this debate can also be extended to our city.

However,

Nandu has a flair for design. When sticking the labels over the files of respective faculties, he used fevicol. I asked him to use transparent salo-tapes. I explained that its easy to change a name on any file then! He appreciated. While sticking labels on the cupboards, he initially had put blaring size stickers! I asked him to reduce them to pt 14. He liked them once he saw them. While making the marking sheet on Autocad - which was all customised, I left an exact blank paper space which would be covered under the metal clip. Also, I put a date (last updation) vertically, on the side of the table (since there was no space in the bottom of the paper - and he almost loved it!

How does he understand these nuances of detail? How is he able to appreciate small things is what I wonder! He is a natural lover of art. He appreciates naturally and understands its value. He keeps telling me to forward interesting images on his mail. He has a collection of good songs on his mobile, he keeps collecting such stiuff. This is why I like him.

He needs direction. I hope I can help him choose something appropriate for him. But may be his priorities are different. May be his family's needs are different. Unfortunately, Adarkar Sir sees him develop into a good clerk. I see him grow into a fine architect..? Destiny! But perhaps he is not struck by desire yet. Maybe that is good - for him and for us!

Revisions

I made two people happy today:
Our Services class faculty - Sujata Bhobe's remuneration was revised and increased. And secondly, one of my class students had wondered why she got such less marks in the Humanities paper. Although she had a lot of inhibitions, I had finally asked her to write in a letter to the Principal for her Humanities paper rechecking. I literally made her sit and draft a letter. Today, her paper was rechecked and her score went up by a whopping 6 marks. This makes her not only the topper of the class (perhaps), but makes her eligible for a higher amount of scholarship money she was applying for.

After a long time I felt really happy for someone - I couldnot control going and telling this girl about her revision of marks. She was thrilled. And for the first time, I felt worthy of being a coordinator!

Masters Mania

Last Thursday, I had dinner with 3 people who are going to perhaps the best corners in the world to pursue their post-graduation studies. I had along with me Amrita who is going to Royal College of Art, London for her masters in Product Design, Aditya Sawant, who is going to Harvard's Graduate School of Design in Boston for his masters in Urban Design and Revati who is going to TU Delft in Netherlands for her Masters in Architecture.






















It was a wierd feeling. While all were talking about their visa woes, packing details, luggage limits, flight routes, staying options, dollars, pounds and euros - we cracked some jokes in between. Some time ago, I thought I would be thinking like this too.






















We had some interesting chat. Exhorbitant and expensive dinner, but also a lot of fun. May be such events are for both - forgetting the past, and also realizing that there is something more than what we are doing now, that we have to do. We have to keep trying. And we have to take consolation in what we have already tried. Sometimes doors open. Sometimes, we just have to enjoy the rhythm of the banging. Sometimes, just the knock.

Workplaces

This is ridiculous. If institutions start behaving in such irrational way, what should we expect from our to be professionals?
The AOA library installed about 12 new computers in the library and momentarily put a zip on the students voice. The reality is that none of them work, rather are not made functional yet. They are waiting for its "official inauguration". I dont understand what is there to inaugurate in computers, which were supposed to be here long time back. Students are waiting to work and Mr. Important will come some day and inaugurate the silly pcs.

The students fear to write a complaint letter thinking that the management will fire back and take revenge, which might affect their grades. Systems thus become corrupt. In India, they become stale and then stink.

We are crying for additional machines (PCs) to work and the issue has already been postponed for two months now. We have already lost a lot of data in a computer crash.

In our country, the burden of inefficiency in work is put only on the employees. Its normal to hold the employee responsible for slow, or insufficient product. Seldom does anyone take into account the work environment. Such work environments are extremely demoralizing for people who want to work. This mood settles in people and becomes a long term crib.

Half the time is spent in quarreling, writing complaint letters and traveling across hierarchies to reach right people. The verdict is always that you get frustrated and give up. The people who go on extremes of such situations become cynics. The other kind of people are social workers.

I have worked earlier at the Goethe Institute, Mumbai, and I can compare the kind of professionalism in work atmosphere that we have in our scenarios and international ones. Its sad to categorize our context in the negative in this scenario. But India runs like that. There are momentary answers given to shut people's mouths and the solution is just a 'jugaad'. There is not english word for jugaad. Still, people work, people keep up with their jobs - like we do. The employers are shameless, and they dont mind this kind of shame. After all, they believe that they are the people who produce the highest calibre of professionals in the country.

Money drives institutions. Huge amount of money is pocketed. There is no transparency. And unfortunately, it is the facilities that make the institutions run, not the teachers. It is appalling to see the newest of the institutions promote their swimming pools, computer labs, green lawns, wi fi systems and all amenities - NOT one says that we have Good teachers. Parents too judge schools with infrastructure, not teachers. It is not therefore surprising to see that students become demanding of facilities. But my point here is that institutions realize this demand and use it as a marketing gimmick. They extract huge money from entrants, but in the end, do not give facilities to students. What's the point? There have to be ways to fight. There have to be other ways to retaliate, negotiate. I dont know how! Seems the only party in loss is the students and staff. Long live the parasites!

"You look sad..."

I really don't know what went wrong in the past year?

Durer's instrument

Today we did the Durer's Experiment. although i was kind of confident of what result it would produce, it didnot produce really stunning drawings. It was then when Shubhalakshmi told me that Durer too accepted that there were a lot of technical faults in the experiment he did with the grid. I think still, that durer was a lot more technically correct than us. Almost all the students missed the eyehole in their instrument grid they used to draw! So their vision wavered! Some students were concentrating, others were not able to relate to the grid and our object assembly together. But only in a very few drawings, could we actually see converging lines on a cartesian grid.

This was our first theory in practice kind of session where we got a space on a cartesian grid (although people may debate that it would have been even fine to just take any photograph and draw it out on paper). But the point was not that. The point was to perceive a 3D assembly on a flat plane. Hopefully some students will get the point.

I can think of doing a lot of things with this drawing. Sometimes it just gets difficult in communication with students and faculty. Artists think very different from architects. Although they draw in 3D, they think only in 2D. That is what i felt with my colleagues. This is perfectly fine, and I am just wondering how can I use this aspect constructively. We are teaching "perspective drawing" and our definition of perspective is "the way you look" - so you see how broad this subject has become.

We now have to crack some good exercises. Experiments and more fun on the way...

Cycloid

Today, Prof. Deshpande took us to the first year class where he was teaching the students to draw a cycloid.

A cycloid is the locus of a point on the circumference of a moving circle. Fascinating. It immediately reminded me of the steam engine and the Harrappan toys (frogs with elleptical wheels which when run, jump!). The idea was gripping. Just last week, I had also read about Descartes, and how he took numbers to a visual space. So I immediately asked Deshpande sir about how it could be algebraically noted. Since it was not a free curve, its equation is written in terms of theta (the angle of the radius). Complex. I know. But i could immediately relate to what it meant - it meant that the coordinates of the curve would only be polar coordinates. Fancy no! While preparing for my graphics lecture, I clarified my polar and cartesian coordinate concepts (which I had studied in the 12th standard). It would have been so easy if our teachers then could make us understand visually, rather demonstrate us its use. Today I find it: and I can actually link it to structure of a building, geometry, graphics, algebra, cartesian system and ofcourse - design. Which Design: the lovely Kimbell Art Museum by Louis I Kahn in Texas. There are so many aspects to study in this building. Its amazing.

After coming back home, I could not resist trying to draw this out myself. I quickly opened AutoCad, and the first few times, I got it wrong. Then I had to visit Wikipedia, and learn how to draw it. So here I present to you my version of a Cycloid with a radius of 7 units.



















Imagine if the circle was moving on a sine wave! Now that one would require a software. And what if the circle was a sphere! Keep guessing!

Google Gadgets

Today I have been exploring the different gadgets that gmail offers and it's exciting feeling for a while to make yourself a bit tech savvy. I am writing this blogger post from my gmail account and its fascinating to learn that I am not that bad at technology! Now I will not have to switch between pages to keep maintaining my blogs. Sometimes I wonder how people keep doing such things, where life is becoming so simpler. It's just that on the face this process looked difficult. I made a google search as to how I can blog from my gmail account although I used to login from a rediff username, and google was prompt enough to offer me a solution.

So I am now going to hunt for more such gadgets for my gmail interface. People who visit my blog often will be happy to find my postings more often! Many a times I am too lazy to write, but now, it will be like writing an s.m.s. on my small little blog window on gmail.

:)

Mumbai

Bomb Scare

Yesterday, as I reached to the college in the morning, I was informed that there is a bomb threat call in the college, and it had to be vacated.

I was asked by Adarkar Sir to call at helpline 100 and ask for the Dadar Police chowki number. Mr. Ravindra Punde then made a call on my noted down numbers. He spoke in Marathi - “mee Academy of Architecture madhoon bolotye, aamchya college madhye bomb threat cha call aala aahey, me principal aahey”

Police: “chaalel”

RP: “chaalel mhanje kaay?”

Police: “koni kela phone?”

RP: “aata phone karnaara naav sangto kaa?”

I guess now the police is so used to such checkings, that it’s a daily affair for them. We vacated the college in about the next 15 minutes, and the police van had reached by then.

As I stepped outside the college, I saw a horde of students standing in front of the building of Academy of Architecture, as if it is going to be demolished. It was spectacular. As if they were waiting for the bomb to explode.

No one dispersed. No one moved…


Our class was cancelled, but we thought it would be interesting to have an informal chat in the open ground behind. By then, Neera Ma’am suggested that she would talk at the Ravindra Natya Mandir and ask if they could allow us to use their courtyard for holding a discussion/class. (She knew the director of the place, who had retired, but she just took a chance with the security guard, if he allowed). The space was made available to us.

We held our Design studio in the courtyard of Ravindra Natya Mandir. Students sat on the steps and the faculty addressed the class (almost unfazed by the ’bomb scare’). It was as if everything was normal. After all, this was perhaps the 3^rd or 4^th threat call in the college.

Students used the steps and stage to display their work. The space became like mini museum, and the dark brown granite steps gave a nice backdrop to students’ work.

I like this nature of urban space in the city. The immediate availability and the way students adopted to it in an emergency situation was interesting. The space was calm, there was no clutter, we discussed student work, and it wasn’t even a classroom. I also like Neera ma’am’s prompt idea, and she also went to the extent of calling other classes to occupy the courtyard of the Ravindra Natya Mandir. I guess that is the sign of an activist.

On the other hand, spectacles are created in the city so instantly. They die instantly too. Looking at 200 students on an otherwise empty road was spectacular, and I couldnot resist taking a picture. In some time, students will walk off after hearing such warnings so easily that the “threat calls” will become a part of everyday. Or has it become our everyday already?

This was one instance also where I realized that it's not so important to have a campus for the college. Infact the very setting of it allows for multiple kinds of activities, and the multiplicity of spaces available to us also changes the way we behave or adjust to space. It was a break from the mundane classroom setting.   Also I realized that how easy was it to convert the existing space itself into a campus. We just need to make holes in the boundary walls of our adjacent plots. Then we have a cultural centre, a large courtyard, a large open ground, a temple and so many things in our campus. How exciting it would be!

Unfortunately, boundaries have become essential. The reason - just the very threat calls!

Art and Artists

In the past few weeks I have attended works of various artists - Sudhir Patwardhan (painter),Gieve Patel (painter) and Mithu Sen (artist) and Dayanita Singh (photographer)

Sudhir and Gieve have been trained as doctors. Their works have dealt primarlily dealt with the idea of body. Though both are doctors the representation of the body in their work is completely non clinical. In their paintings, the limbs never have the bony structure. Bodies donot have biological details. And both the painters capture very different moments in the city. In one of the paintings, Sudhir freezes an accident on the street, in another, he draws out the memories of Parel fly over and mills, talking about memory, history, pace of life in the city, transformation...Similarly, Gieve seems interested earlier in political figures. He also talks about experiences which can be relived while seeing paintings. One of Gieve's work was a sculpture 'Eklavya' - a bronze hand with a cut thumb. I wonder what the experience of an artist would be (who is actually a doctor) to construct a sculpture without a thumb. Similarly, Gieve's painting in which a group of crows were eating a mouse (or a lizard), where the lizard was cut open, the internal organs of the reptile have been blurred. A doctor would precisely know how things inside the body are placed, and when he chooses not to show them, it definitely is a thought to ponder upon.

On the other hand Mithus work (http://www.mithusen.com/ ) was full of glutton, penises, skeleton and biologically morphed teeth and gums. Her work was very provocative. What she shared in the talk I attended was her difficult past and struggle with drawing in academics at Viswa Bharati, and also her difficulty with language. When she moved to Delhi from Bengal, she had a very strong accent, and also she would teach in a school, where people would make fun of her (and she would feel embarrassed). She took time to come out of this, and to become confident when later she got a scholarship to study in London. Her work explores sexual imagery which embarrasses the viewer and forces them to accept the hard reality of life (suddenly as if the position of the person who is making fun, and the person being made fun of was changed). What I saw in her work was the meticulous detail in the internal of the body - the intestines, the detail of teeth, gums, hair, etc. which talk about female sexuality.

The doctors were on the contrary subtle. I visited the exhibitions and talks with Subulakshmi, and infact her presence helped in raising sevaral of these distinctions. The work of art attains so much more meaning when one knows the history of an artist, which otherwise is assumed as a mere painting.

Dayanita's lecture at Max Mueller was another interesting one, where she spoke about book making. She spoke about her experiments in laying out books, distribution of books, publishing, and dissemination  in the industry of publishing. Her ideas were great, and no doubt that she is a good artist. But photography, she said was something alien to her. She had actually went to study typography at NID. She ended up taking photograpy due to some strange reason where she felt she could express better through that medium. There was no stress on the act of taking a picture or photography in her entire lecture. I wondered if she actually was a photographer. She spoke about how she liked making little booklets, how she liked making books, presenting them in different ways to raise several questions about pulishing and the industry of prints. She shared her experiences with Gerhard, who is supposed to be a great publisher from Germany. However, it was silly when she said that her real place was the 'road', where once her work was displayed in the jeweller's shop front, where beggars, and paan walahs would point to people her work and ironically when she was selling her newest booklet (about 50 pages, vertical half A4) at MMB (without any bills) priced at Rs. 2000/-

Anyway,

l have several questions about artists, the practice of art and about who become artists, rather who should become artists? What separates one artist from another? Is there a relationship between medium that the artist uses and him/herself? Are artists confused people or people who are confident with confusion? In the above cases, I see that they project contradictions. Unfortunately these are encountered only by other artists. I wonder if these contradictions reach people. It's only the artist community which talks about such issues and artists become famous. How do artists become famous otherwise? They receive grants, huge amounts of money, for whatever they want to do - ofcourse once they get famous! Funny isn't it? But I am sure there is more to it. Otherwise who would raise these large questions of gender, identity, body, space, time, place...

I have many such complex issues with my own self. One of these I tried to raise in my thesis. I am not particularly skilled. Artists find a way of representing their contradiction (even thought they might not be skilled). Perhaps that is what is commendable. How does one represent complex issues with the self or the society? Artists bring these difficult or complex experiences together in some form. Can this form be architecture? Can architects be artists? A big debate. However, I am still to start a practice, and still to get a commission to experiment this question.

and for this question,
My father says, 'Life is very long',
and I believe that's the whole problem.

Western Railway

Letters that start with 'unfortunately'....

...and discuss it
---

Dear Anuj,


unfortunately I couldn`t meet you personally this week, please except my Email instead.

As you know already, the Cultural Spaces-project will not be carried forward in the format we had expected, rigtht now it has even come to a stillstand and I do not see that we will carry it further before July/August.

You have been very helpful during the process and even afterwards in assisting us in our regular work with many good ideas and design proposals. Nevertheless I would like to suggest that we stop the work contract at this stage due to the circumstances given in the cultural spaces-context. Moreover our institute will remain closed during the second half of May and there are not many programs in the low season before July/August.

Please let me know whether it would be agreeable to you to end the cooperation with the end of this month. Since ths is very short notice I could also offer to continue till mid May, until we close the institute.

We really enjoyed working with you and you have become a member of the team.We see many opportunities to cooperate in the context of other programs in the near future and would be very happy to stay in touch with you.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

warm regards,

Marla

---

Dear Anuj,

Unfortunately, I am unable to offer you admission to The Master of Architecture II program
of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture program of The Cooper Union.

Our deliberations have been concluded. All of us continue to be impressed by the outstanding academic and creative talents of all our applicants, but we have a very limited number of openings. Generally, we admit less than ten percent of all applicants.

I wish you continued success in the future and especially in your academic career.

Sincerely,

Mitchell L. Lipton
Dean of Admissions and Records
and Registrar

---

Dear Anuj Daga,

We regret to inform you that after careful consideration of your application, the Admissions Committee is unable to offer you admission to the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. We would like to underscore that the Committee is keenly aware that there are many strong candidates whom we are unable to admit. We very much appreciate your interest in the Graduate School of Design and wish you the best in your career pursuits.

Sincerely,

Gail Gustafson and Geri Nederhoff
Directors of Admission

---

I am truly sorry to inform you that we are not offering you admission to MIT in the Department of Architecture. The number of applicants for admission to the Graduate School greatly exceeds the number that can be accommodated and it has been necessary to refuse admission to some fine applicants.

We appreciate your interest in MIT and sincerely hope that you may be able to continue your studies elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Yung Ho Chang
Professor and Department Head
Department of Architecture
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

---

Dear Anuj,

Letters have been mailed out… you should have or will be receiving one most any day.
For those accepted into the program, they were contacted by telephone. We had so many excellent applications this year and unfortunately we could not accept everyone. If you have received an offer from another institution, you may want to consider accepting it.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Dianne WhitmoreDepartment of Architecture
Graduate Field Coordinator
Cornell University

AOA Final Jury 2010

(photos in order: house for atheist and a believer, again same, house for plant maker/breaker, house for a person with mixed identity, drawing for space for sculptors, model of the previous, space for a body builder)


We finished the First year AOA final jury today. Looking through incomplete works, unthought-of panels, last minute models and messy floors, we finally shortlisted 8 projects to be discussed in the class. I would like to discuss those projects on my space here.


Project 1: Shamin Bhangwar - She built a space for a musician and a meticulous lady in Sherley Village. What she explored was the musician’s space where she translated the 5th symphony of Beethoven into her architectural expression inside the house using curved roofs, sloping ramps and fabric coverings. Though the project was quite literally translated, the effort was commendable. Her drawings were beautiful and the model was superbly executed.


Project 2: Sahil Kanekar - He chose to bring a character from Madhya Pradesh’s dry land to meet a sailor in Sherley village. He decided to recreate the experience of a ship through the house he designed for both these characters. So his house sat inside a depression where in you climbed to a deck through a ramp crossing the water that would accumulate in the depression. He created a watch tower, a bedroom which was half submerged in water (like you would see from inside a ship) and a suspended floor where one could experience the unstable of the ship.

Project 3: Vidhi Jain - Chose to work with two sculptors (and some complicated story). She manifested the terrace of a 6 storey high tower into a beautiful sculpture like rib case (or rather a spine) - the language of which flowed in to the space of the second character. The perfection with which she executed her drawings and model were superb.

Project 4: Anushka Desouza - I was not interested in her characters at all. However, what we found interesting in her project was the way in which she articulated her spaces in a shoe box like space opening and transforming the spaces outside it.

Project 5: Hrishikesh Borse - His users were a car stealer and perhaps a mechanic? He actually ended up in an exciting dynamic form, which was derived after studying the aerodynamic properties of a car. Though the concept did not apply to the site, or even the function, we appreciated his commitment to a form, which was quite fascinating.


Project 6: Siddharth Kantharia - The most celebrated project of the class - where the two users were an atheist and a believer of God. The design posed an interesting dialectic of spaces which questioned and supported the belief of God at the same time. This was manifested again in Sherley village - a predominantly Christian community, where Siddharth chose to begin by using his building to hide an existing cross, which is only revealed at the end of the journey in the house. The house uses Christian signs and play of light and shadow to create experiential spaces where a dialogue between the atheist and the believer would take place.


Project 7: Nikita Mahale - Her users were a psychologically irritated person who would purge his frustration by plucking leaves (in his village) and grass and a gardener from Hiranandani. The project saw the two users as plant-breaker and plant-maker, in the context of the site, and developed a language wherein the house protects the trees from inside while the trees grow on outside the house. Nikita worked consistently over manifesting a cage over which leaves would creep and become the skin, which could be plucked to open out a window from the house while the gardener thought that he is protecting the trees from his house partner.

Project 8: Rohini Bapat - Rohini’s project was selected for her improvement graph and the beautiful large sections that she drew. She worked with the scrap material on a junkyard site to create a boundary where a night watchman could give a cricket enthusiast practice lessons to develop his skills in the sport. Though Rohini’s project had large technical errors, the quality of spaces that she created were really good.

All project in some ways questioned several notions of the city. The communal mosaic of a neighbourhood, the large green bounded gardens in Hiranandani, the wealth of material in what seems junk at Chor Bazaar, or the junk that converts into a space in a formal space… there were interesting contradictions. Perhaps students were too tired to discuss them,

But that is what was perhaps depressing. We asked students if they liked philosophy or how they decide upon liking certain things, or how they look at the city, or what do they feel about slums - none answered! However, they liked certain drawings, because of technical correctness, not because it was a nice experiential space, or because it felt nice…I think students take pleasure in construction and graphic subjects, where things are given. They said they refer books for Basic Design, not for Architectural Design. They refer to google and type in keywords (themes) for their AD on search engines (how ridiculous can that be!). However, they said they like to study real sites.

I spoke a lot, and tried to engage them in a discussion (but maybe that’s ironical and did not help in a ‘dia’logue). I should have kept my mouth shut. No one likes to talk; no one wants to discuss things. They come from a setup where things are always fed! But things will be like that. And I will continue to be irritated by the system.

Pushp Ki Abhilaasha (Desire of a Flower)

Today while traveling in the local train, a rose fell off a lady's hair, and then what happened:

चाह नहीं मै सुरबाला के
गहनों में गुंथा जाऊं
चाह नहीं प्रेमी माला में
बिंध , प्यारी को ललचाऊँ



चाह नहीं सम्राटों के
शव पर , हे हरी डाला जाऊं
चाह नहीं देवों के सर पर
चढूँ , भाग्य पर इतराऊँ



मुझे तोड़ लेना बनमाली ,
उस पथ पर तुम देना फेंक
मात्र भूमि पर शीश चढ़ाने ,
जिस पथ जाएँ वीर अनेक.

-Makhanlal Chaturvedi Ji – Rajiv Krishna Saxena

Accidents on railway tracks shot up by 53%, from 5,304 in 1997 to 8,244 in 2007
 

Source of chart: http://mumbainews.wordpress.com/category/railway/

Tactical City

(this is a highly unstructured and cynical post)
----

They are more intelligent than us.

Perhaps the Municipal Corporation did not want the slum dwellers to occupy the pavements along the D N Road in Andheri. Initially, before this, we saw them making tents, temporary poles covered in plastic spilling over the pavement, which also accommodated the formal activities like bus stops. I rarely saw people walking on these pavements.

So they started putting planters alongside the compound wall which screens a huge plot of land reserved for god knows what! I thought they would grow plants in it. They even filled it with soil. Then they started to screen it with iron grills. These grills come till your chest. These grills seem illogical from all possible thinking angles - the maintenance, the gardener or even the passer by.  However, I did not know that things could work out just the other way!

The same old people now started using the grills as walls. Only that the room turned inside out. In the gaps, they created their mini kitchens, where they cook on sigdis. In series, the next one has a well defined lavish bathroom, which also takes care of water buckets and leaves enough space for having a shower. The un necessary stuff of the house is dumped inside the grills (in flower beds) - so they essentially become storage bins. Clothes hang on the grill all along. Eventually, I think they will span it across the trees and make a shelter out of that. But a new house typology is ready!

To see it from Rupali’s point of view (or rather Michael De Carteau): it would be “Tactical” - ironically against DeCarteau’s own “Strategic”.

When I see this, I feel that the corporation rather give them houses, just along the pavement. Or is it that they love living in such frugal conditions. When the government gives them housing, they run away - something that Kairavi’s research points out is that the issue is not space, but economy. Seems like they are like gypsies. They want to keep moving with work. But then, I think they need to carry better houses along. Do they need houses? No. They need infrastructure - anyway they sleep on roads. They like to sleep like that I think. So they must be provided infrastructure that can contain water, stove, clothes, that’s all. All other things are temporary - the comb, soap, food…all of it.

Amidst all this, what about the pavement? Do hell with the pavement: they can take nothing but paver blocks! On this one, the trees bend such that you actually crawl under them at regular intervals. Bus stops? They are dysfunctional any ways! Ah! Perfect! That makes a perfect case in favour of these gypsies! But what about the Flower beds? We can make bowls out of those: Topiary!

Why do such things happen in the city: This shows how “engineer-minded” the people in the system are, and how “creative” people outside it are! And people from developed countries will document all of this to make it into a publication under perhaps two broad heads (suggest more if you can): Housing in India and Product Design.

Mumbai skies over last 3 years

The paradoxes we live in

I just finished a bunch of grapes (which was served to me on a piece of paper) and then a plate of watermelon. After completing my work on the computer, I collected the leftover of the grapes (the skeleton) and the piece of paper to throw in the dustbin. As I opened the bin and threw them in, my mother shouted from inside: “is there a plastic bag in the dust bin? Can you never decrease my work…”
I wondered if dustbins (collectors of dust) were meant to be clean themselves!

We generally keep a plastic bag in the bin so that it can be given to the sweeper who comes in the morning to collect the garbage from each of the houses. Culturally, we have remained very strict, where sweepers (bhangis) are still considered untouchables. So we do not even allow them to touch our garbage cans. In such a situation, we take the plastic bags ourselves from the dust bin and put it in the sweeper’s can - from a distance.

It is amusing then to think of the door bell, which he/she rings every morning (she touches the bell to ring it!). When I discussed it with my grand aunt, she had a larger argument. She said: “In Bikaner, during summers, sometimes, sweepers would be so thirsty that they would ask for some water. My mother in law would then get a lota of water to pour it to her (or him). I would ask her, in that case, is the stream of water that you pour to the person not physically touch each of you?”

I was bowled over!

But untouchability remains a paradoxical question. I sometimes think that while travelling in the city, in public modes, can we afford to think of jumping out of the train if we realize that the person standing/sitting next to us is the son of a sweeper or cleaner? (Kiran Nagarkar brings this out beautifully in his novel ‘Ravan and Eddie’)

Gods almost take the place of humans in our daily lives. Every morning, my mother worships Krishna (popularly known as the laddugopal). She almost treats the idol as a third child in the house. (The ironical thing is this child does not grow ever!). Today morning, again, my mother got up late. So as soon as she saw me bathed, ready before her, she told me to quickly take a small bowl of milk and put it in front of the idol. As if the idol had started crying, howling! What difference would it have made if one presented the milk half an hour later? Now, I don’t object to the fact that you feel devoted towards an objectified deity, but don’t we at the same time realize that if we give the deity a status of ‘living’ let it live to its fullest. In this case, the deity almost lives the life of the worshipper. The worshipper makes the deity eat, live and breathe as per his/her choice and then assumes that the object has a life of its own.

She offers the maximum amount of prasad to that small child, as compared to other deities like the Shiv, Laxmi or the Ganpati. Now that I have started to talk about the other deities in my house, let me also say that their life is perhaps not considered to be as important as others! The Shiv and Ganpati idol were recently replaced with new silver ones. So that the idols must not turn black due to outside dust, their faces have been covered in thin transparent plastic. I pity them - if they were alive, they would suffocate to death! Though the Ganesha could manage breathing from his long nose, Laxmi would certainly die!

We wash our hands before touching anything in the kitchen. Literally anything. If we have to take a glass of water, we wash our hands, then we fill the glass, and we drink water, and the glass is considered to be ‘used’ and not mixed up with the rest…if you touch this glass, then you cannot take the second glass without washing your hands first. There is a more complex logic when it comes to cooked food or food prepared for fasting. There are some kinds of food preparations which after ready, are considered separate. There is a separate section in the kitchen platform for the preparation of such food items. I myself don’t understand how and where this concept came from (neither does my mother know), but we follow it, because it’s now a tradition.

In this whole process of washing and cleaning, we end up wasting a lot of water. And ironically, she keeps yelling at the house maid when she uses or wastes excess water.

Ideas like these are complex. How do people live between tradition and rationality? How we develop our own hybrid culture. How we don’t question the way we mould it, and the way it moulds us? What are the reasons for the non inquiry? Is it that we are too educated to question? Or is it that we just live with the environment we are brought up in. The question is critical, because growing up with different contexts, when one sees there is another way of doing a thing, process come under a lens. These processes also drive opinions. Opinions become ideas, ideas become material.

How does one exist simultaneously between these oscillating thoughts? I wonder.