Images <> Forms

In the past 3 days, I have happened to get into some intense discussions. One of them was the Interior design Jury for the second year-ites. The project was to intervene in the caves at Kahneri, Mandapeshwar, Elephanta and Mahakali. In a way, I felt that the project was a an interesting one to study interiority. The interior design studio during this entire year discussed quite mature issues. The first one was almost inspired by my fellowship research (though I may not completely claim it to be that way) and the idea of the first project developed from looking at domestic objects. Everyday objects were studied, analysed and new ideas were associated to them finally taking them to the next step for enveloping them into a space or a space that they could envelop (i shall confirm this with the faculty).

However, the two important arenas of discussion that the projects opened were: domesticity and interiority. Thus the projects were not really driven by the typical practice of interior design that happens in the city today. The arguments they generated were fairly academic. The intervention at the Kanheri Caves especially evoked a huge debate, where students decided to create a kind of historical journey through the various architectural landmark structures. These included the temple forms, the church forms, the mortuary temples at Egypt, the Moghul gardens, the Pantheon, the basilica, the Greek amphi theatre and so on. Imagine placing each of these (taking on different functions) against the Kanheri caves.

At one instance it may seem absolutely funny. Well, it is. It definitely is. But this discomfort allowed us to debate how we so strongly relate forms to functions / images to forms / meanings to images / and information to meaning. Atul's argument was not to look at the image of a church as church or not to associate the image of the temple with the temple. He argued that these functions (temple, church, etc.) were ideas that manifested into these forms. Today these ideas could be reinterpreted. Today, their manifestations could be different. (in fact, they have been different to quite an extent). Then the association between the image and the form is broken. How do we then re-constitute the image of a church? My argument was to go into the experential. But Atul cautioned me to do so! That's the beginning of a big search that we ended in.

Here are some pictures of the projects:

Animals

remaining posts

Actually I had to write a lot about my trip to Haridwar but as usual, things have evaporated by now. I had to talk about my uncle's retail steel products shop in detail. There was so much I learnt there about how reinforcements are dealt with. I wanted to elaborate on the idea of "bones of a building". Anyway, many thoughts are lost.
On the other hand, there were some things that I had to also talk about Palghar (especially new constructions). I have no zeal to write about these now. 

Open Jury at AOA

The open jury at AOA during the last week seemed fascinating. I saw such a charged up chaos at AOA after quite some time (or have I seen it ever before?). Models were all around and the back area was almost crammed up. Some students were all dressed up while others had just finished putting the north on their plans. There was a big panel of jurors - right from construction, structures, humanities to the design faculty. While students shivered, they handled and accepted 'criticism' quite bravely.

Although I still heard some grumblings from jurors on ill designed toilets, ducts, missing section lines, wall elevations as I passed along the panels, there was some really inspiring work. the one model below (yet to be put on a ground base) reminded me of Rem Koolhaas's sleeping buildings.

Forms, materials, shapes, shiny surfaces, file card, thermocole - all around. Still, I feel open juries have to be more open forums. Students still do not attend juries of their peers. Dialogue amongst students will transform the whole scene. Students must overthrow / push their faculties to perform through dialogue. Many of them craved to talk, but were unfortunately conversed only about BHK or toilet ducts. But I am sure this is to change...

A Poem / thoughts

जेव्हा मी मोठा होईन आणि माझी मुलगी मला विचारेल- '' पप्पा, तुमचं पहिलं प्रेम कोण होतं हो....??'' तेव्हा मला गुपचूप उठून कपाटातला एखादा जुना अल्बम काढून दाखवायचा नाहीये...तर हात वर करून अभिमानाने बोट दाखवून बोलायचंय की- '' ती जी किचन मध्ये उभी आहे ना तेच माझं पहिलं आणि शेवटचं प्रेम आहे...''

-Gaurav Gaikwad

Can aspirations be as simple as just being simple? Can one be different by being just like everyone else? Can one glorify the everyday like everyday? I felt the above text did that.

जेव्हा मी मोठा होईन

when i grow up

आणि माझी मुलगी

and my daughter

मला विचारेल

asks me

'' पप्पा, तुमचं पहिलं प्रेम कोण होतं हो....??'

"daddy, who was your first love...??"

तेव्हा मला गुपचूप उठून

then, quietly getting up

कपाटातला एखादा जुना अल्बम काढून दाखवायचा नाहीये

i dont want to bring out from the cupboard - an old album

तर हात वर करून

but, i'll raise my hand

अभिमानाने बोट दाखवून बोलायचंय की

and proudly point out and say that

'' ती जी किचन मध्ये उभी आहे ना

"she who's standing at the kitchen platform

तेच माझं पहिलं आणि शेवटचं प्रेम आहे...''

...is my first and last love..."

(English translation mine)

Marriages are extremely political affairs in our social space. With marriage is the marriage of two families, thoughts, work patterns, lifestyles, bodies of two groups of people. These groups may be from the same caste or different. When they are same, its called "arranged marriage" while the second is "love marriage". The poem for me gives an allegoric account of one hidden below the other.

Does it really mean what it means? Why this contemplation that one will get married when one grows up (here, grow up implies an age beyond the normal)? And the dream of a girl child (a subtle unlikely choice - I refer to the political social space) asking the father - "who was your first love?" - and why would a daughter pose her father such a question? How old is she? Did she just ask him after he encountered a fight at home, or he's feeling low, or she read something or her mother told her some old incident....?

Procrastinating the answer, the author/father chooses not to go to the cupboard and bring out an album, but simply assumes to point at the lady in the kitchen. Why? What does the album hold? What emotion does the gesture hold? Of regret of the past? Was there someone? Who was she? Why it did not work out? Why the compromise? On the other hand, what is the 'pride' for? Why would he proudly point out? Things that put me in thought.

And families live like that. In our society, love marriages are still so hard to be convinced, especially if the boy and girl are of different castes.

More than that, this is the picture that the poem frames for me:

The daughter sitting on the father's lap - who is waiting for the dinner to be served. He's wearing a white loose pyjama and a brief staring out of the window. The kitchen is a room made by the curtained separation. The cupboard lies in the other half. Bare minimum requirements. Yet, the daughter (you seems to be very young) maintains the innocently serious tone. The father reacts like every other father - a father who is like the closed cupboard - reticent, rather someone, who would not open the cupboard and discuss that album, which might have hidden stories. Instead, he would foucs on the present - the reality of life, the reason of his own existence - the lady across the kitchen.

Don't we live in this domesticity?
But on the other hand, it may also mean completely the opposite.  Isn't that beautiful?

(I do not know the poet)

Videos from North India

The pace of Haridwar

Sunset at the airport

Crossing Ghaziabad

Haridwar / Mussoorie

Bones of a Building

My uncle has a retail shop which sells steel for construction activities in Haridwar. The story goes that my grand uncle was appointed as the Project supervisor when the Tehri Dam was being constructed nearby Haridwar. Since it would be a project which would go on for long, my grand uncle decided to make a house there. The house which therefore exists there is more than 50 years old. Although my my uncle was deported to Mumbai to learn better jobs to earn a better living, he was too far away from learning different things. He did not study much. Hence, he would not be able to grasp things so easily. After trying multiple odd jobs for varying months in Mumbai, he decided to go back and settle in Haridwar. 

Panoramas

Haridwar is a small town along the banks of Ganga. It is one of the beginning points for the famous hindu pilgrimages of Badrinath, Kedarnath & Gangotri. All three places have their own fascinating histories. Ganga at this stage is still pure enough to have a dip into or to see through the waters. The riverflow was gradual (unlike that in upper parts of the hill), so one could actually engage with the river. It did not make noise and allowed you to gaze at it quietly. Perhaps it would become more fierce in summers.

Hardwar has; one can say - a sacred centre, a business centre and an administrative centre. I will not be able to locate it on a map since my notion of this geography is very experiential. The pace of Haridwar's life is comfortable, and I shall substantiate and write about it in another post. Amongst recreational places are the ghats of Ganga, and the multitude of temples around. In the lane where my uncle stayed, there was a very weak idea of a community or a neighbourhood. These would be redundant and fancy ideas in the context.

However, nearby hill stations like Dehradun, Mussoorie, etc are interesting places to go for excursions.

Colours

It was almost the end of winter and all things were in a state of transition - the temperature, the skies, the attire of people and the colours of the place. Not only the trees had new leaves on them, they changed colours throughout the day as sun filtered through them. The Ganga was green against the bright brown hills. Everything was cold. 

Shadows


And I kept observing layers of shadows on things and wondered how would I draw them? All shadows of the  multidimensional word became flat graphical shapes which could be transferred on to paper. Light played with the objects and the objects firmly smiled back bearing the shadows, giving meaning to light.

Some due explanations

In the last one week of tranquility, I could articulate answers to two questions that I have been stuck with since quite some time:

1. Why I obsessively write?

2. Who is blind?

The first question was posed quite honestly to me by my students in the beginning of this academic year. They would sheepishly ask me "why do you write?". I did not really have an answer then. But as I now think of it, what I have been noting down during lectures since then is concepts that I could never explore earlier. There have been so many things that related to me so closely which still did not occur to me as a student. The difference I feel is that earlier I noted down information, while now I note down ideas. Nevertheless, without the information, the concepts would not have been as richer as they appear to me now. The answer to the first question appeared to me after my reading of Calvino:

"I'm one of those who write because they can't handle speaking; sorry about this folks... ...That morning I was on the trams early and I saw people reading the things I had written, and I watched their faces, trying to understand what line they were up to. Everything you write, there's always something you're sorry you put in, either because you're afraid of being misunderstood, or out of shame. And on the trams that morning, I kept watching people's faces till they got to that bit, and then I wanted to say:"Look, maybe I didn't explain that very well, this is what I meant," but I still sat there without saying anything and blushed."

-Wind in a City, Numbers in the Dark and other stories, Vintage

While that's pretty much the thought that goes on as I put things down, another thing that slowly has appeared to me is that language is a very limited tool of communication. And if one was to articulate everything one thinks and imagines through language, it becomes very difficult to word it - and there lies the challange of putting something across exactly as you think through language. But I am for layered meanings - all which may be right. I like to write in a way where metaphors and puns add to the dimensions of text. And I have yet not found my way of writing. But perhaps the blog is just a way to develop my skill of writing.

To put it simply, sometimes, we find it very difficult to put down or express what we exactly want to say. Writing is about how one negotiates this difficulty. Earlier, I never understood what one meant when he/she said "I like writing / writing is my hobby" - but I think now I clearly know that writing is about negotiating the terrain of communication.

on the other hand,

The question about "who is blind?" was raised to me at all possible forums where I presented my thesis. And while I tried to procrastinate the answer at all the times, there were times when I sincerely replied "I am still to find an answer...I don't know who is blind". To be frank, I also asked this to Prasad Shetty, since he was the one who pushed me to investigate into the blind. But I think, he too was not prepared at that point of time to answer it. Anyhow, I waited for a long time (about 3 years now) to be able to frame an answer to this question in such a way that it defines all dimensions in which my thesis could be interpreted in (as mentioned earlier about layered / dense writing). Here it is:

A blind is a person who does not have a vision of his own. The blind believes in the world about which he/she is informed, without investigation. The blind's reality is a borrowed one. Blindness is the inability to have faith in one's own reality of existence, because one can not see.

I would stop at that. But I would have loved to detail it in the way Guy Debord writes the 'Society of the Spectacle' or Gerog Simmel writes the 'Metropolis and the Mental Life'. In some ways, I find a lot of juice still left to be extracted out of my thesis. I say this because I am not satisfied with what I wrote in my dissertation. Kaushik (Mukhopadhyaya) told me after I presented my thesis at KRVIA that "the Cinema for the Blind can not be an architectural project. It can not be a building." And although it echoed with my thoughts too (because cinema and blind both negate each other all the time), the B Arch thesis had to be form-al. The thesis had to end in a building. But what I never got an opportunity to ask him was, "Then what it could be...?"

Now I feel quite relieved. May be there is a poetic way in which I can answer the question of the blind. And I could explain the terms in the answer too. And the articulation of blind in such a language allows me to have a dual narrative running through my architectural intervention - one of the physical handicap and other of the social handicap. Most people do not agree with the duality of the thesis. But I would take a Venturian stance and say, "I am for either/and; I am for plurality of meaning."

However, there is no point elaborating over this because at no forum, have I had the opportunity to engage in a kind of debate on the language of architecture I adopted. Was the project so convincing for all, or was it too difficult to critique? I wonder.

Building New Grounds

a

I was pretty amazed by this student's work on our latest Architectural Design project (Building New Grounds) which asks them to design a space anywhere but land. I coaxed her to float her dwelling in the air and asked her to explore the properties of a bellow (blowing air). She came up with this fantastically resolved mechanism which, although we could not harness directly, but serves as a great conceptual model for use in the future. (although I have my doubts if this girl herself really made the model), but I only cared for the fact that it put me to thought about how could one push this idea into an executable one!

In the class, a lot of experiments were being performed. Some one got a blower and tried to float thermocole discs (like space ships) in a tube of air. Others were sketching out aerodynamic forms or fiddling with plastic models...it was quite interesting a class to be in.

I have myself sketched so many ideas for this project that I am excited to sit and render them at length. Although I won't be putting them up now, but it has turned out to be an exciting project for all of us. We are hoping to have interesting ideas come up which not only spur complete new imagination, but also get students thinking of the issue of future/ism and going about it the sustainable way.

I would have to sit back and write on all the projects that we have done by far with the current first year batch - because they have a lot of content to elaborate upon. The studio briefs, I feel are multi layered and open up varieties of discussion, at the same time can be traced to interesting histories in the area of art or architecture or socialism. However, at this point of time, students would not know all of it. But I like working with a class as a team of 40 minds. If each student is able to create credible work, the 40 portfolios can be substantially used to generate an argument / case for pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Anyway, that happens definitely in the post graduate course elsewhere, but I am glad that we were naturally able to achieve it here, although we had no intentions of doing so.

Notes from class

Perfection is contagious. Even the struggle for perfection is contagious.

You are your project.

Shortcuts don't add nuance to anything.

Don't go to your teacher for information.

Knowledge will never grow unless you teach.

Right-wrong की चर्चा किसे करनी है?

Make new mistakes. Don't repeat old ones.

An idea (should) live in a building.

-Chaitanya Karnik

Repetition

Moods

Walking with wrong shoes

Last week has been emotionally drenching. This was primarily because I almost had to counsel parents with a host of their own problems with their wards. The first day, Atul and Adarkar Sir werent there at all. The second day, Atul was there for the rescue. However, although we had mentioned only 2 days on the Warning letters that we sent to the students, parents kept pouring in. Most of them came perhaps just to meet. Of those whom we really expected, very few came!

For parents, it's the colour. Red and black. That's the only point of distinction that they can make out.
"Why are there so many red marks?" - and most would even ignore if the difference was by a mark or 2, or if it was made red mistakenly. The question was only for the colour. There was hardly any concern for the future of the ward. All came with two binary assumptions: "He/she is too good to get it" or "Please help, this won't happen again".

भलाई का तोह ज़माना ही नहीं रहा!

No one would want their ward to stay back, even if they didnot perform well. Every one want them to get pushed! all of them! Reason is obvious: Money! Parents realize, but students don't. In the end, everyone gets pushed. The quintessential bharat ki janta: "कर लेगा अपना गुज़ारा".

Anyway, the pressing fact that I have realized is that most of the people here are in the wrong professions. And I feel worse for those who know that they don't want to do architecture and still are left with no other option. A student wanting to study medicine passionately, tried twice, but wasn't eligible (as per her score) for the stream! Another student who would want to do engineering has ended up in architecture. Some absolutely do not have the aptitude for architecture, and we still have to cope up with them. Its terrible. It's unethical/immoral to ask them to just leave. We know, they wouldnt suit this feild. But it's terrible to question their choice. I feel very sad to see them wasting their lives in the wrong profession. What is this education system which does not allow me to keep refining my choices as I mature with age? Who can know clearly what he/she wants to do at the age of 15? It's sick.

The correct age should be 20. We need that space to experiment with lives. In those tight 5 years, so many decisions are taken: the field, the specilization, the career, the future, the practice - all of it. And if it goes wrong, very few are left with any further choice. 25 you marry, 28 you have a family, and 30-40 is your "maximum gain" period. After 40 you are a generation. After 50 you have to retire! For a wrong decision, I wonder what life you live. Would a "family" give an individual an opportunity to re-do schooling once one finds a direction? Our context is a difficult one - may be there are exceptions too. But given the choice, how many would have the same rigour to pursue their interests? I always feel that I wouldn't be able to give my 100% for what I assumed I should have been doing 2 years ago.

Opportunity - my uncle regrets that inspite of having a tremendous aptitude, his place (then Bihar, now Jaharkhand) offered him absolutely no opportunity / outlet for expression of his talent. He has an immense cognitive understanding of things around him and has a full fleged mechanical workshop. However, he feels he would have been a different person altogether if he got a chance may be to study in a city, or to talk to intelligent people around him or if he only had the means to go out. 3 years ago, when I told him my thesis topic - he had the same smile (a cynical, poetic, smirk), that I would expect from anyone - "अंधों का सिनेमा" - "Cinema for the blind". I felt deeply satisfied to talk to him. He was the first person after perhaps only Prasad Shetty to share that sense of the project. I tremendously appreciate his optimism in a situation that I would end up in a "life is a b****" statement. Why should it happen to any one? WHY? He feels helpless for his children. And once the age passes by, the children lose enthusiasm too. Today, my cousins have just accepted it as a fact of their life.

There are things that would be too personal to write here. But I would never like to face them as a teacher. Rather, why should I be counselling parents with all their gamut of personal problems? I am here to teach, and learn. Does this happen elsewhere? Or am I looking at ideal conditions where students bear their own responsibility?

But I know what frame of mind students live in: "College time is to enjoy." When my friends forced me to skip classes, I could only think: "But I enjoy learning..." And not that I have less exciting memories of my college life!

Naah, I had no intentions to win a gold medal or a national award. I loved what I did. I could never submit a badly worked sheet: but hold on - I was willing to be marked in the negative for it, in case I submitted it late. Anyway, why am I even putting all that here? May be because I have never purged it out to anyone! But all this is inconsequential.

I just keep reminding myself, that I have to work and grow. That's it. And why should I compare my student life with my students' life - there's no logic. I am different. And they are different. There are no mirrors in here.

So today the head announces, that let us push them...they will do good in life... there goes the joyride. And as I butcher my own principles, I told myself, "Anuj, the world is a cinema for the blind, why do you want to see?"

Anyway, I would elaborate in another post what constructs my idealism. That will be an interesting one isn't it?

Colourfulcat

drawing by Sonal Sundarrajan

I have always loved Sonal's sense of representation. Last week she was in Delhi and I assume that she must still be in the memories of the place when she made this drawing. In recollecting Delhi, she constructs her ground plane by dividing the canvas through the radial grid - the first thing a planner would think of while describing Delhi, perhaps. And the green heavily suggests the gardens and the green cover that Delhi is capped / covered with. I have always been jealous of the fact that Delhi has the luxury to spread, unlike Mumbai, where we keep on imploding. The smaller buildings sprinkled around are almost become iconic in the drawing - like that in the real space of Delhi. One could identify the High court, and the neo classical orders which characterise the iconic buildings. And all of them are off the ground plane - toppling off - does that represent the state of affairs right now, or is it the artist's language, one could debate. But the allegory that it (unknowingly?) suggests is interesting.

To talk about suggestion, the main object in the building has been playfully detailed. The ground storey is pulled up with its semicircular arches, and thus it almost appears to be a cage. Who is trapped? In what? one wonders. The upper storey draws its edges from the Red Fort, but has been painted pink. What does it mean for the 'red' fort to fade into 'pink'? The pink tessellations on the remaining body reminds of multiple ideas, fragmented - in all scales - right till the paver blocks.

But in the end, the drawing celebrates the mood of the space - festive flags, state of mess, embroiled wires and bright colours bring out a new enthusiasm. And I would only assume the position of the little black dog that standing opposite to this 'colourfulcat', alone in a green patch wondering what I wonder is logical...

Any Takers? - 2

This post is a continuation of my earlier post on pedagogy:

Constructive Imposition Policies:

In our quest to improve students' vocabulary, we had started taking dication tests before beginning our Architectural Design classes. To our surprise, not even a single student scored 100% marks in any of the tests. To ensure maximum attention and response, we randomly came up with this idea that who ever scored well (maximum) could avail those points for upgrading their attendance. Since this was a completely out of the curriculum initiative, we thought that students who lost out on their attendance because they came in late, etc. would be prompted to perform well to avail their lost attendance. 75% attendance is mandatory to be able to appear for any University exam. Thus, I thought of tying up both issues making it more constructive. Although there is no sense of imposition here, it definitely is a constructive technique. On the other hand, impositions like coordinating archival works from students, photographing projects and events, etc. could help generating our own documentation instead of giving re-dos and disallowing students to sit for lectures.

Faculty Exchange Sessions:

To align with various levels of study in the school, constant exchange of ideas is important. The visiting faculty seldom is able to interact with other classes/teachers. This can be initiated by exchanging faculties between different classes for smaller sessions, eskis, discussions, etc.

Vertical Studios:

The idea of a 2-3-week intensive vertical studio is an interesting one. Although it has been experimented already, it was highly unstructured and unplanned. Better planned vertical studios can become breeding grounds for telescopic ideas of what students would eventually like to do. It can become a great platform for interactions with people and developing all round skills.

Joint Jury:

An initiative already experimented, I think it must be taken forward. However, it has to be a week long process, such that all attend all. There is no point in rushing it over one day. Although students may not be interested, it definitely is an important ground for faculties to look at loopholes in design programmes and an overall curriculum-building.

Exchange Programme:

For a student, it is important at the later years of college to distance himself/herself from their institution to be able to critically assess the skills they have learnt. Going out to a different environment is important to gauge the level at which a school is operating. Learning from different contexts is extremely important and making networks outside our circle of friends in crucial in personal development.

Himal / Himalaya

Based on my Visual Culture class, I am trying to do an experiment here with the way maps are represented. We spoke about politics of representation, Euro-centric world map, politics of mapping in our class.

And for a long time I was searching for this upside down map of the world, which I could finally source from here:

I am wondering why Himal Map is called so. On a wild and obvious guess, I present one of the immediate images that google displays on keywords "Himal Map":

Is the reference to the Himalayas (the crest referring to the new figure of the map?). Seems interesting. Errrr, but the real reason is this. Anyway, I think it may be an interesting coincidence for HIMALaya crests to look like the Himal Map of India.

At Kanchanjunga

Palghar

We went to Palghar over the weekend (2nd year students and faculty). However, I guess we were closer to Kelve. Spent some time in peaceful places, cool shadows and timber buildings.

I think i kept harassing the students forcing them to work. Although they visited the same places last year apparently, no one knows where they lost all the documentation work of these places done by them. Anyway, we looked at the buildings more closely. I had to constantly feed in techniques of measuring things. I had strictly instructed the students not to get camera. So there was no drama of photo sessions. Inspite of that, I do not think they observed. Neither did they see. They kept missing some of the key things to take note of.

The gujju gang kept themselves busy with periodical eating rounds. I wondered if there was nothing else that the space prompted them to do. No one discussed anything about space (perhaps because they had already been there last year).

Visiting Mahendra Kale's office, I felt reassured about my decision to stay away from architectural practice for a while. I wondered if he felt conscious of me being around while he explained the structural concepts to students. Anyway, it was really nice of him to have arranged the entire visit for us.

Teen Turmoils

In my quest to help students, sometimes, I overspend my time on them. I don't realize how much time I put into them without any knowledge of what it would manifest into? And it is so difficult to take the role of a counselor. The last stage of the teen age is the most perplexing, most difficult - because you have to decide and take a stand for yourself. I too was so confused at this point of time in my life. I didnot know what was my calling. I wanted to leave architecture, not knowing what I would do...

But I stayed on, precisely because I didnot know what I would do? And another year passed. Over this year, I just spent time in drawings - making just immaculate drawings. Rotrings - I almost fell in love with them. I would spend a lot of time in the library - looking at old, really old books, looking at drawings. Unfortunately, we did not even have faculty who could excite us with our work. Mundane people - clumsy faces... Same old sheets. What else would one do? I kept looking at books, buildings - just tracing them - without knowing why. I didnt even know how to look at books - what to understand out of it! At that time, it was only drawing to the rescue. This is when my performance dropped.

Fourth year cracked because of Prasad Shetty - and I still remember one question he asked while discussing 'histories" in Research Methods class: "Is your grandfather not important?". This invoked a whole new sense of interest in myself. That is where it started...I used to go after classes and ask him one line questions - on generalizations, on opinions. He would say "But these generalizations are not coming from nowhere." And I spent my time only in analyzing these statements he made. Thats all. He would never give answers. He still never gives answers.

But at this point of time in my life, I met some key people: Madhumita Nandi, Ateya and others. A whole new explorations took place. But going back to this confusion, Ateya once told me: "Look at people whom you like - what path did they follow, do you want to be like them?" And it was all about finding the right people and the right paths then. It gave a lot of food for observation and thought. Life seems different now, where I am out of that state of haze. But I can relate to students who feel lost. And it is in such cases having ideal people become important. Having role models become important. Ofcourse, I may have said earlier that in being 'like' someone, we lose ourselves, but we need to be like someone also to know whom we dont want to be like. Being neutral is unproductive. And especially in this world, being unproductive is senseless.

But I dont even know whether whatever I speak to students makes sense to them. Or does it help them. And what if I misguide them by mistake, or what if they misinterpret me? I am too cynical sometimes, and I dont know if those who trust me, too get influenced. That is not something I ever intend to do. I dont know how cynicism or sarcasm affects students. But that has become a part of me. I just feel sorry for too many people experiencing the same old difficulties and insecurities of life. So I just try to listen to them. And there are times when I avoid them - because I dont know if i have a role to play really. Who am I?

Sometimes I feel so many of them are wasting their potentials, but it's their choice. Sometimes I also feel that students take undue advantage of the time I spend with them. I know all that - but I just try dont let it bother me in the 'benefit of doubt' principle - that it's their loss if they do so. But I dont know how this immense problem of not being able to cope up with the field / study of architecture can be more subtle.

I guess eventually people find their way. Just that it must not be too late. Otherwise, being cynical again, I think life is a b****. Life is the step mother of time I guess. Or vice versa. Anyway, whats the point of going into that kind of negativity.

As Dushyant and I would conclude: What is, is is.

(and I don't know how many times I have use don't in the post and I don't want to use more don'ts - what else do you do with language, anyway!)