Sunday Times

Sundays are best time to reflect on the self and outside oneself. I am with the newspapers at length over the morning and in my mind I keep reflecting over every piece of news that I read - subject wise, content wise, language wise and from my own position. Then carefully pondering over all of it, I channel the entire information in the way it shall make sense to me or be relevant to my interests. So there is a kind of reshuffle in the brain and restructuring of the entire news that I read. The mind becomes like a hard disk with sectors of information. Images, text, events - all are chaffed out. 


Often I make imaginary discussions in my head or smaller lectures which I could discuss with students. These are always lost. The funny part with news is that it is so generic that it always allows you to form an opinion - agree or disagree. I love rationalizing my formed opinion , because it gives me a chance to engage with my own history and reconsider my own biases. I keep refining my biases and recording them so that my opinions are consistent. I wonder how successful i have been with being consistent. 


For example, I was wondering about how interesting it is for a newspaper like Times of India to bring out a supplement on spirituality in times when our actions are heavily driven by commercialization and unrationalized aspiration. For India, spiritualism has still not assumed a relegated position in life, given people's priorities of money, material and possession. Spiritualism or spiritual thought still remains the essential component that validates their action. On one hand, such a supplement tries to infuse some amount of idealism within the masses. On the other hand it makes people evaluate their actions by laying out moral standards. But at the same time, it also reinforces the ideas spiritual living as against the rational way of living.


A supplement like Times Life reflects on the issues of social behaviour of the elite. They mostly talk of a refined class, critically bringing their actions into contrasting perspectives. It is interesting for a bourgeois society like ours to read such reflections. 


I personally like reading the technology section where the news paper discusses how to choose between technology and how best one can exploit their gadgets. They also tell you softwares and tricks which simply ease your life. But there are so many interesting things going on. One can not possibly engage with all of it! sigh! However, they exist and we must acknowledge them... and be aware to be able to pull out of our archives at the right time in the right place!

Spatial Chaos in Personal spaces

We do not know how to move in our own houses when a lot of people gather in our space. We create awkward pockets- completely displacing and misplacing objects and people when population of both increases. This is what produces chaos. Some people celebrate this chaos and describe it as the character of our society. I am not a fond proponent of this theory.

The contradiction is that although there may have been arguments that our society has been excellent in space management, I wonder if we need to invent a new term to address a chaos like such. What is this shortcoming to handle more people to be called? This cumulative change in our living conditions have always been beyond our comprehension. Many amongst us like to romanticize about such condition of chaos. This chaos is physical because of the indecisiveness of a lot of individuals. It is mental unclarity that manifests physically.

Architects therefore have a definite role to play here. The essential job of the architect is to plan spaces for people in such a way that this mental chaos can be abated. In some ways, it is mismanagement or lack of planning that should be attributed to people of here. But long old arguments have always maintained that Indian ways of planning and management have been meticulous. But I wonder how to place my argument amidst this metanarrative...? Is the context I am talking about specific to a specific time in history? It is of global historical space of now? I shall have to investigate into historical records and ascertain my argument....

(investigation under construction)

Of Financial Institutions & Social codes

Financial institutions (banks, investment companies, stock markets, etc.) have flattened peoples lives by sucking in all their money at their nascent ages making them think of their lives 20 years later. What financial institutions do is that they create within people's minds fear of the future. They always project people's futures as negative - completely blanketed with health problems, social problems and emphasizing the negative projections of today's world. Through this they are able to construct a story where life seems unmanageable at the beginning, which when mediated by these institutions assumes a positive end. Financial institutions do not allow you to take any risks. They flatten your life. Your life is made uni-dimensional. One track - where you are projected to be in a bad state and vulnerable to all possible harsh effects of life. So we never live the present but think of 20 years hence. This is not to say that we must not anticipate our futures. But the proportion of our resources that we allocate for 20 years hence may seem questionable.

In this process, it is only the financial institutions that reap the benefit of our money, giving us a paltry sum out of their profit. Are we such timid people who donot have ideas to do more creative things with our money? These financial institutions have created a hegemonic (subconsciously dominating) condition where their web of difficult descriptions of life do not allow us to be or think creatively. We get caught in our 'constructed'/'projected' difficulties even if our life may be much better. They stunt our creative growth as creative individuals. They suppress our enthusiasm. They restrict our dreams. On of the biggest problems of our society is that we do not appreciate dreamers - or people who have the capacity to dream.

Measured risks form an essential part of our life. Financial institutions create within us fears of failure. They choose moral ethical and social tactics to target their audience. They would talk of family values and the assumed responsibility of a son/daughter towards his/her family and make them conscious of their roles. One doesnot need to be burdened by such roles but take it up willingly, naturally. Financial institutions force it upon us and make our family relationships formal. Money becomes, quite absurdly, the medium that ties us to our family members more than relationships...these misplaced notions have to be critically considered. They create frictions and unnecessary tensions that donot need to exist within a familial setup.

And what can financial institutions do for a person losing ones life any way? In the middle class, how many people really lose lives because of lack of money? I guess middle class people do have strong networks to sustain themselves of such eventualities. Here too, the financial institutions create an image of 'awkwardness' that one 'should' feel while borrowing money from their own friends and relatives. Every person in a middle class setup understands each others' needs and the financial institutions almost project it as profane. In  other words, money and its virtual lack (as created by such methods) creates a completely new social and moral code of behaviour. It is internalized and you are forced to follow it - that is hegemony. I wonder if one person shall be ever able to challenge it.

But essentially, one needs to keep a check of inflation - thats the reason one must make a basic investment. Other than that, it's paying someone else to fiddle with your money. And on top of that, we get into countless amount of paper work and maintaining documents. There may be exceptional stories, no questions regarding that. There may be cases where such systems help. But I strongly feel it's over emphasized and becomes deterrant - because it is almost like a fever that grows on to you...

Oxygen Machine

Lungs of the Building

Detail: Outside & Inside 

Opposite to Academy of Architecture, I saw something that I found really fascinating.

I related it back to the Oxygen Machine that our students had proposed during the Orientation workshop 2010-11. 

"One of the direct consequences of a grave traffic jam would be increase in the amount of pollution. Students overtly pointed out that there would be need of more fresh air and hence the idea of Oxygen Supplying Machines, which would provide fresh air to the much needed spaces in this situation. The group chose an external facade of the college to suck in fresh air and prepared a large blowing assembly - a contraption which throbbed through specially designed bamboo hinges and covered by a cloth which would blow in fresh air. The Oxygen Machine magnified the experience of breathing in the city."

excerpt from "Orientation Workshop Summary 2010-11"

More ideas. To be elaborated later.

Quotations

Persons can be hypocrites. Can cultures also be so? Does the hypocrisy of cultures on closer scrutiny turn out to be a contradiction in the human condition itself? For that matter, is a hypocrite only a casual cheat? Or is he someone who reaffirms the basic human values in a word hostile to such values, while himself succumbing to worldly temptations? Is a hypocrite an unwilling critic of everyday life whose personal failure signals a larger cultural crisis?
-Ashis Nandy, the Uncolonised mind: A post colonial view of India and the west, pg 83-84

“Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion. Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion orders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime.”
-Umberto Eco

We all have our secret chart to tastes, distastes, indifferences, don’t we?
-Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 18