Words and the "Idea" of India

Explosions. Terrorism.Attacks. Civilians dead... and India in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Any word uttered in this situation has to be very very thoughtful and right. Who are we to blame ?  "Non- state/Stateless" terrorists ?  Terrorists cannot not have a state. They have to live somewhere, train somewhere. True a nation like pakistan might not be in control over all of its own territory, and its own military.  If not, these are times to act on that. 

Another popular word used is " Muslim terrorists". What a colossal mistake. The right terminology is so much critical...because words mean a great deal. Language is all we have to communicate to each other and its so irresponsible and insensitive to use such flippant terms. Islamic fundamentalism apart, these terrorists are muslims only in name. We all have friends of the Islamic faith who are as much good citizens of india and the world as any other. Modern India has to shed this identification with religion for EACH and EVERY single thing....first in our everyday terminology.

Apart from mistakes in terminology, there's a lot of insensible and irresponsible ideas thrown around. First of all....things like "nuke pakistan".  Have we lost it ? It is as Arundhati roy so beautifully put it  "The end of imagination" when we advocate nuclear war.  Our families, our lives, our friends and our country and all of what we've achieved over 60 years will go back to the stone age...to barren and radioactive wasteland.  Jesus Christ !.. for God's sake let not terrorism make us as idiotic and freaking stupid as the terrorists.  Another one is let's wind up democracy and have military rule...if I couldnt understand the anger and sadness behind such a sentiment/statement , I would've  found it hilarious. 

Abandon democracy ?  The worlds grandest, biggest experiment in democracy ...to become what...pakistan... a defunct democracy where the army when it feels like takes over the country.....where such generals  say they'll make the people "eat grass" to have a nuclear bomb ? Thankyou,  I'd rather have food and the right to vote, and go to court and protest and demonstrate.  I won't have a military state like pakistan nor a  one party autocratic state like china - where i can't hold up a banner in the street and where if i'm picked up by the police - there is no place  for my parents to ask or enquire about me.  Democracy is what makes us different. It's precisely our democracy and secularism and multicultural heritage these lunatics are targetting.  More than 70 million people vote in India...70 million.... and not just that;  we are the worlds most representative democracy.... the no. of elected officials to represent each section of our country is simply staggering.  What more proof...do we need to realise when we criticize " The Government"....that this "Government" is basically us...you and me. And if only we did our jobs well - our country would be much better of.

Another issue is the blinding, surprising and befuddling  ignorance of the Indian constitution- of the "Idea" of India.  What do we mean when you and I say "I'm an Indian". Its a question we all should ask ourselves. And unfortunately most of us are surprisingly out of an answer. Being born somewher e between the himalayas and the indian ocean doesnt make you an indian. For me atleast the answer is simple. You might even laugh at it and say its too simplistic... too technical. Tell me if you have a better one. 

                                   I'm an  Indian because I believe in the constitution of India.Because I believe,  (to quote the preamble to the constitution) that "We,  the People of  India ",  have solemnly resolved to constitute India into a "Sovereign

Socialist** Secular Democratic Republic" and

"to secure to all its citizens Justice , Liberty and Equality and Fraternity"  . That is my creed for being an Indian.  Remember thats what we say in our pledge.... the "all indians are my brothers and sisters" thingy. It is what our elected officials say when they take the oath of office " to follow and protect the constitution of India" Today not only do we disrespect these symbols - these "statements of belief",  we are ignorant of them. And pathetically we see them as hampering our progress, we see them as our weakness - we see the right of every Indian to recieve a fair trial, to have civil liberties irrespective of our what our specific religion is.....as weakness and obstruction to "security" from terrorists.

If we know that this set of beliefs is what makes us Indians......would we use all these hateful terminologies, feelings and irresponsible ideas that we utter so self righteously ? The history of modern India - the modern "idea " of India starts somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century. I'm sure there are other points of view... which would trace origins to the gupta period or something. I'd be very interested in such views if any, to say the least.  Rationality,  developmental psychologists say is the ability to think from multiple points of view/perspectives....thats why reason is sometimes called perspectival reason.I wonder how very educated people can be bereft of this .

As some one in a design profession- and importantly as an architect - I've  been always proud that we as a profession have this special ability to think from different points of view - merge clashing ideas- be open to muliple ways of looking at things. At times like these when I find rightful  anger and sadness , giving away to blind hate ...even among some of us...as few as it may be..it somehow seems a very big let down. I say this because the "idea" of India requires one to have an open pluralistic way of looking at ourselves- at our history.... beyond the specifics of which mosque was really a temple and which temple was really a buddhist sanctuary a 1000 years ago.   

The idea that we may be different in religion, color,language, customs, physical appearence but that we are one people, that together we can govern ourselves and pursue liberty, equality, justice and individual happiness and our life's desires.....that is no petty idea...its a grand magnanimous vision..no petty mind can grasp it.  Whatever their faults maybe these are ideas/strains of thought that were given form by many of our leaders  of independence .....  one I know of is Nehru- who did it so beautifully in the discovery of India(whtever else his colossal mistakes may be).  The idea of an India where seeming opposites exist,  where layers of religion, culture, customs,  races, time periods , tradition and modernity are overlayed over each other and forms a rich kaleidoscope - a crazy chaotic yet harmonious and beautiful whole. That somehow is India for me.  

Many may say and have said,  mind you, that this is a  romantic, impractical and perfectly useless idealism at its  eloquent best.  It may well appear to be,  but for me idealism is not to be divorced from pragmatism. Ideals are what drives our pragmatism. Whenever it has not, we've seen genoicide, war and innocents persecuted in the name of pragmatism.  Afterall Hitler reduced unemployment in germany from 6 miliion to under half a million by starting armament produuction, war and killing jews.  He was practical wasn't he ?  Some tease me on the same note on my "Obama mania".... why I spent so much time listening to his speeches.  I did that for the same reason.......for the first time in my lifetime I saw a politician saying  look idealism and pragmatism can go together,  its not true that you have to sacrifice one for the other. 

Exactly my  sentiment and thats exactly what my answer is to people who reluctantly say RSS or shiv sena or some radical wing of hindu fundamentalism is the only solution. 

NO.  No idealogy of hate can be(or has ever been) defeated by another idealogy of hate. period. 

 

** The idea of socialism as the supreme court of India declared in a ruling is not a communist idealogy or term. It denotes social equality  - absence of discrimination on the basis of race creed color religion sex and so on.

" I first of all felt Joyous.I felt what Joy is made of, and i realized that Joy itself must have been the impelling force, that which was there before we were there...and that somehow Joy was in every ingredient of our making.When the world was an ooze without any shape or direction,there must have been this force of Joy that prevailed everywhere and that was reaching out to express.And somehow the word Joy became the most unmeasurable word. It was the essence of creativity, the force of creativity.I realized that if i were a painter and about to paint a great catastrophe,i could not put the first stroke on campus without thinking of Joy in doing it.

You cannot do architecture/make a building without being joyously engaged.
I would like to feel that i've not forgotten nor have you as i speak to you about the stream of Joy which must be felt.Otherwise you really dont feel anything.If what i say somehow activates that feeling,I would ofcourse be terribly pleased and honored "

Lou Kahn

TTYL

Hmm well I thought all this being by myself, made me pretty unexcitable.
Damn it !
Man! Ive got a long lonely semester coming up and I have to start all over again.
urghhhh!

The polititcs of asking How are You?

Well, couple of things.

1. I like Howdy. Howdy is good.
It's not just because it is the official greeting of Texas A&M.
It works. I mean its functional. Some one greets you Howdy and you say Howdy back.
Case closed. Done .Finito.

But when you are asked, "Hey, How are you ?" the landscape changes drastically.
You've gotta say " I'm good/great/fine." pause. "How are you ?".
Now it's not entirely that its too long to say back you know ?
I mean it is, but it isn't that long - for normal people.

Words like normal come into question for anything related to me.But anyway.
Thing is I'm never thinking in terms of the visual data in front of me while I'm walking/ moving/ passing through a place...whatever. That is I'm almost always thinking of something else, sometimes related to reality(relatively) , but mostly it is completely and ridiculously unrelated to anything at all.
So the " Hey How are you......." takes me completely by surprise...knocks me out.....like a bird crashing into a glass pane ! ouch! reality check. Then I have to suddenly connect to stuff happening around me. Identify which way the voice came from. Recognise the face and then say the rest...and of course if it's someone you know, the rest of the being sociable crap.

It might not sound like a great deal. But it is. Each time, the entire process I described above happens in extremely slow motion for me....you know like keanu dodging the bullet ? Only difference being what if he moved slowly and still all the bullets struck him - dead on target too. Same thing. By the time I am ready to say the "Good, How are you"....the person might have already passed me by....and I can't run behind, tap them on the shoulder and say it you know? It's not that kind of thing. Or worse still, you wait for the elevator, which takes a hell of a long time to come up , and people shoot out of it as it opens up and someone says the dreaded greeting words...... and before you know what hit you they are gone. And you spend the rest of the time in the elevator, feeling bad....about your lack of response, your being slow, you being a misfit in society esp american etc. Yes the hard part is the guilt...lol...of not being able to reply. It's tougher than you think....

I mean americans are used to it. Its their form of greeting. So they are obviously good at it. And original too....as in they have various forms/types/variations for asking it and replying. The Indians are bloody predictable. That includes me too, don't worry. But at least I do not keep shooting that question, at the slightest chance. I mean I don't know that many people.... :) :) but if you indeed know someone well, that means you know them, so....you would have something better to say, or you would talk longer, so the whole "how are you" paradigm is bypassed.
And even if I manage to return a volley of "Good .How are you doing?" back at them.... they shoot back the reply...(I don't even know what it is they say) ... so fast I don't know what hit me(sometimes you are going somewhere so fast, that you are out audible range....lol). I mean the whole exchange has to take place in less than 4 seconds, if you are on the move...which is usually the case. And desi's shoot it out like they've been practicing it all their life. It's good in a way shows their commitment....... they are here to stay....lol. :)

There is of course the larger issue, of the redundance of the question. Why do you have to ask a question to which you already know the answer ? That too like a zillion times over. People are all "fine/good/pretty good or great" There is no sorrow or want on the face of the earth, if you go by the response to this question ... lol. By now anyone reading these thoughts would definitely have come to the conclusion that I'm cuckoo..or seriously messed up. But try to believe me, I have nothing against this form of greeting. I means it's polite, civilized...all that. Its probably just my small town typically overtly sarcastic mallu thinking that makes me a bit bitter of this greeting. I realise that. But I sometimes still do get unreasonably angry when Indians/desi's shoot this question at me. I almost feel like replying..

I'm good/fine...DAMN IT! What do you expect !!
..........................................
And How are you , You fuck !

lol..just that...that might lead to a very deconstructivist outcome ...eh ?

"What do you mean,Diotima " I said, " is love then evil and foul ?" "Hush" she cried;" must that be foul which is not fair ? " "Certainly" I said. "And is that which is not wise, ignorant ?do you not see that there is a mean between wisdom and ignorance ?".......
"Quite true," I replied. "Do not then insist," she said, " that what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good, evil; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefor foul and evil; for he is in a mean between them"
.................................
"And who" I said, "was his (love) was his father and mother ?". "The tale will take time, neverthless i shall tell you," she said. "On the birthday of aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god Poros or plenty, who is the son of Metis or discretion, was one of the guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty as is the manner on such occassions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse for nectar(there was no wine in those days) went into the garden of Zeus and fell into a deep sleep; and Poverty considering the circumstances she was in, plotted to have a child by him and accordingly she lay down at his side and concieved Love, who partly because he is naturally a lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful and also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant.

And as his parentage, so are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and he has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother is always in distress. Like his father too whom he partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and the good; he is bold enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or the other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all tiomes, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment and dead at another moment, and again alive by his fathers nature.He is never in want and never in wealth and further he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge.

The truth of the matter is this: NO god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. For herein is the EVIl of ignorance : that he is neither good nor wise is neverthless satisfies with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want. "But who then Diotima" I said, "are seekers of wisdom if they are neither the wise or th foolish ?" " A child may answer that question," she said, "they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them.For wisdom is a most beautiful thing and Love is of the beautiful and therefore love is also a philosopher or the lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between ignorance and wisdom. And of this too his birht is a cause, since his father is wealthy and wise and mother poor and foolish"

"Such my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine from what u say, has arisen out of a confusion of Love and the beloved. For the beloved is ttruly beautiful and delicate and perfect and blessed; but the principle of love is of another nature"

2. "This my dear Socrates", said the stranger of Mantineia, " is that life above all other s which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute, a beauty if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and conversing with them without meat and drink, if that were possible - you only want to look at them and be with them. But what if man had eyes to see true beauty- the divine beauty , I mean pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with pollutions of mortality and all the colors and vanities of human life - thither looking and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine ? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabked to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities(but he has hold not of a nimage but of reality) and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life ?

from Symposium, Plato's philosophy of beauty

Well....interesting aint it ? I am not going to write what all this signifies. This was an insignificant part of my philosophy reading....and it was part of a larger discussion of truth and beauty and art.
You can draw your own conclusions from Plato's account...
But know what else I learnt from reading this ?
But I can't help mention two very philosphical observations.

1. LOVE IS A BASTARD CHILD
2. THE GREAT GREEK PHILOSOPHERS WERE GAY !!!
LOL....amusing

lol

From Shooting star to Black hole

( dated early 2007 when i was working in india)
So what’s this about. Well its not about astrophysics of course, but it is certainly about life in architecture, nothing serious, not anything specific , just a kaleidoscope of random thoughts in the mind of a graduate….err… or to put it better.. an architect engaged in private commercial practice…..did u sleep off yet ?




I don’t know when it occurred to me that I could be an architect……?? I guess it was sometime after I joined B-Arch here at NITC. Somewhere towards the end of first semester in the Architecture Design studio. I of course don’t remember the exact moment, day or even week. Quite pathetic because some poetics of inspiration is what one would expect from an architect. Well Not from me, anyway…. not at this moment definitely when all that is running through my head is the daily calculations of sq feet to msquare and cent and acre and back to feet inches. But I guess it started sometime when a particular professor who reeked of cigarette smoke , (ya I know…how stupid… my whole batch was reeking of smoke towards the final years- yet let me state this for the record - just for posterity’s sake – even we were once innocent and undefiled ) . So where did I stop….yup when this man taught us the 3 golden words of architecture- Scale proportion and the most holy one of all ..sssppace. Ya ya …U .fundoo…I know Space is the spelling…I was just was trying to recreate how he said it -- cause there was something about the way he said it which stirred something in us - the way in which he lifted his nose in the air and uttered those words with a sparkle in his eyes and a hiss like he was releasing some mysterious energy… ..”ssssppace”.
Well I found I liked space. Hell I found I could even conjure up and draw “space” pretty well !

Yup Basic Design was quite miserable, though all the principles they taught were damn interesting - because the girls were at their artistic best – soaking their sheets with whole bottles of paint for the slightest reason- scoring so thick and fast, that the closest comparison would probably be Adam Gilchrist & M.hayden opening the Aussie innings. But even with all this happening, it was when I discovered that Architecture, in college at least- is not entirely (I repeat not entirely-but a major part of it is ..) a matter of execution – of how it looked, or how it worked - but of why it had to look the way it did – why it had to work the way u imagined it should – and in no other way …….and the way in which u figured that out….. that I got my act together in B-arch. In simple words let me put it. Architecture at its heart is personal expression – but used to solve a problem, physical, spatial, visual, social or mostly all these together. Sometimes when there is no problem ,you create an imaginary problem and solve it- that’s how all these imaginary/futuristic projects that architects draw up are born. How wonderful isn’t it ? ( I can see the “ you poor fool” look on my engineer friend’s face…..still)

Anyway the beauty of it is that though we rely on the laws of nature – the laws of gravity and mechanics to make our architecture stand – yet we contort entirely new formulas when we design space - when deciding how its going to look, work and feel. And then it becomes a huge live mechanism/organism in real life affecting people using it or going through or just passing by. I believe architecture really happens in that transition when that great dream/vision of yours is translated into a doodle, then to a sketch, and then to a drawing. And of course like engineering teaches us(if it doesn’t…use “like how frank Gehry shows us” instead) whatever that can be drawn can be constructed.

All these beliefs were cool in college , but when u actually start working in a commercial firm u start swallowing the “poetics” of architecture and start trying to digest the “business” of architecture. Large glasses of water would be helpful for the demands of that business will not go down easily. Take a client who wanted his customers to reach the first floor without even “they themselves” realizing it”. No in case u are thinking lift, escalator and such…..he wasn't referring to them. For a moment I even doubted whether he was suggesting that I carry each of his clients up and down the stairs for a lifetime. Or who wants 3 steps instead of 4 just because it is a better number..??
Who takes a brief look at the 3D view you have drawn(the only satisfying effort that goes into countless hours of adjusting and readjusting plans and sections according to the clients whims and fancies and to meet his square feet requirement) and draws a clumsy arch on your beautiful composition or fishes out a shoddy pic of some other buildings arch and tells you ..I want 5 numbers of this on my building.(like he was buying fish at the market or something !) Clients who don’t want to give the minimum no. of toilets that the building rules specify, cause he believes that’s wasting space and yet expects u to get building permission. Which brings me to the fact of bribery and corruption in this business – if u are asking the areas of our involvement..... we help bend and break town planning and building rules....

And while you sit at the computer furiously clicking away in CAD, trying to meet another deadline ,u sometimes wonder where architecture is in all this. At these desperate moments, thankfully an IIA(indian inst of architects) meeting comes up, with the promise of free food, booze and…….. well no girls… but you can stare at the beautiful wives of rich architects or their US employed daughters or sometimes a fellow female architect( who will most probably have a boy friend or fiancée in 90% of the case). And it is as you sip the free booze and talk about practice with ur fellow architects that u realize that U are in a process – a process of learning how to give the crap back to ur clients - how to brainwash them and build what YOU want, like how YOU think it should be, have sweet revenge on all those junior years as an architect and do architecture the way u want to. Well its not simply that some of our wisest teachers said that an architects life starts at 40. We are like wine it seems…. as we age we are better valued… and I asuume even our lives start tasting better!

All that is ok….and I can end my long purposeless writing right about now.... but ….let me raise something that worries me in this context ….a doubt that some of my more thoughtful archi-friends have raised..... whether to stay a bachelor till 40 or marry and divorce at 40...when our lives get a nitro boost...or in general what do we do.....
I don’t know the answer fully for that yet. But I suggest you check up on the personal lives of FL Wright, Louis Kahn and few other great architects to get some ideas. Or its better still if u have fresh ideas ….



Note FL Wright 4 wives among countless other flings.
L. Kahn- 1 legal wife but father to 2 other families.
The list is long...
U can add to the list…..

Ironically, the era of the free market has led to the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in India—the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country of their own, somewhere up in the stratosphere where they merge with the rest of the world's elite.

This Kingdom in the Sky is a complete universe in itself, hermetically sealed from the rest of India. It has its own newspapers, films, television programmes, morality plays, transport systems, malls and intellectuals. And in case you are beginning to think it's all joy-joy, you're wrong. It also has its own tragedies, its own environmental issues (parking problems, urban air pollution); its own class struggles.

An organisation called Youth for Equality, for example, has taken up the issue of Reservations, because it feels Upper Castes are discriminated against by India's pulverised Lower Castes. It has its own People's Movements and candle-light vigils (Justice for Jessica, the model who was shot in a bar) and even its own People's Car (the Wagon for the Volks launched by the Tata Group recently). I

It even has its own dreams that take the form of TV advertisements in which Indian CEOs (smeared with Fair & Lovely Face Cream, Men's) buy over international corporations, including an imaginary East India Company. They are ushered into their plush new offices by fawning white women (who look as though they're longing to be laid, the final prize of conquest) and applauding white men, ready to make way for the new kings. Meanwhile, the crowd in the stadium roars to its feet (with credit cards in its pockets) chanting 'India! India!'

Arundhati Roy
excerpt from Article in Outlook.

The Void

It’s a curious thing to feel out of purpose, to be at the end of your wits, to suddenly look at what u think is/was your life’s work… and feel… disinterest? No perhaps skepticism, maybe a kind of weariness…. I don’t know how exactly to describe it. Being stranded alone in personal life, also is not a small factor adding to it. But I’ve taken that for a given now. I’ve been working or at least trying to work for couple of weeks now, working through nights, trying to meet deadlines, trying to put up a presentation and make it look like I have done work and actually make it look that it makes sense ! Actually work is all I have now , and movies on the 42” wide screen TV which we roommates bought…. few hour of escape from reality. Hmm I don’t know about that, because all what I’m doing is probably far removed from reality, the architecture I create, the assumptions I make while making those design decisions. Decisions. I hate decisions, to say this is good and that’s bad, to say use this material and not that, that color and not this , that this particular form doesn’t work and some other works. I hate these decisions. I think sometimes it’s not fair, I don’t want to explain my work anymore than I intend to. What’s the use anyway ? They say contemporary architecture is an intellectual practice at least a major stream/chunk of it is. It is got to do more with ideas and theory rather than anything else. Yet architecture is not read that way. Let’s leave the real world alone. Let’s take the studio. Architecture is read God knows how, by the number of 3ds max rendered images you have, the quality of the drop shadow u have used on the plan. Ok, maybe not that bad, but what I’m saying is it is too visual. It is too on the surface. And it is not to be confused with giving a preference to a culture of visual thinking or anything. Even on the level of visual judgment there is no complexity, there is no vibrancy, there is no…..life, there is no mad experiment, there is no random merciful lapse of reason.

Even my work is all the same. I’ve been trying to be more adventurous, to not to go around in circles about making decision whether the stairs should be to the left or right or the wall should be brick or concrete, to lose myself in a delirium of form, random free flowing interplay of surfaces all those murky edges and a 100 chaotic messed up thoughts and imperfections, and that make me up. And in doing that try to balance a personal expression with the nature of a building type. Not very successful I should say, I get caught up in the same old web. Infact I’m growing increasingly tired of my own work. To put it in no milder terms, I am increasingly finding it disgusting and boring and more importantly without meaning. When a creator feels that , theres something gravely wrong and ideally he should stop. But you see I cant, I’m in the middle of a degree, I’ve got to churn out more stuff….but on the brighter side, hey it doesn’t matter anyway, so don’t worry.

One needs a goal to work to, a dream to live for, a cause to go on for, a passion to pull through when the going gets tough and I think I just might have lost all of that.

In the deep recesses of the mind I ramble,
And linger in the labyrinth of despair.
I soar for moments at long, on the wings of reason,
Sometimes even on the crest of creation.

For Meaning I search, for purpose,
Perhaps even for truth and conviction.
And in search of them, like them I wander,
Like ghosts among the living.

Doing architecture.

'd like to think I have few pretensions to what I am
Or what I can be.
I'm in this .... this joyous:depressing,stimulating:tiring, simple:esoteric, heavily intellectual:dumb, creative:painful realm called architecture.For me each moment in that realm is a continual reminder of the dichotomy - the mind numbing complexity - in myself,in life,and in the world around.
I'm lost in here and trying to find my way....but not out.
Its a pain in the ass you cant live without.To put it slightly more eloquently it gives me a way to look at the world, to order it, to understand/fight/hate/love/theorize/ it.

I enjoy its dichotomous nature not because I am brilliantly talented, but because I am so not.
Not because I can understand but because I can't.
I don't know where I'm heading...but I'm on my way.

I may not be among those whose names are inscribed on the sacred walls of architecture for all eternity- hell! not not even close, but perhaps after a life's work...perhaps I might be the wind that blew across its portals for a fraction of a second.

That in the end I think, might be more than enough.

Ramblings on architecture

I have often wondered what it is that makes the immortal, the eternal.

I've looked at great architecture and great art and wondered about the fabric that’s common to it all.

I sense strands that run through all of them...or at least I think i do

From the Amber fort that shocked me through the sheer range of its scale: from a towering majestic monumentality to light humane functional living spaces - From its sheer opulence to its disarming simplicity - from the silence and light at IIM-A: those volumes in brick silently guarding the eternal spirit of human institutions - From Corbusier’s few deft planes of concrete that trap space time and light in disarmingly simple and brilliant ways in the Millowners building - From the transformation of a simple yet vital function of accessing water to a celebration of light and movement in the adalaj step well, to the amazing spirit/concepts of modernism that I sense in the historic padmanabhapuram palace.

I've felt all these as almost universal in their spirit, they belong in the same realm of inspired creation.

From function undoubtedly they sprang, nevertheless ultimately they transcended it and became a celebration of life.

And what is life other than the celebration of living.

And what is architecture, other than the celebration of the human being.

A play of our sense of scale, vision, movement, balance, behavior – our sense of what is right and wrong in public , of right and left, up and down…….

If God made man in his Image, we make architecture in our image. Yes even the coldest, monumental, worst ones are facets of our own self.

Space and time(movement) , Light and Shadow, Mass and Void, Planarity and volume I believe are the universal language of Architecture – a language with different dialects, one used with different patterns and permutations yet the same basic language, the same grand old spirit of Architecture running through all of them.

It is quite disarmingly simple, that it seems almost obvious yet I believe that ultimately shrouded under all the theory architecture comes to down to this. I can find no other way of explaining why something as diverse as a subtle yet exquisite timber palace in South India to an outrageous Gehry building appeals to me in the same intensity of spirit. That is why a small space that is created in some corner of the world, appeals to the entirety of the world.

And that is why I can’t digest when narrow classifications are made of modern and post modern, western and oriental, ad hoc and “designed”. I believe one sows the seeds of the eternal in that very moment when concieves these combinations of space, volume and mass submitting to that universal spirit/force of architecture. There is no style, there is only the intensity of your will to create and if you have truly understood what you are creating, and convinced by its will to be- I believe you are on your way to creating something eternal – even if its not for the entire humanity - for yourself….a moment you have etched in your psyche….a moment that you know was lived creating something worthwhile.

The beginning of Insanity

Everything has a beginning...lol...even the public display of ones insanity or mediocrity...whichever applies. A random collection of thoughts....obvious,ridiculous,chimerical or didactic ... this is for my satisfaction alone ..like writing on a wall.....or like kicking in the air when u are mad....no.. maybe like the times you talk and shout to yourself, when multitudes of thoughts cloud your mind, your heart wells up god knows why to express - to pen down something , or talk to somebody about all the random thoughts in your mind - architecture or philosophy or whatever.Well in the absence of the latter(the person to talk to), i write. Maybe its not the absence - maybe there is just no other way to communicate to yourself. Anyway.... I think some people are destined to have these absolutely meaningless thoughts, these changes in flux of the mind, these colossal wastage of time thinking things that have no purpose. Yet that is the way some are made, and those thoughts have to be let off, like steam of a pressure cooker - to use a very indian metaphor.....so as far as I am concerned , let the steam off, why give a damn what its for or how it sounds.