Slice of Life on a Hot Summer Afternoon

The sun's crackling down with its fierce March intensity. The heat forces a kind of dull inactivity. A couple of vehicles whiz down the road braving the heat. 
Sitting by the pavement (sidewalk!) under his black umbrella for shelter, the 'chai-wallah' nonchalantly pours out cup after cup of piping hot 'chai' from his thermos flask for an unending stream of thirsty travellers stopping by. They'd rather quench their thirst or just have a drink of steaming hot tea in an already hot environment than move over to the 'ganna-wala' a few yards away. A couple of girls dressed in the fashion of the day - cotton kurtis and those famously popular leggings - trot by under the shade of their umbrella and gingerly climb down the rickety steps off the pavement into the lane below.
Standing in the shaded balcony of her home across the road, a girl impatiently fans herself with a folded newspaper while waiting for the power supply to be restored. A while later, the buzz of vehicles on the road has increased slightly. It's an hour to sunset and the state of limbo clamped by the sun ebbs as it sets. Down by the 'chai-wallah' an even larger crowd has gathered to enjoy an early evening cuppa and the relief from the heat...

What's on your mind?!

'...where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops...'

Aspiring normality.

'...Up the steps of the church through the fields in the dirt; In the dark, I have seen that the sun still shines for the one who believes...'

Hot white heat, sun-baked days, mirages on roads, redeeming coconut water and royal tans - summer's here!!!

Nothing feels better than to be able to squeeze back into an old pair of jeans that you thought you'd never be able to get into again - ever!!!

Just be.

Oh! 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' to lift a girl's mood!!!

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works (action) is dead also - From 'The Speaking Tree'.

Of glorious sunsets, gorgeous evenings and big dreams!

'Kabhi tujhe milke lauta mera dil yeh khali khali haath...'

I like how that built space 'feels'...

...yeah, that's all it boils down to: feelings. No matter how much cold logic and reason you approach most things in life with including built spaces, somewhere deep down within you, or to the more spontaneous of us - quite instantly, they do evoke and inspire feelings and that's all it takes for you to 'like' or 'dislike' or just be plain comfortable with the space you live in, work, shop or visit.


Spaces that one dislikes are aplenty. I'm talking about all those lovely built spaces that have an atmosphere about them and feel special or at least make you feel good to be there. They have a character that asserts itself and yet unobtrusively recedes into the background when you use the space making you feel like the space is your second skin. A lot of it has to do with how you perceive the space and how the creator of the space manipulates it to make you feel the way he's intended the design to work for its users. Incidentally, in a design lecture I attended recently, one of my professors had something similar to say. Built spaces have to feel right to be lived in and enjoyed.


It also feels nice to have an affirmation of one's design ideology.

Sincerity - Always

Finding Middle Ground

Balance. It's such a crucial and often ignored element of our lives and universe. There's always yin and yang. One needs the other. Too much of anything is bad. There has to be, and indeed is, a little of both - good and bad. They may seem less or more  - our perspective adds weight, and that's all I'm saying because how we look at or outweigh the good or bad is very subjective.

Spring Evenings and Summer Nights - 

Magical!

A Purpose, A Statement - My Statement of Purpose

Here's the holy grail: my statement of purpose or atleast part of it. It's personal, it's cathartic and I preferred not sharing it with too many people until now. Of late, I find myself becoming increasingly possessive about my writings, for whatever they're worth. So, I wouldn't like to see my 'SOP' getting plagiarized (ok, I'm probably flattering myself here but if it ever does get copied).  Having it up here would, hopefully, point to its original source. 

LEARNING, UNLEARNING AND GROWING…

MY STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The atmosphere was electric. Heated arguments and rebuttals were flying across the stage where I sat along with my team. The hot yellow-orange track lights beamed down on us putting us in sharper focus even as the three judges looked on solemnly, almost menacingly, at the proceedings while the ‘hall’ full of 700-odd schoolmates sat rapt in nail-biting attention, erupting into a joyous shout and clap of hands whenever the school- ‘house’ they sided shot down an argument of the defending ‘house’. As I sat precariously on the edge of my seat watching one student after another, both from my team and the opposing team, almost sprint to the microphone placed in the centre of the stage attacking points they’d picked up from each other’s debates, I resolutely thought, ‘It’s now or never.’ As sure as I had been of delivering my argument on the topic, I’d had a nagging fear all through my preparation and rehearsals weeks before that I wouldn’t be able to rebut points – think on the spot – from the rival team’s argument. Sitting there on the stage, at that moment, I felt that fear crystallizing into a numbing inactivity, trying to glue me to my seat. Maybe it was this realization that spurred me to think and do something that I never thought I was capable of. All of a sudden I found my legs taking me determinedly to the microphone and there I was, making a case against and refuting the opposing team’s arguments.

The result – my house ‘Pansies’ winning the debate and I being adjudged the Best Speaker – are mostly a blur now. The cheering, clapping, thumping of backs…all come back to me as one big blob of a memory. I remember more vividly the raging debate I had going on in my head and how I overcame what I’d feared most.

How does all of this relate to my purpose of graduate study? Well, it shows that I’m made of sterner stuff than I think I am. I’ve had quite a few experiences where I’ve astonished myself by my ability to overcome and do things that I thought were huge roadblocks.

In my first year of undergraduate study I always strived for absolute perfection in my assignments which I later realized was my way of avoiding failure. Doing them over and over, meticulously trying to iron out every single crease in my assignments left me feeling stifled. It was then that I learnt to allow myself to make mistakes, learn from my mistakes, but most importantly, enjoy the whole process.

They say there’s nothing a mind made up cannot achieve. Although I dropped a semester in college for reasons both founded and unfounded, I found it very hard to make myself go back and resume that one semester that was left out from my Architecture education. Refusing to face my fears, I lost out on an academic year. Finally, when I let good sense knock me over, I remember the steely determination with which I went back to college to pick up the remaining thread I’d dropped, resolving not to let anything – however small – keep me from completing my semester. In hindsight, I don’t regret on losing that year or having graduated later. One of my professors says that regrets scar the mind. I’ve learnt a lot – about myself, about situations and how to deal with them and not to make mountains out of molehills.  I’ve grown, and I can confidently say for the better, thanks to all my experiences.

‘With great power comes great responsibility’, goes a line from one of my favourite films. My situation, today, is not as cinematic as the line sounds but facing a class of 90-odd first year students as their design faculty does fill me with an immense sense of responsibility in trying to be the best guide I can to my students. I’m trying to pass on all that I’ve learnt from one of my most influential professors – Professor Farid, Head of Department, Architecture. Design, he emphasized, had to be ‘felt’ to be created. To ‘feel’ the personalities of the people one is designing for. Anyone could design but what’d make an Architect’s design stand out from the rest would be this human qualitative aspect that he/she imparts.

Another one of my responsibilities, which can at times seem overwhelming, is reviewing Design Theses of final year architecture students as an internal juror. Having gone through the entire process myself as a student very recently, I can empathize with the stress and sleepless nights that the students go through. At the same time the anxiety of being fair as a juror and assessing their work to the best of my knowledge has been an amazing learning experience - in more ways than one. I will cherish this learning experience because it’s got me in contact with a plethora of thoughts and ideas from both, the experienced senior fellow juror members and the young but daring students.

I now know, from all these learnings and unlearnings, that I can, and will be able to accomplish the goals I’ve set for myself – and overcome any roadblocks.