ahmedabad . car music- jazz

in ahmedabad, paul and me spent valentines day in a room on the ground floor of the fabulous millowners building in a workshop /conference that purportedly was aimed at re-imagining the entire architectural education system. how much difference was actually made by the conference and how much difference all the ‘inputs’ made by us will make is highly suspect; but there were some very violent outbursts and quick put-downs; and in a room so full of marathi men the biting cant be missed. paul and me tried to navigate our way gently in between bursting egos craving attention, performing for the minutes of the meeting; and the power players fighting a turf war under the guise of a noble motive. in the final reckoning nothing much has changed, a five year course stays with possible specializations (why? – don’t ask)

i don’t like ahmedabad much. i find it dusty and depressing. the architecture that everyone seems to appreciate so much for being so wonderful to me seems extremely insular. closed muscular boxed that contribute nothing to the city- not even a façade. monasteries in a city of markets. the disjunction most apparent when the market spills like water from out of these dumb boxes trying to be everyday ld that wants life to be extraordinarily banal. even the highly appreciated building of cept ahmedabad had the most ridiculous temporary bamboo toilet outside on the lawn. as if people who appreciate light and shadow on exposed brick walls don’t need to pee.

the evenings at cept there was a woman from switzerland who presented us with the work of the vitra company sponsoring famous architects to design buildings for them in the zoo of a campus; and her work on luis barragans stylish, colorful, dandyish work in mexico. i had complaints about it completely apolitical aesthetic. pointless but pretty – so i thought- or should that be pretty but pointless? the vitra work was nice though. chairs, chairs, chairs..

my classic moment of the trip. a teacher of mine from lsr, mumbai is walking around with me around millowners. he is right now doing his phd at some local university- so he claims. he asks me, ‘who designed this building,?’ i choked. he was serious. with as straight a face i could make i said ‘le corbusier’.

car music
jazz is such urban music. while driving it seems the perfect soundtrack to the city. the syncopated rhythm’s, the plaintive trumpets, the sexy saxophone and all the patterns of movement- sliding, shifting, shuddering – the throb and the pulse. whenever i am listening to it i can imagine a cinematic city- animated in vibrant saturated colour or as a collage of one dimensional black figures on white superimposed one over the other. hard edges to extreme fuzziness. there is no in between. wynton marsalis’ black codes’ works for me so much more than his ‘blood on the fields’. the rural landscape i think needs a different sound. for now the city movement makes me tap my foot at try to keep up with the mad polyrhythm and the crazy improvisations. herbie hancock- maiden voyage/ abdullah ibrahim – african river / wayne shorter – speak no evil / wynton marsalis – black codes from the underground / modern jazz quartet – blues on bach. miles davis after this set.