notes from the back benches

for all that the possibilities are for a seminar on architectural education this one happened to be one which met up to all my expectations.

we were put up at the neeri guest houses and the conference was in a large university campus. it was like being caught in the middle of two islands with only the single bridge of the transportation being arranged by the students as a bridge. like prisoners we were. prisoners in a rather green prison. that’s all i got to know of nagpur. the rest of the time i spent in the interiors of auditoriums listening to the self congratulatory, back slapping, sycophantic speeches made in honor of each other.

“i would like to welcome…, i would like to thank… i would like to felicitate.. i would like to call upon stage.. i would like to extend… i would like to..” it was a strategic meeting, a meeting to consolidate power and gather the forces against a common ‘enemy’. it was a flippant little aside from me that created a lot of drama in a post lunch session. but none of that here.

instead i shall talk about the odd situations that turn most intelligent sarcastic cynical men into such obsequious people when they get on stage or the fact that no matter how aware i am of the poses that i am putting on or that are put on for me i have to assume them to be true merely to keep the charade running. it was appropriate that i was reading the monologue from the mind of a disgruntled civil servant of dosteovsky’s ‘notes from the undergound’ at the same time. fact mirrored fiction. i could look into the minds of the checked terrycot shirted, overcombing, pleated trouser wearing men over 50.

one of them was being felicitated and at the function the handing out of flower bouquets to one another, constant praise heaped on those in power (not that the object of the praise seemed to even cringe) went on for 4 hours. the speeches and even an amateur film about tending students like flowers were interrupted by inspirational quotations from english poets or dead american architects and mellifluous music sung in the high pitched falsetto that is mistaken for a beautiful voice.

but the next day was worse when everyone at the scene had to choose sides. ‘if you are not with us, you are against us’ was the mantra. every move we made was carefully strategized. like a high wire trapeze act with spikes 15 floors below waiting for us to make a misstep. naturally, every word had to be chosen carefully and one had to keep a constant watch around to make sure that you are not seen by a certain someone fraternizing with another certain someone. the only way to manage i decided was by being as much of a harmless idiot i could. so i stared blankly, pretended incomprehension, and laughed lightly at nasty digs. academics is a vicious world. meanwhile the issues being discussed largely covered methods of expanding the architectural fraternity. how to make more- no matter what the quality of them might be.

nagpur itself i hardly saw being marooned on the islands of the university an the guest houses. in between all i got to see was wide docile roads with copperpods, the tacky rcc structures of the growing city and street lights with lower lips. deeksha bhoomi where ambedkar converted many to buddhism with a stupa was also somewhere along the way.