saibaba on the highway

early one morning on the highway

a black and white christmas

at i.c. colony this years crib.

street shots

singh is kinng . peeyush

if akshay kumar was not so incredibly bad looking- or if he could act even a little bit this might have not been completely boring. it looks like his face has been sandpapered and is red and sore, like the last face lift was so tight that he cant smile anymore. but why blame him- even om puri is shrill and grating. the few good one liners are only effective when some bit player delivers them. the only two good things about the film- that make the film even moderately watchable – are the music (the title track and both the egypt songs- the love song and the bhangra); and katrina kaif- who is breathtakingly beautiful and still not a touch me not diva.

before we stepped into piramal’s to see peeyush’s china photographs of everyday people staring into the camera at china’s tourist spots.

can ad campaigns get any more offensive?

shouldn’t we be angry? this is the new times of india campaign. ‘teach india’ they call it and these are the images.. it’s a series where obviously privileged young men and women take time off their busy schedules and ‘help’ the unfortunate by educating them. this is in today’s newspaper. a wide toothed fair young man takes time off his busy exercise schedule (note the orange track pants and the hurdles in the background) to teach a darker thinner and thus marked as such - underprivileged man to count - the hurdles perhaps. there is an ipod headphone dangling from his left year and a towel in his hand that wipes his sweat with. but the real difference is in the body language and the eyes. the difference between the two looks to the camera is amazing. while the yuppy teacher reeks of smug satisfaction, the reluctant student seems shy and even resentful beneath the apologetic slump as he raises his eyes to meet ours. the ‘u’ ties the two men together across sparkling white t shirts. while one man fills his up the others hangs limp around his skeletal body. the image is carefully assembled with signs that make sure that 'times of india' readers don't even begin to identify with the wrong man. we all know which one of the two it is addressing. disgusting. incredibly offensive.

vanity on a saturday morning

it was morning on saturday and i was sweating away on the treadmill. like in most gyms the machines face outwards towards the windows and during my 15 minutes walking my reflection had turned into a silhouette as the sun came up and lit the street outside. my t-shirt and fabindia trousers to a fading outline through which i could see the street below and a truck collecting the debris of the demolished beauty parlor on the ground floor. as i moved from the treadmill to the stepper climbing artificial floors for my ‘lower body’, a young man’s muscles rippled in the morning light as he carried concrete and brick debris and piled it into the waiting truck. as he sifted through the garbage he found a fragment of a mirror that stayed the rhythm of his work. he dropped the pickaxe and picked the mirror and preened in front of his reflection- the smile, the profile, the biceps. and i kept climbing stairs to nowhere.

in which i try and figure out why i don’t like the raghu rai exhibition at the ngma

i need to think this through. as mukul, kuntal and me spent an hour or so wandering through rows and rows of enormous black and white prints and super saturated colours of india blow ups of of ‘classic’ raghu rai images i was left pretty much indifferent. i found the images to be over-framed and unnecessarily ‘constructed’ to a point where the narrative of the image is reduced to the most banal observations made by any traveler to the country., i.e. the ironies of juxtaposition- the old and the new, the rich and poor, the cow and the tractor.
or there is that 'one detail' that is supposed to make the photograph- the two umbrellas in the bottom right corner of a landscape, or the man scratching his crotch in a group shot. the 'punctum' i assume. although i have always thought that the punctum is found by every person within the image for themselves not thrust into your face until it becomes the photograph. it might as well then have been pointed out by placing an arrow on it and letting the rest of the photo disappear.

the over framed makes all into exotic and what passes for content is a simple minded one liner that merely repeats all the cliches of innumerable exotic india brochures. and for the sake of merely, for the lack of a better term, i can only call the ‘oh-how-cool’ factor. spectators of the great indian exotica show are supposed to drop their jaws in disbelief at the great ironies of the subcontinent. you are told what to think when you pause in front of every image like its an illustration of a children’s book.

and but far worse, and this is debatable, were for me the posed celebrity shots of artists. what makes the photographer and his model choose, for example, hariprasad chaurasia on a beach looking wistfully sideways with a flute in his hand as waves crash- as a portrait; or for that matter satyajit ray on a bed twisted on his back and making wild eyes at the camera. what extremely silly imaginations of the artist are being constructed and propagated through these images?

the disaster photographs of the bhopal tragedy were manipulative and coarse in their shameless sentimentality, the bombay photographs repeated cliches of speed and trains and marine drive, the benares photographs showed us half naked wrstlers, praying swamis, naga babas... the only images that did not make me cringe were the photographs of politicians and the immense street and crowd shots that let the image itself do the telling. these were spectacular and beautiful.

random image post from the past week

avon curtains

new at kandivili

demolitions

tv show in inorbit mall

mukul and mimoh - dance is in his dna

pramod mama at home on sunday

expressway and a picnic

time on the expressway does not exist. nor does spatial experience. its like being in a vacuum removed away from the world as felt. manoj’s car coasted gently in soft 80’s pop over the sun baked bald hills. the four of us lulled to torpor lazily noticing nothing around us but the billboards selling dreams. as you head towards pune they sell you rooms with two windows, a bit of singapore, a fancy new car, homes inspired by water, freedom, happiness and love on a bit of real estate. laughing young couples smile toothpaste smiles in blue skies as they float meters over the baking hot highway, arms open wide, carefree laughter and bright sparkling eyes. pune seems like a city bejeweled with fantasies. the difference between these as you head into pune and the ones that face you as you head in mumbai is marked. no consumerist dreams face you as you head into maximum city. instead, there are banks asking you make sure you save enough for your future and insurance companies warning you if you don’t, phone companies offer you discounts. it is as if the highway into mumbai has been populated with signs of caution- be careful- it is dangerous where you are heading.

manoj, lalitha, sonal and me had gone to the singhadad college off the bangalore highway to give a presentation on the masters course. lunch was idlis and sabudana khichidi just outside the campus on the winding road heading down sitting on the storm water drain. picnic.

end of semester architecture blues . china india

an end of semester recap regarding design and its development leads to a rethink regarding the processes deployed last year. successes and failures or rather new areas to explore emerge and fade into the chaos of voices in the corridors of the college. persistent themes might rise to the surface. i might be beginning to discern some of them. looking back at the year littered with experiments old and new comes a realisation that interdisciplinary dialogue can only emerge if we are able to articulate where does each discipline come from. the problem that we have, of course, is that we don’t know who we are. We scrounge around in half baked terms stolen from theories of social sciences or literature, misunderstand them and superimpose them upon architecture without finely analysing them for relevance. a crisis in architectural theory is dislocated elsewhere.

i hope this does not sound like i am advocating a return to insular formalism or even worse pragmatism (which means the market). on the other hand, i hope that it means we look closer at the architectural object(ive) analytically. my current thinking is trying to locate the question at somewhere between and i guess encompassing two categories.

the first is the architecture as ‘made’. as in architecture that is created as an act in space through the body. a prosthetic device worn to protect and/or to perform. a mask/ a veil/ a shroud / a fake fingernail. architecture that we attach to our sensory organs so that they perform better. to see better, to hear better, to feel better (or worse).

the second is architecture as systemic. a set of relationships between objects that form patterns particular and universal. patterns of folding, floating, slicing, dancing, capturing and letting go. these patterns exist everywhere around us. slice open the body or turn to the city; or look into your self- inside where it hurts. do you see them?

these are some of the ideas we hope to play with next year: finding architecture where three identities intersect – the archetype, the self and the other. a game of tarot and masks; opening up formalism by the analysis of the cultural object; and perhaps looking at nature as it is constructed through our acts in space.

will try to keep this space updated regarding the journey.

meanwhile yesterday vidura’s china photographs were projected large scale at the top floor of the bodhi. documenting the everyday lives of a forgotten community in panoramas of interior spaces. the homes became the sets within a photo studio, the subjects assumed docile expressions. surprisingly absent was laughter, pathos or anger. or was it there and i was unable to see it because of the surprisingly distancing panoramic frame. composed and still with little movement in space or time. perhaps in a few more years they will gain from the aura of nostalgia or the shock of knowing that the chinese man when indian plays cricket.

the reasons i have odd dreams at the end of the month: madame butterfly . invisible cities . city shots (interior and exterior) people

how can i be expected to sleep well after being assaulted by the sawdust in the air from mustaq’s enthusiastic carpentry on the terrace (it gives me a severe allergy); and phone calls in the middle of the night to trace the whereabouts of our very own artist=engineer. in between bouts of trying all the way from 2 o’clock to 5.30 i had to have two ridiculously cinematic dreams- one that definitely bar-coded me as film snob and the other as a hollywood action fan. to enter a gallery for a derek jarman art exhibition and be confronted with huge painting –projections of paul klee like drawings of golden haired boys. these are annotated with the poems of tarkovsky’s father. and then running like hell from a strange shadow who is abut to kill me up a steep hill of dust and then sliding down on the other side into a village. running like hell. and as i run the word gets around ‘supandi is coming’ and panic films the air. as i run looking for shelter from the shadow behind me doors start shutting on the street. ‘the supandi is coming!’. a clearing at the end of the street where i hide in the bushes and watch supandi come in – who turn out to be dark me in grass skirts doing a hindi film version of a tribal dance.

as incongruous a phenomenon must be watching a russian woman and an italian man play a japanese woman and an american man, singing in italian with english subtitles with an orchestra that’s called the ‘symphony orchestra of india’ and is made up largely of musicians from kazakhistan. but the music was beautiful. the tragic heroine and her maid had voices that could make you cry (in spite of the danger of creating an embarrassing ‘pretty woman’ scene); and for all its feminized asia being ravaged by the ugly american- was pretty interesting as a study in orientalism.

or maybe all this oddness has to do with the beautiful cities built as riffs on calvino texts by the first year. cities where meanings disappear as soon as you let go, or signifiers tease you into imagining patterns, or memories are found and made, or lie like unattainable utopias.

palak

kruti

anuj

pratyusha

jeenal

reema

sonal

or maybe its the streets of this city.

highway

i-flex goregaon

kharghar

juhu

borivili

kandivili

powai
--

or its rooms.

avon

mandapeshwar caves

red box

santacruz community hall


dharavi workshop

dharavi house
---

or people?

dad

aaji, usha maushi, mom

ranjit sonal

muk

prachi

deepali benita rohit paul

rupali

chetan - reluctant architect back from australia for his first novel.

paro surabhi

me