trip photos two

the bicycles and the boys on the way to wagah

shanker dhaba at the cantonment on g t road

shanker dhaba

nikhil

sachin

trip photos one

nikhil. sachin in a yash chopra film on the way to wagah


wagah

saluting sitting down at the border

sachin, nikhil: the way back to the hotel

the grand trunk road from the top of the bus

'goodbye lenin'

a mother falls into a coma and when she wakes up germany has been unified. her son goes to ridiculous lengths to recreate the earlier berlin so that his mother does not have to cope with the shock of unification.
though i was a little annoyed in the beginning by the incessant cuteness and the irritating piano background score; the film suddenly became far more when the premise of the film becomes merely a backdrop to explore the languages and ideals of the two radically different worlds; from the clothes, the television shows, the food. why was all the paraphernalia of the east so summarily discarded? what happened to the world that had created it? what happened to those people?
suddenly the film, from being an ingratiatingly sweet piece of fluff became a fairly moving look at a world suddenly vanished.
my memories of childhood are also full of these images of state sponsored stuff, that is nowhere to be found nowadays.. a ridiculous nostalgia grips me for the days of black and white tv, and chaya geet on thursdays. and how we longed for more then.
beautiful image: the bust of lenin floating over the streets of the city being carried off into the sunset by a helicopter.

‘a talking picture’

in manoel de oliveira’s ‘a talking picture’ a history teacher and her daughter are on a cruise to india to join the girls’ father in bombay. the ship makes stops at marseilles, naples, athens, constantinople, cairo and aden on the way to india.. as the ship passes we are given a stilted informative history lecture with postcard like shots of monuments. characters step into the frame merely to supply us with legends, myths and narratives from the troubled history of western civilization.

after leaving aden the movie shifts gear into a series of staged dinner table conversations between three women from different countries – a french business woman, an italian ex-model and a greek actress; and the polish american captain of the ship played by john malkovich. these conversations rotate around the themes of nationhood, language, war, love and longing- the tower of babel, the tree of goodness… until an arab terrorist bomb blows the ship apart, killing the mother and daughter.

a fantastic film.. bending any preconceived notions i might have had of film making. a travelogue and a history lesson and a serious exploration of the state of the world today.. except , at least it seemed to me, to be from a completely eurocentric point of view. while the first few shots do dwell on the portuguese colonization of the world and there were many references to the faded glory of the value systems of the west; the easterner or the oriental was always treated as the alien outsider.

perhaps there is a truth to this. maybe the value systems of the west along with democracy and christianity are completely alien to the value system of the arab world- and therefore threatening. what was i expecting from a portuguese film maker looking at the state of the world today?

perhaps i was expecting the self flagellating guilt that we are so used to whenever someone from the west begins to talk about the relationship of the first world to the rest of the world. always slightly patronizing. thankfully, i did not get it. instead the film sketched out the impossibility of mutual understanding between different nations all attempting the create their own ideas of civilization through the exercise of power. every civilization has been and will be genocidal.

perhaps there are many more readings of the film.. maybe it was about the death of western civilizations and a paean to it… maybe it was a wake up call i have read a review that completely inverts my own reading of it.. and it sounds convinced .. i don’t know.. confusing.. but very very good.

baby photographs

in the corridor of the breach candy hospital this monday

kuntal and nandita

diwali and three films

diwali lights

every diwali there is a ritual that we have in our lane. headed by shyam and my mother we light the entire lane up with diyas in the evenings. the girls draw a rangoli in the morning on the badminton court. shyam and me go to the railway station to buy 500- 600 diyas and lay them down in a line edging the lane. oil is collected from the buildings and lamps are lit through a collective effort of kids and older people.

this year mukul and me bought diyas from the railway station and the older people watched on as the ritual was taken over by the kids, who organized everything.

this year as always, the lane was lovely.

l’avventura

antonionini’s film about a woman who disappears suddenly on a yachting trip leaving her fiancé and her best friend to find her and meanwhile begin a new relationship with each other. the film seemed to be attempting a dissection of the male ego; as the jilted lover immediately proves his own virility to himself by storming into an affair with the next available woman. the woman falls after initial pangs of guilt, and the man then moves on to the next conquest. meanwhile he craves for creative expression (he, we learn, was an architect, but now only does valuation of buildings), for youth and energy (he wickedly spills ink on a young mans sketch of a window, etc).

all in carefully composed black and white, seaside landscapes with lone figures and crashing waves; long silent lovemaking sequences and ornate interiors of hotels. it seems that claudia- the other woman- was antonionini’s wife. that explains why she is in the film. i thought she was wooden; and thought the movie far too long for such a flimsy premise; though in the final reckoning it was not completely unwatchable.

the blood of a poet

jena cocteau’s 1930s film about art and its sources, the artist and his sacrifices. surreal images of death, self-immolation, mirrors, games- a mouth on a canvas begins to speak and is wiped on to the hand of the poet as tries to destroy it; leading him to kill himself- then in another sequence he walks along a corridor of a hotel peeping into various rooms with strange happenings; then a snowball fight in which a child dies; and at the end a game of cards between the poet and his muse / creation(?) watched on by spectators in overlooking balconies.

50 minutes- almost silent. brilliant images (for its time) interesting, but not fascinating.. surprisingly.

shaadi no 1

three frustrated men seek three separate affairs with the three hot daughters of their employer after their three wives refuse for one reason or the other to sleep with them. enter one fiddler dispensing ‘misaals’ like missiles’ one for each character constantly making the most ludicrous similes. marriage is like a .. closed bisleri bottle/ salwar kameez / .. whatever..

tedious in parts, hilarious in some.. not enough silliness.. and actually not that much fun.. even if we overlook the sexist premise.. the actors pulled the film down.. the khan brothers have no timing and sharman joshi is too bad looking. the women (wives) are hot and the girls (temptresses) are naked…. and the music sucks.

amritsar – chamba – chandigarh (linear / non linear)

chapter one : linear

october 17^th

night train- the golden temple express to amritsar

october 18^th

the train journey

october 19^th

morning at amritsar.
the golden temple.. langar.. distribution of work load
the guru nanak dev university to meet sarabjit singh behl in his office.

october 20^th

jalian wala baug and more meanderings in the walled city.. sarabjit singh behl’s lecture at the university..

october 21^st

exploring the city and its gates on bicycle.. kesar da dhaba.. the bridge gurudwara, , the ranjit singh museum and the baug at night. the big trees, the midnight swim.

october 22^nd

amritsar – wagah border- the bicycle ride.. the performance at the border.. on top of the bus on the way back home

october 23^rd

bus to chamba via dalhousie. tibetan market.. the mall road.. the new jackets.. the bus ride at night down into the valley.. girls with motion sickness.. hotel aroma palace

october 24^th

the chamunda devi temple.. the bajreshwari temple.. the hydro electric water peoject.. finding our way to the water.. swimming in the cold water of the ravi river.. laxmi narayan temple complex in the middle of the city.. playing football on the chowgun with the boys.. looking for momos on the streets at night and failing.

october 25^th

morning hike to khajiar lake.. uphill all the way.. the short cut that ended up being very long and very tough. nimita, ajay and me lost and found. the landscapes of the mountain.. chicken chilly dry on a verandah overlooking the clearing. the camping site overlooking the eastern mountains.. the cold air and lying down on the clearing in the evening light.. the campfire party.. singing and dancing.. sleeping.

october 26^th

early morning drive to evening driving to chandigarh first in mini bus to chamba and then in our rickety old one. stopping at various places for food.

october 27^th

chandigarh - panchayat bhavan hostel. walking around making fun of pseudo corb-ness.. the secretariat, the assembly and the high court.. nek chands rock garden in evening light and swings.. dinner at hot millions 2 – sector 17 and hunting for a drink and finding one at ‘wild wild west’.

october 28^th

morning train to mumbai. the paschim with all the crowds

october 29^th

mumbai at 3.30. screaming kids.

amritsar – chamba – chandigarh (linear / non linear)

chapter two : non - linear

places

amritsar has seen so much violence from the jalianwala baug massacre to operation bluestar. important moments in two freedom movements one successful and one abandoned have occurred within 100 meters of each other. after having committed a violence on the center of sikhism the center does not know its role in the city anymore. it now takes a back seat as the monetary power- canada born- and the considerable clout of the akal takth evict complexity from the once thriving commercial portions of the city. the evicted include markets, akharas and other subcultures. the houses and markets around the golden temple have recently been flattened by the state as per the wishes of the temple and has been replaced by a gated walled garden with seating areas and red sandstone steps. an urban designer is earning a lot of money destroying a city yet again. our site for the next third year project overlooks this clearing.

the golden temple lies in the center of the walled city of amritsar. it is beautiful. amruta called the movement within organized chaos, it seemed more to me like a ritualistic dance that people entering learned by watching people around them move. heads covered and footwear off, you enter below the huge clock tower and walk down to the amrit. the golden temple lies in the middle of the pond glittering as sikhs donning the five k’s are seen moving around it clockwise.

amita, nikhil, sachin and me went for an evening walk one day in amritsar to the ram baug gardens in the middle of the city. in the dark we found the derelict summer palace of ranjit singh in the middle of the charbaug. there were the largest trees above us that loomed in the night light.

i remember the fervent nationalistic jingoism at the wagah border where we sang along on tiers to ‘mere desh ki dharti..’ and ‘yeh desh hain veer jawanon ka..” and anuj danced along with a fat mustached man for a few photographs on the road. the choreographed cries we were made to repeat and the performance of the armies on both sides now shaking hands instead of pretending anger. the moment when the doors between our nations opened made my hair stand up on end. i did not know that i cared about boundaries that much.

chamba is a beautiful city. in a valley surrounded by mountains, i can still see it nestled in the distance way below me, with the green chowgun clearly. directly in front of me snow peaked mountains and the shade below the tree where we took one of our many rest stops.

i got to know the landscapes of a mountain on the walk up to khajiar. every face of it has a new facet. the pine tree forests, the fir trees, the terraced agricultural fields, the underbrush and the barren bald areas criss crossed by zig zagging paths like scars.

some short cuts are tiring but generous in what they show you. Distant snow peaked mountains.

I met a school teacher on the way to khajiar lake. friendly and amused by our adventure. I also saw his students – little kids in military green, running wildly on slopes that we were trudging over.

chandigarh cant make up its mind whether it is a city or a dark garden. the roads at night are dark and gloomy. shadows everywhere and the lights from passing vehicles blind you for moments after the cars pass. we walked down unknown roads that all looked the same (doesn’t all darkness?) looking for food and found tacky restaurants in the heart of the city serving bad punjabi food. in punjab!

the capitol complex - the secretariat has a roof like an urban park. many levels and the ramp up has randomly coloured windows. the assembly is churchlike and brutal in its domination of the human body. the high court was alive and kicking the other buildings’ ass as it was teeming with black clad lawyers below its gigantic wave like roof and twisted fluorescent columns. while the secretariat was modernist housing complex, the assembly a medieval church, the high court was a true public space. its too bad the plaza in front is as barren… but so dramatic.

there were kids playing cricket in the monument of the open hand. the sun was setting.

nek chand’s rock garden is a twisted counter point to the pristine clarity of the master plan of the city. convoluted paths, grottoes and waterfalls.. a little bit of lonavala at the base of corbusiers stark masterpiece. the class was swinging in the clearing for a good half an hour before we went for a walk through the bungalows and empty open spaces in a residential sector.

at khajiar the lawn rolls like it does in a yash chopra movie. i was rishi kapoor to amruta’s sridevi. couples found their way to the remote corners of the evening light and walked back to the verandah for a long dinner.

what i learnt from corbusier was that there is a joy to being free from dogma. the only rules he had for himself was his imagination- problematic as it did turn out to be for so many of us. for me the ease of hand and the playful madness, along with the complete disregard for an over articulated form were refreshing and beautiful. so different from the anal overproduction that we adore so much in mies or kahn. more baroque and classical in approach than truly representative of the “spirit” of modernity. it is about the people, dammit! not about the palaces that they build!

the hotel astoria at amritsar has a central double heighted lobby that was our living room for three days. our sheets were everywhere, and there were kids lolling around on the chairs until 4 in the morning.

jalianwala baug, the scene of that massacre is now the site of a phallic gruesomely ugly monument in an axial garden. you can either stand where a small stone pyramid marks the spot where general dyer stood to give his orders; or walk around landscaped paths with neatly trimmed lawns and shrubs to a wall where bullet holes have been marked out in white chalk on a wall for us to appreciate. a travesty of a memorial.

the chamunda devi temple overlooks the city of chamba with ritual bells and stone walls rising in cascades to protect the white plastered sanctum. the shikharas of the temples in chamba have a double roof to protect them from the snow.

people

the class has too many couples. at last count there were 11.. that is 22 students out of 40 are seeing each other. you can imagine the train rides and the romantic night walks.

the class is also boisterous and rowdy and a lot of fun. they seem to be all together and peaceful but it does not take long to see the tensions right below the surface.. also they sing a lot.. if i hear the class singing ‘happy birthday to you once more’ i will scream.. amita and amrithi had birthdays on the trip. and then there was the entire hour before the trip ended at borivili station. the continuous screaming, the gang rape of the boys, the rambunctious mad behavior. and i was in my firing mood more than once and was a little bit of a dampener on their spirits… especially poor dishita, and anuj whose obsession for photography got on my nerves.

perhaps the most articulate person we met who set the stage for the design project at amritsar was pauls friend mr behl, who teaches at the architecture school in the city. the department is in a large oppressive modern atrocity on the central axis of the green university. his room is on the top floor of the central axis of the building shaped like an inverted pyramid with chains hanging down its sides (to drain the rain) the khalsa college was on the way to university and we decided not to see it.

whenever nikhil and me came back to our room we turned on the tv for background noise and ganesh hedge was on channel v. i liked and it was my anthem for a while.

sachin, nikhil and me sat on top of the bus with our bicycles as the sun was setting, heading back from the wagah border. the wind was cold as we ducked electric wires and the boughs of trees. our bicycles shuddered on the roof top behind us. the bus conductor joined us on the roof for a while. i remembered s v road from the front of a double decker bus.

the langar- or the free food that is served in the golden temple in a hall was not nearly as nice as sachin had made it out to be and nikhil and me held it against him throughout the time that he was with us.

night swimming in the amrit sarovar. 2 o’clock in the morning, sachin, nikhil and me on our bicycles drove to the golden temple to strip and cleanse our sins in the freezing soft water of the lake. the golden temple glowed ethereal in front of us. the coffee at bubby’s was fabulous later.

speaking of swimming, the ravi that flows though the chamba valley thunders blue frothing. We stopped along it on the first day there to dip our heads in the freezing water; to stand on top of rocks and admire the young man who swam across the flowing river; and to photograph semi clad bodies drenched in the morning light.

amita had a problem with cycle rickshaws. the closeness of out relationship with the sweat of laborers was too much for our city bred sensibilities. we took them only when absolutely necessary.

i have been reading poetry throughout the trip. languages that emerge from a completely different one from that i was experiencing. this acontextuality was strange and beautiful. the words has presence purely for themselves and therefore the images a purity. i finally was able to really love t s eliot and w b yeats- though i still cant claim to have understood either of them.

kesar dhaba was what saved sachin from being murdered after he fooled us into too many vegetarian meals. after leading us down many alleys, he took us to a vegetarian restaurant with marble tables and friendly self confident waiters. the parathas! the gulab jamun!

the food was fabulous in amritsar, whether it was the ice cold lassi near the lahori gate that was had in the early morning, or the chicken at friends dhaba, or the strange chicken and bread thing that siddarth, nikhil and me had one evening in the old city. chamba was a disappointment gastronomically and chandigarh a disaster.

whenever we started driving our bikes the first thing sachin used to do is sing ‘main nikla gaddi leke…” really loud much to our amused embarrassment.

i played football after, i think 20 years. it was never really a sport i liked. the chowgun is a large green space in between the hill town houses of chamba and the ravi river that flows in the gorge. i must have touched the ball 5 times, but ran around and screamed like i was diego maradona.

around campfires the songs are either boisterous and rowdy like sing-alongs; or they are sung in soft falsettos. hindi film ballads or 70’s rock. rajiv was our backstreet boy doing his dance number. kausik imitated a rickshaw’s music and s p balasubramanian, shetty did a cool elvis act. i danced a little and drank a little. the night was freezing.

photography in the age of digital cameras is no longer an art form or even a recorder of a special moment. it is documentary evidence of banal ordinariness. it is not about the moment in space and time as much as it is about capturing a representation of oneself having been in that space and time- once. all is image.

the bhangra on the roof top of a poor caretakers house at a temple, or the incessant posing for photographs wearing glares in front of buildings remove all wholeness of an experience in favor not even of the visual- but of the idea of the visual- ‘reality’ thrice removed.

shopping - a small kirpan and a amulet around my neck, two jackets from dalhousie and a shawl from the cloth market at amritsar.

amritsar to chamba

first post of the trip.. just to update everyone on the highlights- a more detailed boring description that will be (hopefully) lightened up with photographs later.
writing from the chamba hotel after a ride through wild flowers and fields; pine trees and barren mountains to dalhousie and then chamba. dalhousie was cold as hell and the mall road was a shopping spree for woolens. the way up and down had women puking every ten minutes.
yesterday was when i decided to live my twenties all over again when sachin, nikhil and me gave up our plan for a bicycle ride in amritsar and ambitiously rode 28 kilometers to the wagah border to watch the display of chauvinistic nationalism - dancing to 'mere desh ki dharti..', waving tricolours, bhangra on the streets, and lots of bharat mata ki jai. the rise was longer than we expected and though we had many breaks for food and photographs, we were exhausted by the end of it. on the way back, our bicycles were on top of a bus and us with them ducking in the evening light so that branches and electric wires dont cut our heads off.
the summer palace of ranjit singh is dark in the evenings and beautiful. the trees loom above you in the darkness spookily. the palace itself is tacky and needs lots of work. the road from the summer palace leads directly through the ram baug gate to the inner city and the golden temple. sachin, nikhil and me drove through many of these 12 gates - the gullies and the chowks on our trusty bicycle shired at a ridiculous price from an old sardarni near the bus stand. that night the three musketeers went swimming at 2 in the mornign in the amrit sarovar of the golden temple. cold water, cool breeze, the music was off and the temple was beautiful. the coffee afterwards was good too.
more later, i am tired now. see you guys..

the day of leaving

when everything that needs to be done has to be done in one day, it can drive you mad. the day started with a meeting with resul at 7.30 in the morning at his goregaon flat. in college all the odds and ends of the end of semester had to be sorted out; which included internship programs for the final year, thesis guides, third year studio programme, etc.. mukul on the highway and had lunch at thai ban.. then shoppers stop and bought some stuff for the trip. met amit at globus, went to ganesh’s house for a meeting. his son vinay, who studies law in bangalore was here too. then a kerala ayurvedic massage in borivili to set my nerves at ease. packing in 15 minutes- two light bags have been favored to one heavy bulky one. two books- the poetry compilation and 'soul mountain'.. nikhil, sachin and amita for company.. the train to amritsar is at 10 from borivili.. ‘the golden temple express’.. shall try to write from there.. shall be back in bombay on the 30^th. see you guys then..

cowboy

learniing some bad habits from my family. high on two vodkas, chocolate and almond cake and a beautiful cuban cigar at satish uncles place today at lunch. smooth lovely. another family event celebrating new entrants - meghana's ashish, siddarth's jasmeet and adheem's sharon. a gujju boy, a sikh woman and a catholic from bandra. our tradition of secularism continues in the next generation. fun time.

thomas hardy

i have always found it very tough to read poetry, except for the michael ondaatje’s relatively easy image heavy poems and a few more exceptions. i bought the book ‘the harvill book of twentieth century poetry in english' after deciding that reading poetry was a skill i had to develop.

i started the book with some thomas hardy poems, which i found very often sickeningly romantic, as he perpetually pines for places and times when he was happier. this constant nostalgia for bygone eras and quest to find happiness in the past was not particularly appealing to me, even though i always thought that i was a little sentimental in nature.

still liked some poems though – ‘a broken appointment’ where he is accusing a lover who does not love him about not having the politeness to keep an appointment; ‘heredity’ in which he examines his features and traces them in the future and the past; ‘thoughts of phena’ about someone who died; ‘afterwards’ about how he hopes he will be remembered; ‘during wind and rain’ about the last days of a home.

a weekend round up of the semester end

the end of the vasai fort project with a jury of young architects from the city: sanjeev punjabi, kaif faquih, shantanu poredi and chirag jain. the kids had worked really hard this time and had fairly good sheets and good models for the jury. nice the work was and the externals seemed to like it too.

post jury i celebrated in a haze of hookahs and low light, satin seats and glass bead curtains at a “lounge bar” called ‘quilla’ near amboli. meghana, sonal, ranjit, amit, tejas and me- heady long island iced teas and inconsequential music with a sardar dancing solo on a smoky dance floor. soon we were there too.

i leave on monday for amritsar with the third year. study trip. which means more organization, inspiration, exhaustion.

meanwhile as i get older and jaded the debate rages on about the value that young people get within the school. i am all for them and their energies, while others feel that their immaturity can be dangerous… to whom to they form a threat, i ask?

meanwhile, naturally the pakistan plan has flopped, though as a concept it was relly useful because ofr achange i got all my paperwork in order- tax returns, lic payments- for which i went all the way to town on thursday after college. was not that pointless a trip though. spent itme at oxford book shop, bought sonal ‘a whistling woman’- a s byatt’s final novel about frederica potter; met mukul and amit who were also in town and had dinner with them at ‘candies’, bandra. candies is so gorgeous in the evenings. the christmas lights that twinkle above the terracotta floor and the wrought iron tables with painted tile tops. the food is not bad either.

engagement - 'reflections'

yesterday evening nilesh and yogita got engaged yesterday in a “small” ceremony where a lot of people were invited. the hall was opposite shoppers stop in andheri, and the both of them were looking very happy; nilesh in his blue kurta with a gold dupatta and yogs in a fancy orange sari with matching bangles and necklace. all the couples were son being pestered by everyone around to get engaged immediately so that prasad could get a discount in buying the wedding gifts.

mukul came a little later and the two of us went to this preview theater in bandra- dimple- owned by the kumar gaurav family to watch bejoys’ debut 7 minute film: ‘reflections’ in which mohanlal daydreams of relationships with various women, one of whom was juhi babbar whom bejoy is currently seeing. the movie was all slick surface and the press was there to interview the boy though their cameras spent a lot of time lingering over juhi and her mother. mohanlal could not come. dinner was sizzlers at kobes.

happy dassera to all..

strange dream no 732

last night. a christmas tree in my room with shiny bright things that i am undressing. each of them gives out a ticking sound that scares me into running out of the house as i realise that each of them is a bomb. as i race out the tree explodes- every thing is still shaking as i walk back into the apartment only to find that nothing remains. i still can see the room, empty and barren, and can still feel the sadness of losing something beautiful.

against plurality

while reading 'recodings'- hal foster

in a world where all positions are valid, there is no right and wrong. this self conscious amoral embracing of anything in the name of plurality allows no critique. with everything having an equal value- nothing can sustain meaning. but how do i critique my own sense of the ‘good’ without being able to appreciate a different perspective?

all that is solid melts into air : the experience of modernity

a book that makes so much sense in todays desperately shanghaiing mumbai.. an exploration into the meanings of modern life and the dialectic between the violent thrusts towards modernization and the urges of modernity; the book traces these forces in the work of goethe, marx, baudelaire; in the literature from the strange surreal city of st petersburg and in the devastating urban renewal projects of robert moses in new york. through it all marshall berman makes a case for celebrating the internal contradiction of the modern self and its power to resist and re-imagine itself through performance in the classic public realm: the street.

three dreams in one night

a long white bar like interior with rooms shaped like enormous teeth- glowing white pure as if made of light. i am skating free around these placing colourful eccentricities in the gaps- toys in red and yellow plastic- little homes and machines that move; or glittering mineral crystals that are supposed to bring luck. i am trying to involve shipra from the fourth year.

a grey hospital on a mountain that i can fold into my pocket. i live in a nomadic community with a few friends.. there is a tree that we carry around, along with reams of glass beads that we decorate the hospital building with; the tree forms the center of our nomadic community wherever we decide to set up base- we drag it behind our trailer.

for some unknown reason i am dancing behind usher as he races across bandra bandstand; everyone thinks he is a murderer but me. then i hug him and he disappears and becomes nikhil; who is sitting in a room outside my house breaking down and crying as he is accused of killing someone’s son.

designer clothes - jigsaw puzzles - haircut inspiration - tax returns

shopping at inorbit on sunday – the only weekend while sonal is here. ritu kumar blouse and skirt for her- she looked lovely in them and also in a red jari speckled sari that was rejected only for being far too expensive to wear only for one day- the day being meghana’s wedding day in december.

at crossword mom bought a renoir 100 piece jigsaw puzzle that she is sitting in the living room trying to decipher right now, while i got me an anthology of twentieth century english poetry. i had carried my book to the barber today thinking i will get time to read while the dude cut my hair- but the guy was too enthusiastic and kept talking to me while he gave me a ‘captain marvel’ haircut- so he said… (he watches cartoon network to get inspiration for his styles- but the other guys prefer their 80s hindi potboilers) .. the head massage was intoxicating and a little tipsy i probably tipped him too much..

prabodh meanwhile has taken all my papers to file my returns in the hope that i will be able to apply for my visa to pakistan in the coming week. lahore from amritsar via the wagah border.. just next week? i am so unprepared.

a description of my dancing

prerna chawla from the fourth year on her blog : "billy elliot meets saroj khan"
hmm...

headphone dandiya

i am sorely disappointed by the court order to allow navratri celebrations till late at night; rather than until the 10 o’clock deadline that was set. first there was my irritation that such a deadline existed in the first place- such middle class, middle aged morality but now, besides the obvious annoyance at such a blatant example of favoritism towards a particular community (christians were not allowed to conduct midnight mass!); i am really pissed that i don’t get to see the wire free headphone dandiya i was promised by news reports. can you imagine these gujju boys and girls, dressed up in their finest, twirling around to music that only they hear? from reports (dishita from the third year) i heard that only little kids wear these headphones- sometimes.. too bad.

a 'thank you' post

thanks to everybody who wished me on my birthday- from everyone who called- babu, shyam, sushma, paromita, nishesh, tejas, nilesh, yogita, paragi, kshama….. to everyone who sent sms’… fourth year students( every five minutes a new sms), madhushree…. and those who met me and wished me- saurabh, jude, lalitha, deepali, kausik, amisha, nikhil, supriya, dnyanesh, amol, .. and those that did not remember and whom i shamelessly reminded. thanks to the third year class ho embarrassed me (and sachin who shares the same birthday) by singing “happy birthday to you…” loudly in class at least four times intermittently in a dummy drawings jury for their vasai fort project that started at 8 and ended at 2.30.. what a way to spend the morning of your birthday. thanks to amit and mayuri for buying me that fabindia lamp that is sitting on the bar in the living room right now; and amit for the lunch party at alfredos’.. thanks to mukul boy for buying me bjork and madonna videos from katmandu and being nice enough to drive me across town in the evening for the freshers party at ‘seven’ above ‘shoppers stop’, and to the cook at golden orchid for the flavour of the pot rice and teriyaki lamb; and many thanks to all the kids who wished me for my birthday while dancing wildly to remixed bollywood and bhangra.

a nice birthday.

wishes

happy birthday to me

stories

yesterday.. the meetings.. lokhandwala; then mayuri, amit and me at sea view killing two hours watching sunlight make pools of glitter on the sea through an overcast sky; the saraswat colony meeting at mr nayampalli’s house with mr jariwala and mr mukherjee as they told us stories of the time when the water reached up to their houses and the britishers had set up camp out side the colony; prasad and rupali at the zunka bhakar, and the sparc fiasco that prasad described all the way back to his place.

it is strange when huge amounts of funding are given to people with no expertise in a field- and only because they claim to love the “sound” of a language; or when two people are forced to admit a secret in public because of an innocent question; or how a non governmental organization manages to fool the entire world; and how even they don’t mind making smaller sacrifices for what they see as the greater common good. it is also strange when, there are things that we all know that no one want to talk about- though it is the only thing on all our minds. somehow, we sidestep the issue or drown it in blustering talk.

and.. sonal is back in bombay for her dassera holidays and kshama called in the evening to wish mom and me for our birthdays and so that we could wish her- happy birthday kshama!

sunday morning

its sunday morning and i am looking at a day with non stop meetings from morning till the evening. i need a holiday!

yesterday was the 13^th day event of prasad mothers death at a hall opposite sion hospital. a huge number of people from college turned up, including nilesh, rohit and yogita just in from delhi. spoke a lot to rupali who told me her sparc horror story and about the guy who had such a big architectural business that he could not afford to send her an sms with his address. after he did, she naturally erased it.

i parked the car facing the opposite direction like an idiot in front of amits house later in the day and the car was promptly towed away. while mayuri was trying to give me a ride to the traffic police chowky her bike broke down. it was quite entertaining – this comedy of broken down vehicles. we worked out three estimates for the flat sitting in the office (again!) until it got late.

gave them a dinner party at copper chimney in anticipation of my birthday (4^th october- for all you who don’t remember)

today morning in the living room over coffee, cuddled underneath the covers mom, dad and me spent some time talking about complicate things like the loss of idealism and where do we go for dinner when sonal arrives (which is today.. )

sleepless

don’t you hate it when you get up in the middle of the night, not able to fall asleep again, thinking of the most irrelevant useless things, that should definitely not be the cause of insomnia? like why qazi is still around in fame gurukul; or a phone call you should have made last week but did not; a study trip that is still far away- or those odd meaningless dreams .. when i woke up right now i was trying to find my way through wet mud around an apartment building in marve, in grey morning light, from which naked people kept walking out to defecate on a beach- in line. disgusting. in the building all my students were waiting. i remember saurabhs face as soon as i entered. can someone please analyze this one for me?

the sources of the self: the making of modern identity

just finished reading this tome (and it sure is one huge book). sonal said it is the heavier version of ‘sophies world’- a narrative of heavy philosophical concepts and a complicated book, the attempt is to understand the notions and concepts that help us see ourselves as modern beings. what is it that constructs this modernity?

naturally charles taylor traces it in western civilization, as he naturally would. though i am sure there are definite differences in the construction of my own post-colonial identity- after all i did not share the same history of development- i was able to relate to many of the ideas. it must be my english medium convent education and liberal westernized background that allows me to see my own self in the identity of the modern man that he sketches out- the thinking man of the enlightement detached and rational; and the expressive man of romanticism struggling to get in touch with his own ‘reality’ and that of nature. this careful deconstruction of my self was provocative and fascinating- though incomplete. kept me thinking- and still confounded.

my two trucks

dr pandya's clinic

dr pandyas’ clinic lies in an old rotting building on the fringes of lic colony. its been there for years, behind what once used to be the best bus stand at the base of the hill. i have always gone there, ever since i was a child. mom, dad and me went there in the evening yesterday because of dads hip injury and all those memories of waiting for our turn to go in came back to me.

i have very rarely seen the clinic when i have been healthy. it is always through a mist of antibiotics or in a fevered haze that i used to sit waiting for my turn to go in, studying the medical charts deconstructing the human body into its relevant parts or the detailed descriptions of how to identify and prevent diseases like polio and (yesterday) leptospirosis.

as i was waiting outside yesterday, looking at the doctor talking to my father through the window from the lobby to the inside i had a lot of time to notice just how beautiful the benches are in the lobby. on a white and blue streaked vitrified tiled floor they stand carefully crafted out of wood. slender graceful carved legs holding up a polished teak wood slab- soft to the touch- very comforting and comfortable. the delicate way in which they hover over the floor lightly perched on black legs- a plane of warmth for sick bodies to rest- upright. so much better than the plastic moulded chairs or the cushy sofas in modern hospitals or clinics.

there is something about the space of a clinic that must be necessarily pure- and perhaps hard. there is a rigidity and clarity that in some way represents the pure space of rational science glowing shadowless in fluorescent light. i like that.

raman

a photograph of babu's adorable two month old son in chennai.

the seven samurai

after having heard about it for year, i finally decided to watch the seven samurai- akira kurosawa’s masterpiece that inspired so many hollywood and bollywood remakes. the storyline, i am sure, everyone knows- a group of villagers decide to hire samurai to protect their village from bandits.

the hype for me was a little too much to take and i might have expected too much of the film, but it was not as great as i thought it would be- though i did get involved with some of the characters and some sequences were tremendously staged. the battle sequences were amazing and so were the scenes in the forest, but constantly as i was watching i felt that there was someone over my shoulder telling me to find something profound to feel- and to be quite honest i did not- except for the complex way in which the dynamics between the moral codes of the villagers and the samurai were presented. great action film though, and quite entertaining (though a little too long- or so my mother thought)

bjork: medulla

bjork: the new album is ‘medulla’ with sounds of birth, fluid, throbbing, squealing. her vision is vast and intimate at the same time and so is her sound. it is primeval and sophisticated. the terrain that she covers is of existence in its most basic form- where matter and thought are being born.

oceania

one breath away from mother oceania
your nimble feet make prints in my sands
you have done good for yourselves
since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore

every boy, is a snake is a lily
every pearl is a lynx, is a girl
sweet like harmony made into flesh
you dance by my side
children sublime

you show me continents i see islands
you count the centuries i blink my eyes
hawks and sparrows race in my waters
stingrays are floating across the sky

little ones, my sons and my daughters
your sweat is salty
i am why
i am why
i am why

your sweat is salty
i am why
i am why
i am why

the new sex symbol

graffiti on the college walls:

'jt' meeting

the city has been over run with community based initiatives to upgrade or “beautify” their localities for the past few years. as some of you know i have been involved with some of these- like the churchgate project or the gateway of india project. the design cell has also bene working on such projects for a while.

yesterday one of our recent projects ‘the juhu market revitalization project’ held a stakeholder meeting in the stilt area of the school. i was quite impressed with the number of people that the group from ‘juhu together’ had managed to convince to come for the meeting- people of all types; from the shopkeepers, band members, from the village and from the apartments. a local band played live music and some aunties catered east indian food. everyone shouted a lot and spoke in broken english or anglicized hindi to communicate with the other. to have the language is such a relief. the local corporator also turned up and so did a group of young men from a santacruz slum who had completely transformed their area by providing a clean toilet with a computer classroom above it through funds from the world bank.

the thing about these events is that they can be completely unpredictable. local groups will never say what you want or expect them to say. and the discussions were just like that. everyone had their own agenda to peddle and was vociferous in stating its claim to prominence. what did we expect? still they were all quite enthusiastic and perhaps ‘phase 2’ of the project should emerge now.

the week that was

the week that was: routines… design class every morning, followed by some work or the other on the impending caa evaluation (the report is still under construction); some problems to solve with the schedule of things and then in the late afternoon and evening sitting with amit and mayuri on the lokhandwala interior.

i really have started looking forward to these evening sessions. somehow the work there is so much my own. i feel happier in that space. less weighed down by consequences. the office is also done now and it is really not as bathroom like as i thought it would be. dying to get it working again. i needed that space- a space of my own- or at least a space i felt was mine. no matter how well or badly it does- at least it exists as a concept.

the day before yesterday stopped over at prasad’s place to see how he was doing. met tamal, rupali there and the kids from saurabhs class followed soon. we bitched about college, about work, about anything that we could to try and not address the reason that we were there. what would be the point in speaking of it? can we offer any advice? is he not getting his earful of it anyways? and besides which wouldn’t it be presumptuous of us to begin to speak in a place where words cant begin to express emotions? all we could do, i think, is to be there and support with our presence.

ancestors

suddenly today morning i felt the urge to reach back into my past- beyond the time when i was born; in fact beyond the time even my parents were born. i want to know the secrets hidden within my skin color. the gene pool and the climate that gave me this particular shade of brown. what gives me these particular features? who else in the past or had them? from somewhere in the middle of todays’ maharasthtra where my mothers family comes from or from the rice fields of todays’ tamil nadu which is where my dad grew up. who were they to whom i owe these particular circumstances- this body, this language? the peasants, farmers, landlords, priests, workers? where were their homes? who did they love? what clothes did they wear?

suddenly today morning i needed to see them- really see them- not in the sepia tinted visions of movie flashbacks or in the costume drama of an amar chitra katha, but as living breathing people walking streets, making friends, eating food; i want to know their everyday life; not only their glories and tragedies but rather the glorious and tragic in the mundane.

as far back as possible, i need to draw me a family tree till the branches disappear into a haze.

funeral in the morning

a terrible beginning to the day. prasad shetty's mother passed away late last night. she had a heart attack. it was very disturbing seeing prasad so visibly disturbed.

such productive work / back in business

such productive work after such a long time. reading, sleeping and a lot of tv watching. singing competitions, dancing competitions and kaun banega crorepati; downloading music and indexing and cross indexing it. kishore kumar folder right now- though i need mukul to tell me the names of the movies.

it is unfortunate that i have a meeting in andheri today- cant this bliss continue?

but that was eariler today... after the meeting at lokhandwala, met amits mom who is bedridden in traction because of a bad back. amit, mayuri and me then had lunch at 'seven hills' and i have just got back home to edit the caa document- again. back in business.

report making. furniture. office. 'chocolate'

the dates are here- the caa inspection begins on the 10^th of october and ends on the 14^th. this means that all our schedules for submissions and examinations go for a complete toss. luckily it seems like the paperwork to be done is almost over. just a few (more) fine tunings.

yesterday after my two classes- third year design and the ralph erskine ‘imaging the inhabitant’ second year lecture, paul, kaushikand me were planning the next few days when amit came and i started work on designing furniture for the lokhandwala flat.

the office is almost done, all i need to do is pay the guy and then move the computers, etc to it. finally!

‘chocolate’ at inorbit with amit. another shameless hollywood ripoff. ‘the usual suspects’ set in london with an all cool cast- very much like ‘dus’. also like ‘dus’ hollywodised caricatures, editing ishtyle and over the top camerawork. quite well made in spite of it all. arshad warsi, emraan hashmi, suneil shetty, anil kapoor and irrfan in the kevin spacey role are all quite goos. the women- meghana reddy as monsoon the ditsy reporter is gorgeous and tanushree dutta as the femme fatale is all cleavage and legs that go on forever. the music is awful- like really bad. three item numbers, if i remember right- just one big hit- at least one song that i quite like- ‘halka halka’ with the usual suspects dancing on the streets of london.

bahaar's wedding

bahaar and anand

bahaar is the last of my friends from my architecture years at lsr to get married. she was looking exquisite (as she always does) at the mehndi in a room above ‘joss’ and in the wedding at the ‘crystal room’ at the taj. anand, her husband, is this tamilian iyer boy from new york- seems like the kind of guy i would like to know better- good looking, smart and with a sense of humour. the poor things looked exhausted yesterday when mukul and me ( wearing matching matching clothes –almost…) met them resting their feet after being very polite and pleasant to all the guest who stood in line to pay their respects. they are off to kerala for the honeymoon and then anand heads off to nyc; bahaar follows at the end of the month.

bahaar at the mehndi

bahaar and anand dancing to a live band singing bollywood hits at the mehndi

i wished i could have spent a little more time with them, but the roads back are unbelievably bad with the rains, flooding, ganpati and the government machinery all conspiring against all motorists.

sunday meetings . 'dus'

mayuri, mukul, amit and me on our way to ghatkopar in the morning.

after our meeting the food court at hiranandani powai.

then suresh p m and his white flat overlooking national park at raheja estates, with the half wall bathroom, no walls.

‘dus’ is all suave coolness with magnificent flying men (and one woman) and their machines in a fabulously derivative plot sourcing varied hollywood blockbusters. a shameless no brainer, fast motion / slow motion rapid cuts for no apparent reason but to seem 'happening', an item song out of nowhere and the designer clothes making abhishek, zayed, suneil, sanjay and shilpa all look hot as hell. completely unpretentious mindlessness. i liked.

driving attempts. car deck . madhu's bombay

madhu, mukul and the ghulam sheikh mural on the floor at majlis

many attempts to get to andheri later i was in mukuls house (again). the unpredictability of the forecast, the complete lack of any reliable information and the ridiculous traffic jams made me head back home thrice on the way to andheri in the morning. it seems that many people reached safe and sound though. anyways, i made use of the day by getting a car deck fixed, with mukuls fine ear for sound helping me make all the decisions.

not being able to sleep at home, i then decided to go for a massage when madhu called to ask whether we could go to kalina for a screening of the rough cut of her bombay/mumbai epic. so we did. interesting it seemed though it was tough for me to comment as i did not know the techniques and therefore the possibilities.

speaking of film, samira has to make this presentation of her work in december to a bunch of other architects. i am thinking, maybe a costume drama staged in her architecture in black and white still shots (or vivid colour), perhaps a few short movie clips, surreal for sure..mythical characters performing unusually everyday acts in her rather strange spaces. or maybe a childrens party?

madhu and mukul in the majlis office

'blue velvet'

i had heard so much about this film in so many places, that today when we all evacuated college for fear of more flooding, i went straight to clixflix and picked it up to see. i hate scary films, i hate gruesome films. this was both. violent and frightening.

david lynch explores the dark side of the american small town when a young man discovers a human ear lying in a field and is drawn into a mystery that involves a beautiful torch singer and a sadomasochistic killer. he is assisted along the way by the quintessential girl next door. the two worlds- the perfect suburban homes and the manicured lawns against the dark corridors of high rise apartments and seamy beer bars- intersect and disturb the lives of all involved.

eric fischl's work

i am not so sure about the politics of the film that for me seemed to still stay safe within the moral bounds of traditional american family values and see everything that might be aberrant as evil. eric fischl’s paintings explore this sexual frission underneath the pretty brick facades of suburbia. so did the soundgarden video for ‘black hole sun’.

but in ‘blue velvet’ the dystopia is definitely the ‘other’ – the city, the foreign accent of the singer, the crimes at corners. yet somehow when jeffrey confronts the ease by which he is able to hit dorothy and cries, is he seeing himself anew- confronting his deepest desires? i don’t know but for me the dark side seemed more ‘real’ than the utopian suburban neighborhood. and though the first shot shows the worms that lie beneath the surcafe of the lawns, i don’t think we were able to penetrate below the facades of suburbia to gaze upon its dark secrets, as much as we were supposed to relish the disruption of the evils of the city.

extremely interesting film though and quite a thriller.. dark and scary.

'elephant'

i am still feeling rather empty and hollow at the end of ‘elephant’. gus van sants’ film based on the columbine massacre of the 1990’s when two american school kids took ammunition and machine guns into the school and shot their classmates, teachers, indiscriminately and randomly. long tracking shots introduce us to the characters walking down the corridors, the intersecting lines of their lives that meet and part at random, sentences remembered repeat and ring in spirals- no judgment, no cause and effect for the act is ever made explicit as we become participants and observers in the everydayness of the day and the inexplicable violence of the act.

the urge to explain the act is defeated whenever we begin to speak. we are like the blind men in the story where we try to describe an elephant by each touching a different part; never getting it right. was it sex? a culture of violence and easily available guns, the dynamics of high school nerd/stud relationships? the explanation is missing. Thankfully, this is not rhetoric the way michael moores ‘bowling for columbine’ was . it is a meditation. a hypnotic fluid meditation on a particular culture.

mukul said that after the film you feel like you do after you wake up in the middle of a bad dream. disturbed and with a sense of loss.

'iqbal'. ateya’s birthday. new car ganesh. ganpati.

nagesh kukunoor’s 'iqbal' is safe harmless multiplex cinema at its most banal, yet reasonably all right for a mindless night out. a rage to riches inspirational drama about a deaf and dumb village boy who makes it to the indian cricket team because of his love of the game and the help of a drunk local now fallen into drunkenness hero, the move doesn’t even attempt to add anything novel to the premise. a premise so old that we have seen it before in countless american sport films. in fact even the background score was vaguely ‘chariots of fire’. every scene and moment in the film was derived and therefore predictable.

i guess that is all fine enough, but in the first half when everyone is being ingratiatingly endearing and cute, at least i wanted to strangle somebody. in the latter half things got a little better with the cricket playing becoming central. so there we have it a film with nothing much to recommend but nothing much to hate either . but then maybe i am just an asshole who expects more from his films- or an overly intellectualized pseud who is unable to shamelessly enjoy mindless films (like kuntal accused me of yesterday). but i loved ‘the princess diaries’, ‘the rock’ and ‘legally blonde’- so?

aditya aditya ubaid prasad

prasad

mukul rupali

chitra sahal

ateya
ateyas house is this enormous marble mansion overlooking the sea in colaba in a building where , in a similar flat, ratan tata houses his dogs (and his mother in a separate similar apartment) the birthday party was a small intimate affair with 8-9 people from college and some of her friends from school. the alcohol was divine with spectacular cocktails of all types, rum toddy, whiskey sour, and something with vodka and lime; and then the watermelons soaked in bacardi. rupali, prasad, prasad, aditya, aditya, ubaid, mukul, ninad, pooja shah… we drank, gossiped and laughed a lot. spent the night at kuntals place and slept in a beautiful wooden room overlooking priyadarshini park.

got back home and ran to shahapur with mr ganesh where we went ganpati hopping from home to sweltering home and ended up on the site. meanwhile we also conducted many enquiries about the status of education in the area. mr ganesh wants to start a tuition course for the kids. we met more small town power brokers and contemplated the right way to begin intervening in a place where outsiders are seen as money plants to be squeezed for every thing that they can possibly give.

mukul and mom meanwhile went and picked up the new car which is shiny and new in the parking lot downstairs.

new car

all the roads meanwhile are jammed with ganpatis presiding over throngs of people carrying and worshipping them. these shiny pink skinned, lotus eyed, garlanded gods with gilded crowns in surreal sets.

some images from the past few days

the stilt area at manek


kuntal at manek

pdp and the arabian sea from manek

nandita / kuntal in the wooden room at manek

the party at bhupen among friends

ghulam sheikh

jogen choudhary

atul dodiya's dedication

atul dodiya's work

mukul at joss

the frame wall at ghatkopar

from pragyas house

art ojects. the shape of a pocket. jhanak khanak payal baje

there are works of art that completely adore works of art.. and their creators. been immersed in them for the past few days. jeannette wintersons art objects- ecsatcy and effrontery - a luscious dramatic love poem for art and her relationship with it, the meaning of it in her life. effusive about both the art and its creator, she is unashamed in gloriously extolling their virtues. words are what she loves; and her own are fiery and precise, abounding with aphorisms that dissect the role of art in our lives- be it books, paintings or movies. right now i am reading john berger’s ‘the shape of a pocket’- a selection of essays whichi also seems to be similar – so far .

and then there was ‘jhanak jhanak payal baje’ where a dancer sacrifices her love for art for the sake of art and ends up being the one who saves it from the enemies of jealousy and money. the film is highly melodramatic, like you would expect from a shantaram film featuring his love and his art- sandhya; the dnaces are fabulous most of the time and the music great. the sets trip over themselves in trying to out gloss each other. i loved the film.

artisans villages and a miserable jury

the sad state of architectural education on the city was apparent to me when i had gone for a jury to the “sir” jj school of architecture yesterday. a third year jury. the project i am embarrassed to say is 20 times the size of our vasai fort project. an artisans village, if you please.. these workers working always like prisoners in a camp making pretty things for the consumptions of tourists. 150 of these drones flown in from all over the country- like a theme park of culture- working away for the benefit of “our rich and varied cultural identity”. this strange construct of a national identity that relegates cultural differences to being items in a shop; that reduces the lives and histories of people to just another item on the shelf; that treats art like it lies outside the realm of real life and therefore peripheralizes its creation to mountain tops overlooking suitably pristine water bodies. will we ever question these? or will we pander to the most ludicrous of bureaucratic nonsense. a ministry of culture sitting somewhere in lutyens delhi deciding to collect appropriate marginal cultures by marginalizing them and simultaneously engulfing them.

it was truly difficult, trying to be fair to the rather adorable students, when we could not agree with even the basic premise of the project. even if we were able to put aside our own predispositions, there is only so many times that i can talk about an organization diagram. is that all architecture is supposed to be? ‘aesthetically pleasing” efficient form? i believe not. so i fought. and so did pinkish, and samira and manoj. all us krvia-ites swooped down on the poor kids and tore into them. i felt really bad, becasue there were some beautiful sincere kids.. trying so hard. so committed, so serious. i wish our students had even half these guys energy and seriousness.. the possibilities… the possibilities…

after the jury as i was waiting for amit to pick me up, so that we could go to ghatkopar, i was talking to vidya who teaches there on the brick podium near the new building. we discussed the difficulties of teaching at jj. its hulking monolithic nature as an institution, its stagnancy, the claustrophobia that sets into anyone who spends enough time there.. i am afraid of what might happen to krvia with all the new paperwork that seems to rule our lives too.