To my juniors with love.

Three winters back, I was in an orange S-19 bus gliding over the E M By-Pass heading towards Gariahat wondering about my thesis and dandling with vague ideas. It seems so far back in time, but yet nothing seems to have faded – just a bit jaded. It was January and I didn't have much to show to this world. I remember my reviewer almost fell asleep right before me as I was explaining my convoluted ideas. The situation wasn't just pressing but clearly depressing. My anxiety, clearly re-enforced by the detailed models of my colleagues during those jury sessions, took its toll. With little sleep and a weakening digestive system, I would stay up in the wee hours looking at a black and green monitor at home; hoping that the magnificent chip inside would electronically intervene and crunch me up with a solution. The black crows would philosophically crow wildly outside my window trying to make me realize how futile life was - how all models, all solutions are only part truth, part assumptions and part lies - but then I believed in my work – felt I was converging towards a solution that would save the world.
Life right now is fast – the fifteen weeks of every semester feels like a roller coaster ride – once it begins, you just ride with it. Often I feel stressed out, totally dazed and the twisting turning upside-down world hardly makes sense then. However like the highways one isn't allowed to stop or slow down and coursework stretches your every nerve – It is during those times that my mind passes into the blissful memories of the Gachhtola. How often between classes we would just settle underneath it like migrating birds on a lake and literally do nothing. It was like my ‘Bodhi' tree – it taught me the threefold path to bliss – the art of doing nothing or very little, the art of surviving over nothing or very little (cha-shingara), the art of reflecting over nothing or very little. I hardly get to tread on such a path any longer, but my longing remains. I believe that there is something truly oriental and mystic about the art of doing nothing. Though not many would quite agree, but I feel the act is purgatory, much like a garbage collection procedure to the computer savvy.
Living away in such distant lands, I miss my city, I miss my people, I miss that ‘ Eelish Machheyr Bhapa ' that I swore by. It is unfortunate that even with such intense electronic interventions prevalent in our world; some of best things in life still remain constrained by time and distance. However, I live on the banks of river Charles now – the blue waters over which hundreds of white sails float like charming butterflies on a sunny day. I often sit back on the benches on the green banks that flank it and get to see Nobel Laureates cycle by. I lived on campus for the last two years and was in the midst of the humdrum of college life. Much like JU, there is a magnificent green lawn right in the middle of campus. On one side of it is an auditorium which is shaped like a cut hemisphere floating on space, and on the other side is a solid cylindrical chapel, very grounded, very heavy structure – these happen to be my favorite two pieces of architecture on campus and together they are almost in a dialogue with each other. Both of them were designed by Eero Saarinen around the mid ‘50s and he remains one of my all time favorites. My studio, which happens to be right across the street from my apartment, has become my home. It has an extremely cosmopolitan atmosphere with students from almost all continents represented. More than the classrooms, it is in these studios that I learnt the most during my masters. My mates, each rightly declared as geniuses in their own field, are much sought after by the world. Wherever they go they leave traces of glory. Life in general is very stressful during the semesters. To rinse oneself of the stress, there are frequent socials and parties where we soak ourselves with loud music and wild dancing, in true bacchanalian spirits forgetting that there is something called tomorrow. This charming cocktail of academics and socials makes you forget how time flies and before you know you are a graduate and life is garnished with a sweet sense of achievement.
Many of you have emailed over the last couple of years asking me how to reach such places? There is no magic single answer nor is it just luck. However I feel one can prepare early. It's not the GRE or TOEFL that one needs to break ones head on – at the end they become just formalities. Rather one must understand what one is really passionate about. Once you find it you will see all your peripheral work falling into place fueling your central interest. It is only then that things will start making sense and your work and eventually your career will resonate with a clear statement. The one thing that I have noticed amongst each one of the students here is that they are all driven. Something invisible, incommunicable that pushes people here to strive a little further than the rest of the world. I believe it's this passion.
To the fledgling architects who graduate this year, waiting to take over this world – I wish you all the luck. Be bold, humble and kind. Architecture as a profession is less about drawings and more about character. To those of you who are changing over to other streams – I would urge you to never throw away your Architectural background, rather build on it. Those painful studios where no design was ever perfect and where every hard-worked butter-paper ended up in the garbage, taught me an important lesson - that most real problems hardly have a solution. My engineer friends, who are used to working with perfectly modeled equations and perfect solutions, usually have the ground beneath their feet unsettled at the thought of having no perfect solutions – I smile at them now and say ‘That's life'. To all my juniors who are still in their early years, still struggling to find the terra-firma - I would ask you all to be passionate workers - take the greatest risks and biggest leaps now. The next few years will be painful but think of the butterfly – the little pupa tears apart its entire skin, loses several parts of body to come out of the cocoon – just hoping to fly and be as beautiful. Each one of you has a butterfly in you and nothing would bring me more joy than see you fluttering and flying under the sun tomorrow.
Love.
K.

Aplam Diaries 00

Aplam Diaries 01

Aplam - No its not from Aplam Chaplam... :) but from where i found him - the Appalachians. Three months back during the spring break I went out to do some hiking in Virginia. Up on the mountains, I suddenly found a dog following me - very confused I moved on trying not to break my rythm - but after couple of hours it was hard not to be perplexed by this canine intrusion. We made friends but I told him that it would last only till I found his owner at the parking lot down near the highway. He agreed with a nod and we hiked for the next three hours. When I reached the parking lot - it was empty. I couldnt leave him next to the highways nor was the police helpful, so not-so-little doggy brown took the back seat of my rented chevy malibu and drove back to cambridge. His nomeclature happened somewhere in I-84 East where he was taking an extended leak and I had to come up with a name to call him back. He didnt respond ofcourse - infact we played hide and seek underneath the big trucks parked in a gas station for sometime after that. He is doing much better now though. He goes to school with me everyday and infact has attended a few lectures as well. 'Aplam' has several variants - americans love to say it as 'ah-plum', my greek labmate 'aplamos' - yeah they have to make everything their own kind. My chilean friend calls him 'ap-loom'. hehe. The rest of the variants go far enough to dissociate itself from the original - ranges from 'apmul ' to 'napalm'... Recently I found out that 'Aplam' in South India means a puppet :)

Baghbazaar Days 01

I was born in a busy port city called Calcutta - some twenty seven years back. Was a calm and shy kid inept of interfacing with the world very much. Introvertish. Very. Even in school I was the quiet kind - thought a lot - daydreamed. Dont remember the dreams though - but teachers used to say so to my mom. During my early years was an easy target of bullies and I loved the strawberry ice-cream stick from the Kwality man who used to bring his cart inside my primary school in wood street and every evening before I got on to the school bus I would use a fifty paisa or a one rupee coin which I would steal from moms purse to buy myself churan. I swore by it.
Never a hotshot in anything, my primary days would pass by playing hand-cricket under the hot sun - that’s where I believe I really got my brown skin from :). I grew up in Baghbazaar, a busy little area in north Calcutta and used to live on top of a Press house. My granddad was at one point, the publisher of Anandabazar Patrika and Jugantar. They were reasonably well-read Bengali newspapers which were very active during our freedom movement and post independence era. My earliest memories of the Jugantar Press building were glorious. It was buzzing with people all the time and hundreds of cars parked in front of it - mostly white ambassadors. The Press house was some six stories high. The five floors below us worked like a machine all day and I would run down in my underwear to collect stamps from officers and clerks. I had favourites, who would intercept mails from all around the world and with immaculate perfection would separate the rarest of stamps for the then six year old me. Often they would give me some foreign stickers - those were my jackpot days. One of them actually gave me a Russian fairytale book once. It was the most prized possession I had for a long time. I would sit under the sun or a bulb for that matter and delve into those mysteriously illustrated pages for hours.