cloudy day at Ronchamp chapel.

Rain Reign

‘It rained cats and dogs’ would be an understatement. The road next to my building had turned into a torrential river. I remember a friend of mine (Patil) telling me that how even if ten people come together and pi on the central railway tracks the train service comes to a halt. My sister happened to reach before the trains stopped yesterday, waddling through a metre of water from station; noticing chappals, clothes, trees, dogs, kids etc float by. Having taken admission in law she was enquiring about whom to sue if it rains heavily. My father stayed in the office worried more about his car parked in the compound than the rest of the Mumbai city. A continuous cacophony of mobiles and phones from near and far relatives, and some so distant relatives that they could had easily been classified under ‘sorry wrong number’ slot, enquiring about who has reached and who hasn’t, interspersed with ‘so what are u doing in life these days’ questions. Fortunately all that stopped, the phone lines couldn’t handle the stress anymore. The cable decided to strategically go off during the end of a movie scene, making my hour and a half useless. So with transport, communication and home entertainment shut we can say Mumbai came to a standstill, and a standstill so fast and abrupt as if the rain god (whoever he is, I usually imagine him to look like Shridevi from the Mr. India song) had jumped from behind a wall and said ‘statue!’ We stay on the first floor and are kind of safe from flooding as a natural calamity. Electricity the last sign of civilization was cut of ‘for safety precautions’ and not because of a ‘goof up’. Till 2.00 in the night my sister and me were looking outside at the new river which had emerged in our local landscape, with the same kind of fascination that one tends to look at a fire burning…some primitive psychoanalysis thingy I think…

p.s. (on a more serious note) this post was written by me in the comforts of my home on the very first day of the heavy downpour and so is completely ill informed. it was only after 2nd day when my father returned from office getting with him stories of people's plight and the destruction caused by the heavy rains. rohan's office was a mess, mayuri sisodia and aditya both staying on the ground floors had a very tough time. lot of people lost their homes and some their lives.

Nice.

I have got selected for the fellowship program in my college, something that I was looking forward to…actually lets say banking on. I think it is a nice opportunity to try my hand at research and teaching, some things that I always wanted to do. Also I think it will give me enough time for introspection and getting rid of all the hang ups I have in life in general. Lets see…. For now our unending mission to seek new life forms and civilizations and boldly go where no boy has gone before continues…

p.s. It’s a little lonely up here…but the fantastic view compensates that rather well…I must say…

sunny day in WoZoCo housing...

On the La dida people…

I have realized this ‘conspicuous consumption culture’ is getting to my nerves with pg3 people on TV eating lobsters during lite afternoon brunches, going bon appetite in a rather pansy way, with most of them either being people who design clothes and the rest who wear those clothes…but anyways I don’t have a problem with them “living” their lives, but every time it is pushed in my face from morning to evening I just cant take it any more, another one of those oolll lla lla las rolls along with his\her false accent because that person happened to do schooling from ecole mondiale’ (with horse riding lessons ofcourse) I feel like socking their face. Everything around is just becoming too expensive…with fame adlabs and fun republics selling movie tickets at 130-150 where do we get to watch a movie. Leave movies even fast food joints and restaurants having taken to “re-inventing” themselves the only place where we can afford food like patel and shetty’s chinese are illegal and unhygienic, so we are left with option like la’ bo’il’ed’ food (with mayonnaise sauce) and mexicana pizza. The real estate prices are going high and if someone says that there is going to be a decline because of the NTC mills that someone has to be a builder. There is intense pressure on the land but it is absolutely important that we have a minimum number of 5 shopping malls on every station, which claims to be bigger, taller longer, better than the other. Its as if that the city can have only a certain class of people, a class which can afford the city…very nice indeed and we are advertising it in the papers. So friends let us all sell our homes today and migrate to Vasai or even New Bombay (wasn’t that the reason it was designed for) something, which we anyways will be forced to do tomorrow. And please do it before the prices decline!
'live your lives' i dont care, but just dont break into a salsa before me.

landmark painting

Competitions…

I happened to work with Rohan and Amit for the ‘landmark’ competition of recently. We sent our entry yesterday. Our sheet looks a “happy” sheet according to Rohan and I too think it has come out quite nice. Its filled with colours and drawings of the city imagined (we didn’t take on ground interviews). There certainly is something about taking part in competitions, which I thoroughly enjoy…
I remember Paul talking about competitions during (Vardha competition) as how they ‘activate thought processes’ and ‘generate’ lot of ‘+ve energy’ in college. When I was working with Shantanu, (during Kharghar competition) he talked about how competitions are the only way of entering mainstream practice for new firms; monopolized by builders and just too many architects out there to take away any project headed your way. During the Banganga competition we as a group had great fun designing the building and continue to do so (and at the same time get jolts of insecurities of some big shot architect pulling a “marine drive” on us).

I think these architectural competitions allow a certain democracy within the system for everyone interested to voice their opinions at the least. Then winning, getting selected etc. is a different matter all together. But what is most important is it allows you to express.

Burning Queen's necklace

Danger Wall of Geeta nagar
Once again our survey job has taken us to new frontiers of the city. We went to land’s end from the Navy nagar side, a thin 2m wide bund wall which extends 1.5 to 2 km (a billion decameters for all you know) into the sea bringing you almost to the center of the backbay area with sea on both sides. It was fantabulous. When we asked a local resident for directions he warned us of the dangerous residents of a slum called Geeta nagar who hang around there and advised me not to go there with “lady log” (Namrata). But we decided we should go there and see…

It was amazing, the local residents did give us some looks but beyond that they did not mind. So we got to see the safer NCPA and Queen’s necklace and the rest of the safe city, from dangerous Geeta nagar side. Not only that, one of the dangerous resident who happened to be a taxiwalla decided to give us a lift till colaba.
We asked him the dangers of staying in that locality; he seemed to be most scared of the sea, which rises during monsoon high tides and floods their houses.