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…

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.