Bhiwandi
The Spinning machine
The above photo is a part of the spinning machine, it is a stand on which a certain number of yarn spindles are mounted each contributing a single strand of thread that through elaborate systems of pulleys and hooks that delicately maneuvere each strand from the spindle to the end (right hand side of first photograph) where all the strands converge passing through a small mechanism that is again made of simple wooden pegs and metal rods that does the job of managing each strand and sending it to the desired position in a giant spindle specially prepared for a certain weave. The spindle is usually a drum made of metal or wood (2nd photo) onto which the threads get wrapped around tightly. Now the tough part is that this spindle is loaded onto the weaving machine which again takes each strand and weaves it into the cloth and so it is extremely important that throughout the spindle, it has to have every single strand or else it will give rise to an empty line in the cloth with that particuilar strand absent. A worker explained that in case a strand breaks they stop the machine rejoin the strand and then start the machine again, and this is so important that 'zindagi ka dhaga tootey tho chaltha hai, lekin mishin ka dhaga n tootey'.
Bhiwandi suffers a lot of power cut, power fluctuation, power surge and many other incentive packages provided by our schrizo govt. busy stamping SEZs all over the place, due to this power problems especially surges that are very common the tubelights have known to explode and ruin cloth, spindles or even some machines, till someone came up with the idea of having a bulb put in series with the tube (2nd photo). The bulb soaks the extra power and just glows very brightly for some seconds and in turn protects the tube. In some cases bulbs are also provided as their provide the required warmth for the yarn.

Starch machine
This process is required before the spindles of raw cotton yarn go for weaving so as to increase the strength of the strands and also make them slightly hard. This is a much bigger machine consisting of compartments that hold the starch powder and heat it so that it gets the desired consistency to be applied on the strands. The machine efficiently dips each strand of the spindle and coats it with starch before it is sent onto the drums that you see in the photograph to be dried, cooled and then spun again into the same spindle. This entire process involving coating of strands with starch give rise to a lot of heat, the entire galla was extremely hot with workers working in close proximity to these machines handling boiling hot strands with their bare hands. The floor superviser explained that in most of the labour here in bhiwandi was informal and got hired on a daily basis, but in many cases a workers often takes to a certain process or becomes comfortable with a certain machine and that is when 'aadmi aur mishin ek ho jathe hai'.

Dying machine
The yarn dying is an optional process, depending on what cloth has to be generated. A monochrome cloth is sent for dying after the cloth is woven but if the cloth is to have complex weaves visible from both sides of multicoloured threads then it is necessary that weaving process happens after dying of yarn. The process consists of mounting small spindles on a tray that has perforated vertical rods (as seen in the 1st photo on the left hand side) this tray is put into the dying machine which looks somewhat like a mini boiler (as seen on the right hand side of the 1st photo) that gets filled with a certain coloured dye and then sealed. I am not very sure what the right hand side photo machine does but it is a part of the dyeing process i think. The machine was again taking each strand and coating it with oil, i guess it was like adding finishing touches or something. The owner of this galla happened to tell us that 'Bhiwandi mein koi bhooka nahin sotha hai, sabko kam miltha hai' and explained that he had a strict policy that he employs almost anyone who comes and knocks on his factory gate (for that day).
Bhiwandi as an area has number of small and large gallas some legal and others illegal all working under the informal sector and employing a huge number of informal labour. There is complete absence of planned open spaces or housing for people who work and live here as entire area falls under industrial zone.

My School, triangle lawn & Gilbert hill in 2000

Profusion of Confusion of Position

Last week we finally got opportunity to show our work to S.P. at his studio in Thane. The studio was located on the 2^nd floor of an aging yellow building abutting a narrow vehicular road, narrow enough to reduce vehicular speeds but wide enough to stage different dramas from everyday life, from women buying milk to violent fights. The insides were simple with white tiles (having absolutely no marks of paints) and white washed walls, with a unit having well stacked brushes and paints. Everything neatly arranged almost to the extent that I for sometime imagined that even the colour tubes followed a VIBGYOR sequence. An equally neat library and study cabinet adorned with the past as well as the contemporary on one side and a small kitchen platform on the other side. We started showing our work on the studio floor with every image given its due and discussed patiently in context to our intention, methodology and overall project idea. For the first time we were talking about the ‘FORM’ of the image itself and the position we had to define. Even we haven’t been clear about the nature of images and so we have been constantly referring to them as images and not graphics or paintings or documentation material. If we were to show these images as paintings then the form, balance, skill invested become important. As I was also reading Berger’s Shape of Pocket, I seem to understand what it means…where he explains that horses, lilies, sunflowers, shoes, haystacks as subjects to paint have been commonly painted by number of artist and attempted to ‘map’ the model in its entireness, but it is only those specific horses, lilies, sunflowers, shoes and haystacks that become famous and hold everyone’s attention, where the model and the artist merge as one. Here I think it is not the skill of painting that is stressed but the skill of seeing the model or the object and the rest is rigour. No doubt the ‘CONTEXT’ (What? When? How?) of the art work or anything for that matter does become important, but I feel having been trained to think in a certain way without a context most of us seem to have absolutely no means of assessing anything or being in a position to appreciate an image / text / poetry / play. So whenever we go to any art gallery most of us have a deep urge to understand context of the images and then most images / artists get ‘equaled to’, where except the socio-political context all other layers of beauty often get missed out. In History of Art (I don’t remember the author as there are so many histories of arts written) I remember reading a constant attempt by many artists to get ‘something right’ where what is right is something that is not clearly defined but a number of compositions are tried with different colours that are constantly changed on different sizes, and then a diagonal line or a yellow dab just makes it right. I think it’s similar to the ‘right skew’ concept that most of us architects fetishise or the ‘right proportions’ for that matter. When someone makes a wax sculpture of a Little Ballet Dancer aged 14, I wonder does it really become important to know, Why was it made? Who commissioned it? What is the history of Ballet? Was the girl artist’s friend? Did she start Industrial revolution? In order to appreciate how does she stand (she is made of wax, of recently she was x-rayed to reveal the artists work on her skeleton and his attempts to just make her stand), the surreal scale (of she not being small enough to be looked at as a doll but not even life sized but somewhere cast in an uncomforting scale, where you look at a small girl wearing real ballet costume covered with a layer of wax in a glass cubicle) or her expression with high cheek bones (almost Egyptian) hiding secrets that few have access to. No doubt that she turned even more beautiful as I read more about her and her creator, but I wonder isn’t she beautiful the first time you see her? Does personal liking become the only framework in absence of context, to enjoy a piece of classical music, a painting or a poem?

4th image, by Ranjit


















Work has been going a little slowly, hope we are able to create some kind of framework for making of the images. Like having a brief for every image or some concern around which we construct the images or even carry our site work. But now it will be more fun as we will be collecting data in context to the new lens, new way of seeing that has happened. Even the enquiry into how to draw something, how to represent all the words that we speak, how to simply apply paint over paper is turning out to be quite interesting.

Visit to the Town

Visits to Town have always been beautiful, something about the area that makes me feel happy, and content about the fact that only suburbies like me can enjoy that experience. The visit to town was beautiful, as memories were created and embroidered delicately on shirts and skirts that walked hand in hand that night, sprouting plants, blossoming flowers and ripened fruits, as they changed seasons around us, from warm gallery lights to cold glitzy neons seen on the horizon. The buildings turned into people, some old and ragged while others sage like with experience seen on every wrinkle of their facade, some like the ones along the marine lines reminded me of mukul dressed in pastels with horizontal and vertical stripes unsuccessfully attempting to break the chubbiness of the volume of these cotton candy cuboids, some like the churchgate station building reminded me of an extremely extrovert and talkative classmate i had in 4th standard, and many more buildings turning the entire town landscape into huge giants who had stopped moving like ents and were slowly turning into stones and plants, but still watched traffic and people wiz around them with speeds for reasons which they could not comprehend. I wonder whether it was rude of us to point to these curious giants looking down upon us to describe and show their intricately carved brackets hanging from their smooth armpits, balustrades that formed their rib cages, spires that crowned their balding heads, stained glass that they wore like ornaments. The artwork that claimed to be sincere representation of everything outside (and in some cases inside) was extremely bland as compared to these stone-wood giants that pondered at overtly underdressed people with a generous plaster of makeup and unearthly accents walk towards an art gallery.

Stone Woman

Happened to read A.S. Byatt’s ‘Stone Woman’ from Little Black Book of Stories, a story of a woman who suddenly finds herself transforming into stone, slowly in the beginning with smoothening of the skin around her navel into a marble like hard surface and then changes that take place all over her, with she having stone thoughts of rumbling and crashing, and feelings and perception of time changing.
I especially relished the descriptions of every crystal, stone, mineral, salt, pearl, rock of her and how the transformation makes her even more beautiful. And as she is transforming into stone her need to find a final resting place where she goes about standing and posing in different town squares, graveyards and many other spaces makes her sound super cute. While reading I could almost imagine ‘stone woman’ with crystals all over her reflecting, refracting light into a million beams and million spectrums all around and making low wind chime sounds while moving.
Fell in love with stone woman big time :)

On monday we (chitra, pottu, me and ninad) make 2nd year class draft insects for the graphics class. Quiet excited about seeing what specimens we have. Below is an interesting specimen of 'portfolio moth' that has been bugging me since 3 days now.

3rd soofeer cool image i say !

My favourite image of all the images done till now, this image has been drawn by aditya with details of wooden balustrades, metal pipes, doors, locks, bulbs to the smallest detail and painted by ranjit with renderings of shadows and lights on pink, blue and green walls. Long ruminating discussion have happened on this image....holding it in different angles...and ranjit explaining his seven layer painting technique...and pottu going on detailing even the filament of the bulb...and me wanting a pink sky and rflected pink light to lit up the housegalli....and ranjit being very proud of the rust of the pipe on the blue wall....and we fighting over 'we' all should take equal interest in this endeavour...and ranjit wanting to show the clothes hanging down straight and not according to the perspective....all this is rightly proved by the painting being still incomplete...but we shall overcome...someday.

2nd image

this is the second image, zooming down into one of the streets with the tower from the first painting and small new inserts that have mushroomed within the old fabric due to the opportunities offered by the city that surrounds it...al this against a pink 'Munch-ian' sky.

















the image has been mostly worked on by ranjit with me taking certain creative liberties, like my pink sky...but the image still is in process of development...let see...

The power of “WE”

My understanding of this complex word, its implications and what it allows has changed a lot lately. Simple but beautiful images from DD metro animations like ‘simi machhli’ or ‘ek a gilahari, anek gilahariyan’ first embedded within my young mind the values of unity, and the power of a collective…with my bed time stories strengthening this naïve concept. From those DD metro animation days to today with George Bush talking about ‘we need to protect our homes from terrorists’ speeches, the word “we” has come a long way in its innovative usages in the English language almost to the extent of replacing most multi lettered words for convenience, blame, appropriation etc…

The word first originated when Neanderthal man created fire and burned down an entire village and exclaimed, “we shouldn’t play with fire” to the survivors (coolly pointing at the charred bodies of the victims).

Also my own personal experiences have taught me to be careful around people who refer to you as “we” for example “we will really have to finish all this by tomorrow”…Reminding me of Sridevi from Mr. India singing “we we we we” as she fools the stupid naïve villains into believing that she is one of them…just as Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha collect a handful of good performers representing a billion of us and call it “we the people”. I don’t know whether I will ever be able to truly use this beautiful word to its fullest till then the question remains “to we, or not to we”.

Null Bazaar painting

The first painting of Null Bazaar : inner city area, a small side project which me, pottu and ranjit have been working on. It hopefully is going to grow into a series of images representing different things which did not find a place in the 33 \ 7 report done in the Design Cell KRVIA. We are not sure of the form yet... but lets see...

Diagrams diagrams

Virtual Freedom

Happened to see the Airtel advt, with extremely powerful black and white images and sub titles being flashed on your screen… one dream can change a nation (with Martin Luther King), One finger can break a million hearts (with umpire Shepherd declaring Sachin out) and one voice to move a nation two fingers to win a world war and million candles to end it, the add continues, with Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and many more doing their bit of modeling for Airtel. The advertisement predictably ends with ‘the power of expression, express yourself’.

Ranjit happened to show me Orkut site and rest of the world on Orkut, right from long lost friends from school days to new potential ones. Everyone can now post pictures, comments, meet friends and have a very delicately crafted profile (with the right light, sepia tone, Photoshop touch ups) all that as we blog, scrap, orkut (don’t know if I can use it as a verb) and form complex communities. So as we continue traveling in packed trains, abusing the government, rushing to our workspaces, negotiating for space and many other everyday torments, we can finally express and declare and say things about the government, rains, poverty, cute puppies, movies and be each others fans and change the world through this new found freedom of expression. We are finally free…

I can’t deprive myself of so much freedom that I never had…

I am on my way to buy an Airtel card, order Adidas shoes, run \ swim to the nearest Reliance centre and open my very own Orkut account.

p.s. There was no other space I could put this on, but my blog.

banganga_burial ground

DO IT YOURSELF EXERCISE

We often take our freedom of expression (speech) and movement in the city for granted, almost to an extent that we do not even realize that of lately YOU are allowed only in your house (have you ever been interrogated by your own society’s security guard?) and your workspace where you are allowed only because of your identity card (a piece of paper with your photograph and position in the labour pyramid authenticated by the royal seal and signature of the capitalist landlord of the place)…oh! And I forgot completely the circulation corridors between your house and workspace.
Here is something you can do:

Choose a part of a development plan it could be any place your locality, your in-laws house or the area where you got bitten by stray dogs…. any area.

1) Find out all the places like top-secret government building-like things (places that your locality is sometimes known by but no one has seen those places or even knows what they do). By government buildings I mean places of high security like water treatment plant, sewage treatment plant, nuclear plant etc. Now colour these places black because these will be places you will never see in your life except for a glimpse on the horizon (unless your preprimary school decided to take you to one such place or you successfully convinced the government officials that you wouldn’t blow it).

2) Now that lets say 15 percent of your plan is painted black, lets find out all the private properties in your area, all those having the board “trespassers will be prosecuted” or better still “beware of dogs”…now now don’t think this to be a capitalist invasion some people have more money, they too pay fair taxes and can still afford to own humongous pieces of land in your vicinity of course you wont be allowed there.

3) Now that 15 + 35 = 50 percent of land is coloured black, places where legally you wont be allowed lets us find places where you cant go (either because your economic status does not qualify you as an elite or because you have moral problems with capitalist, multinational corporate giants controlling the world; both of which are serious issues). If you are sensitive enough you have guessed it right (if not you are still sucking on that soft drink as you read this) I am talking about all the pubs, “joints”, international five star hotels, all the coffee shops selling exotic herbal coffee with extra froth (and a waiter who does a tap dance for your entertainment). Please colour these places black. For making sense of this point please colour them black for now though you might be rich enough to own all these places and might have traveled the world, and you eat in French restaurants and bathe with mineral water. So now 50 + 15 = 65 is the number.

4) Now comes a new genre of buildings these are huge candy coloured residential skyscrapers with historical motifs on the elevation and water tanks so elaborately done that it seems as if the architect decided to “design” when the building was over and water tank construction started. Anyways these are the new co-operative societies that employ highly qualified security personnel. You can’t pass through no matter what. I have heard even the maidservants are provided identity cards. No this place isn’t for you “security reasons”! These are spaces, which suffer from compulsory obsessive security syndrome well equipped with security personnel, security alarms, security intercoms, security burglar system etc.

5) Now that you, I assume have coloured more than 90 percent of the plan black you will realize that there are very few places within the city which are truly public, places open for all, places which people from all sections of the society will visit. Just to make you feel a little bit more sad about your existence here I dare to sadistically point out that these days even the roads are places where your presence is marginalized or completely ignored, there are very few places which have footpaths so assuming you don’t own a car please colour the roads where your pedestrian existence is insulted as black; but out of sheer sympathy for your sorry state I give you the liberty to colour it in a lighter shade (greyish-pink if that shade exists).

maple trees at Unite' d'habitation (Marseille)

City: Mumbai

Once upon a time, a time not very distant future or the past, but somewhere in between, in a city peopled by different communities, cultures and classes, occurring together…

Infrastructure spun within it like veins and arteries connecting it to the lakes, the sea and its palpitating heart. To the west was an orb, which glowed and produced energy for the city.
Forest found refuge in the centre, with walls broken in parts and remnants of histories collaged in the center of the forest, in the form of caves dotting the cliffs as slithering path wound itself along the stony hillocks. A forest surrounded by a mega polis. Sometimes the forest would invade the city and other times the city would intrude into the forest, waging an undying battle of man and nature.
South of forest few distances away is a slum, a collage of cultures, materials and activities.
A machine with different parts alive, coexisting, symbiotically and parasitically like a complex organism evolved towards being in a constant state of metamorphosis.
The eastern coast of the city lay bare with concrete, rust and oil stains with machines and men alike, working in cohesion rusting, decaying…and dying.
The 5 lakes of the city provided the city with water.
Water all around the edge forms a jagged profile, at times entering inside the city like roots branching and sub branching in the soil, forming creeks and marshy areas. Strange trees with roots popping out grow in these marshy wastelands where, small animals and birds find solace on the city’s edge.
In the older parts of the city, lie ruins of not very distant past, when the city played an important role in the manufacturing of fabrics…fabrics which spun through machines handled by men, both working in unison to become one. In the hay days the fabrics made were magical, as they clittered clattered out of steel machines eating spindles and spindles of yarn and sometimes even an unfortunate worker’s limb. When this happened the mill would be closed and the stained bale of cloth would be ripped and thrown into the ponds to decompose. Every mill had a pond.
The concrete roads flow through the city narrowing and widening, as they rise and fall on the ground, swirling and looping going through different parts of the city…narrowing and widening…like choked arteries.
The railway lines mark three distinct sharp scar like marks on the surface of the city as seen in the geological maps as they cut through built forms, slums, hills, and everything that once might have come in their way reducing it to gravel under their thundering tracks.
The inner city, also known as the suburbs, a collage of developed, developing and undeveloped lands, with housing interspersed with the green cover. In some parts tall brightly colored towers rise up above the sprawl of housing and roads.
On the western coast the city gradually slopes down to the sea forming distinct sandy coastlines. The city has 2 clear sandy coastlines that curve inwards.
The city also houses villages within it, in pockets and crevices of developments, along the waterfront, belonging to the fishing folk, the keepers of forgotten history, the treasurers of enchantments, the makers of the boats of our dreams, stand on the horizon waiting, with an eye to the sea. 

The city has a wide range of markets, most of them selling fish, nuts, taps, cloth, animals, fruits, flowers, diodes and many other things which reveal themselves in the constantly shiftings of the market within itself, as it arranges and rearranges itself with respect to the things it sells and the seasons.
It is a constantly changing city, mutating, adapting and most importantly living.

sunrise at chandigarh
photo courtesy namrata

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…