A year later...

This day last year was a profoundly sad day for me. My mentor- Abhijit De passed on and some parts of a world I was building for me came crashing down. A year later, I find myself re-building, re-evaluating and re-calibrating. I’ve worked with him on various projects from when I was still in college till last year and that experience and learning has been invaluable for me. He encouraged me, guided me with his erudite design philosophy and his appreciation for all the finer things in life. Not just to me, but to so many of us. And everyone one has their own special connection with him.

Today I’m at the very place I really got to connect with him, understand his life philosophy and his work. This was during our second year study tour to Auroville, when he was our design guide. It was his very first study tour with students.

We chatted over long Auroville lunches and breaks between study visits to buildings about art, architecture, and symbolism. About learning to brutally criticise architecture. About the very many connections he has with people from various backgrounds. About books, philosophy and food. We spent hours discussing our lives, what it means to be an architect over countless games of rummy in the train. And I started understanding him. In many ways he understood the world, yet couldn’t navigate his way through it. Taking every setback in his stride and using such opportunities to re-evaluate, re-calibrate and rebuild. He- like my father, left me with the confidence which helped me understand and face this world better in the many different ways even they couldn’t. They both gave selflessly, throughout their lives and even after it. What gift could be better than this? And I didn’t even realise it till they left me with it.

So it’s only fitting that I find myself in Auroville today. Where I really met my mentor. And the place I had the motivation and confidence to live in after my father passed on: Re-building, re-evaluating and re-calibrating.

Handy worker

I have been relying on experts to fix a lot of gadgets at home lately because daily house tech growing more and more complicated the better it becomes. Sure it breaks down less, but one can't fix it on one's own when it does... Or so I though till a very enthusiastic plumber showed me otherwise. 

I had fancy high tech concealed flush tanks installed in toilets at home last year and felt happy about how neat everything looked. I also assumed that these fancy flush tanks with their European engineering do not need much maintenance but we live in India. It can neutralise any bit of great engineering/tech. When one tank started leaking, even the contractor wouldn't trust his own plumber to fix it! When the fancy plumber trained by the company arrived he told me that even a tiniest bit of something falling in the overhead water tank can get stuck in the flush tank valve and result in water leaking into the WC. When he realised I was an architect, he demonstrated how this can be fixed. It seemed simple enough. I was confident I could fix it in the future. And the time to prove my mettle came almost half a year later when another tank started leaking.

The tricky part about fixing a leak in the tank is that it has to be done partly in the blind. The opening behind the flush plate is quite small and trying to fix it feels like a dentist fixing someone's teeth *Shudders*. I was trying to remember what I needed to do. removing the flush plate was only the beginning. Had to remove the actual flush lever parts to be able to access the fill valve which is to the left. So one can't really see it while shutting off the water supply, unlocking the clip and snapping it out of the inlet. When the thing came out, and I removed the top clip to open and clean it, the whole thing just came apart. Disintegrated right in front of my eyes. High drama, but it's meant to do that after all. Spotted the problem and cleaned it.

Snapped the valve back in place, locked the clip, switched the valve on and wasted another 10-15 L of water to check if it had stopped leaking. It had. Fixed the rest of it back in place and realised I may never need to call a plumber again. After having spent twenty minutes studying the internal workings of this flush tank, I believe I can fix other parts of the flush tank or install replacements on my own too.

There is a method to the complicated European engineering madness. Once you understand one tiny bit, it's not difficult to figure out the rest. Having said that, I'm never attempting to fix the washing machine on my own.

The cost of being single

Let me start with saying that it's not an emotional or psychological cost. That is a breeze to handle. It's economic.

Now I'm no economist. And I haven't done an extensive cost comparison, But I earn and spend money, pay taxes and I generally you know... live and interact with my not single friends. So of late I've come to the conclusion that I spend more money than my friends who were married or in a relationship. While chatting with a male friend about this it was brought to my notice that it's not applicable to: 1. Single men, 2. Women in their 20s

So let's just say that it's probably applicable to women similar to me. I had a fairly cheaper lifestyle during my 20s which wasn't that long ago. But there was quite a drastic shift in my life and priorities once I was 30. Obviously since I started earning more, I could spend more, but most of the times - only for one. Which my married friends weren't. And many things become cheaper for couples or people in a group. Couples memberships, group discounts and holidays! Traveling alone is definitely more expensive that traveling in pairs or larger groups. I can't halve the quantity of anything that a couple buys for themselves. It's always more that half. For example: A single bed spread costs more than half of a double and sometimes it's even more expensive than the double bedspread! purely because it needs more than half the cloth required for it't bigger counterpart.

I spend more money on safety and peace of mind too. Since I'm alone most of the time, I need to either drive or take a taxi rather than public transport especially if it's later in life. Being with a companion rather reduces that concern and the cost drastically. Men on the other hand don't have the same kind of concerns the way women have.

So why don't I plan more activities with my friends you ask? When you are at the age I am or beyond, most of your friends are in stable relationships or are already married and have at least one kid they're planning most activities as couples or as larger families (OR with other married couples) and co-ordinating with various friends to plan activities is exhausting for me as a single person. I used to play so many group sports like badminton which made recreation cheaper. Now, I have to rely on more expensive activities like swimming. Not that married people don't spend on these, but since memberships for couples and families are cheaper, and commuting to and from these places is cheaper if you are more than one person. You simply need to own more things for a 

As a single person, gifting becomes that much more complicated. Especially when you don't have common friends to pool resources to gift as well. As a couple or a family, one gets away with buying a single present between them but as a single person, I cannot possibly gift half of it, can I?

This hypothesis may fall flat when comparing to my friends who have children as it definitely is more expensive when one member of the family is not earning and needs the most expensive things, but lets not get that in the mix.

I am not even bringing up the following fact(ors):

1. Women in urban India (whether single or not) have to spend more than their male counterparts because of the so called Pink tax etc.

2. My friends' spouses gift them expensive essential stuff which I have to buy for myself! (ok I admit that i'm just being jealous now.)

3. I spend a lot on my interests, even useless ones. A lot more than what most people do.

And I suppose as far as resource management goes, being in a relationship or being married is better for the environment than being single. Damn.

The best is yet to come.

I have a shirt I sleep in that says so.

Yes, the dreams I dream about often outdo my previous ones, but I’m not too worried about the best when I’m asleep. I’m worried about the best when I’m awake. Every time I make something interesting which according to me is fairly well executed in its intended medium, I have very worrisome thoughts: 

What if this is the last best idea I’ll ever have? 

What if I’ve exhausted my brain capacity (ha!) and my creativity? 

What if from this day onwards, I have nothing but a string of terrible, unoriginal ideas till I die? 

What if my best came and went many years ago, and I’m living in an illusion created by my mind? 

I struggle with this quite often but I also know that our brains don’t work that way. Yet I can’t help thinking that there is a limit of creative thought per person and maybe  I’ve already crossed it. The only way I deal with this is by pushing myself harder every time. It gets overly exhausting quite often and doesn’t work sometimes, but at least it assures me that I still have some ideas left in there and it helps me sleep better.

Ps: is it just me or does everyone’s mind play that background old black and white movie ending trumpet music when they write the last word of a blog post?

FOMO Friendship

I've managed to overcome FOMO significantly since 2014. My mind has learned to give up and accept that there are some things I cannot/should not give my time and effort to.

But for the first time in my life I'm feel FOMO towards a person. It's not the best way to express it, I understand. But I desperately want to know this person and be friends with them before it's too late. It's confusing to say the least because before now there've been times when I've wanted to know people but not let them know me. Most of my friendships and interactions begin organically otherwise. This time it's almost like I want us to be friends or such before something/someone else occupies their life to be able to give me time. And it's almost feels like if I let a chance for this interaction go now, I will be missing out on something major in my life which I just cannot know at this time.

How bizarre is this?

Spent brain

Unlike last year's inktober, this time I was hoping to draw some high brow ideas with more colours and styles. But I haven't been able to because of two reasons: 

1. Let's be honest, I'm not a high brow person. At all. But I wanted to think a bit differently that I usually do. 

2. I've been doing too many things at once (All this after deciding to prioritise and having to give up certain activities for some peace of mind.) 

Following inktober prompts and coming up with some different sketches requires a bit of thought but I've been spreading my brain thin and scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas (although one might argue that the brain is a bottomless pit of ideas where most of them eventually go to die.) I constantly try to make my brain work more but alas, I have finally accepted that mine has it's limits. But I'm hoping i can manage to find more time to at least think of better things to draw the rest of this #inktober.

Firm believer

Last week at yoga, someone came up to me and said 'My cousin's daughter joined your firm.' and for a second I froze and I thought... Which firm? What employee?

I am a hundred percent sure it showed on my face.

Fortunately a second later (which felt like a few awkward minutes of me performing some mental and facial gymnastics) I remembered... My firm. My employees. 

It's been more than four years since my friend and I started a firm, but it seems that this still hasn't sunk in. I may need to confront this issue.

Seoul Searching.

Having taken many solo trips around the country, I decided to treat me self to a vacation to Seoul last year. 

I’ve never argued this before but I believe that a solo trip in India for a female traveler is often more challenging than one abroad, but like many other threads on this blog, it’s a discussion for another day (read never... only if you got to see my drafts folder!)

I never really intended to visit Seoul. Except for a brief period in 2002 when Korea hosted the FIFA World Cup and they advertised Korea as ‘Japan, but cheaper.’ As a matter of fact the original plan was to make a solo trip to Japan in 2016 but that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons. Then one day, Foo Fighters announced their 2017 Asia tour dates to Japan, Seoul, Singapore and Thailand. “Hmmm...” as my brain thought “It’s a perfect opportunity for me to visit Japan AND enjoy a Foo Fighters performance!” But... They were headlining a music fest. I would have had to buy tickets to the festival itself. Now, I do not enjoy music festivals as much as I would like to and I’ve never fully understood the reason for it, but I do like music concerts and band performances. So I was getting less and less invested in my Japanese vacation and looked closer towards home. Singapore or Thailand would have been cheaper and easier for sure but I've never really wanted to visit Singapore or Thailand.

But Korea: so much like Japan. East enough. Unique enough. Quirky enough. Cheaper than Japan enough. And Foo Fighters at Jamisil stadium enough. Also performing was Liam Gallagher. Sure, why not. (And he sang Wonderwall during his set, how could he not!) So I booked my concert ticket online in May and declared my intention to visit Seoul.

I begun planning the rest of my trip to Seoul. I love it when I’m going to a place alone. I can have my own agenda and PoA. Like:

Meet and hang out with new people on activities like a small group food tour (which I suggest wherever possible.) Walk into impromptu hip hop concerts in public squares with aforementioned new person(s) (that happened btw.) Find out a lot of Koreans attend concerts alone. Yes even women. I’m not comfortable doing that in India even when I really want to. I’ve done it before and it’s uncomfortable AF. But here I was with my people. Cycle around the city exploring it on the day it rained so much even the locals were complaining and get soaked to the bone yet not fall sick.Have an extremely grumpy old man instruct, nay scold me in a pottery shop on how to select the wares and after getting my ethnicity right after ten minutes of guesswork cracking me the biggest smile, giving me a discount and rolling my purchase on large sheets of delicate handmade paper someone practiced Korean calligraphy on. I’ve carefully unrolled and pressed those sheets on my return. (There’s nothing rude written on it, I checked on google translate)

A week before my trip, I found out that a friend’s cousin lived in Seoul with his wife and their baby and I volunteered to transport some dry Indian rations for them. It was fun meeting them, I must say. It seems there are more than five thousand Indians living in Seoul many of who are students studying in the many universities dotting the city. And the funny part is, there are many Korean students studying in schools in Pune. Since the medium of studies in public school education there is in Korean, they can’t speak much English. And like any good Asians (I mean the entire continent) their ultimate aim is to migrate to the USA. They send their children to live in India and study in good schools here where the medium of learning is English. And where the fees and stay are cheaper than living in Korea and studying in an international school. Interacting with the locals, it seemed to me that the pressure on an Indian child to do well in exams and succeed in life is nothing compared to what the Korean kids go through.

I loved every moment of my Seoul sojourn. And Soju. I learned how to make a Soju Bomb- a cocktail with Soju, beer and Coca Cola or Pepsi If you prefer. The Korean air logo has always reminded me of Pepsi’s old logo. As an army kid I’ve for a brief period lived near an International Airport close to the Cantonment and my terrace was in close visual range to the landing path of aircrafts and I know many airline logos from the late 90s.

My flight had a stopover at HK and since I’ve always wanted to visit HK, I planned take a five day stopover there. 

I decided to take some advice from someone I know who used to live there. He was surprised: ‘what’re you going to do alone in HK for five days?’ 

Well I had no fixed plans. But I had a list of things I wanted to see and do and see and do I did. Alone. And I had the best time. I reached HK the day after Cyclone Hato wrecked havoc there, but no signs of it having struck were visible when I arrived. Barely three days later there was a storm warning and everyone was told to be indoors for more than half the day. HK was a revelation. Like what I had come to expect after having watched countless Jackie Chan movies, but so much more. The 

Where Seoul was quiet and highly civilised and squeaky clean, HK is closer to home. It’s like a slightly more glossy Hollywood dystopian version of Mumbai but slightly cleaner and more vertical. I mean I hardly clicked any photos in portrait mode! Speaking of which, this was the first major holiday of my adult life where I didn’t carry a DSLR. I used my phone(s). I edited photos on my phone and almost a year after my trip to the Far East, I’ve uploaded select photos on Flickr. 

HK fascinated me. The location, topography, the density, noise, verticality, the transport network, rain, humidity, heat, culture, food parks etc etc. The buildings in HK don't have a character, but HK does: The buildings in Hong Kong have no character. But the island does: dense characterless vertical buildings with narrow roads along gradual slopes. And the best part of my trip was a very therapeutic walk on the Peak trail from evening till after sunset to watch the lights come on. Twice.

An interesting bit about my holiday was it’s timing, although I didn’t at the time of planning envisage the repercussions of some delicate geopolitical standoffs. Yes, plural. Because there were two and almost simultaneously and may have potentially had an effect on my holiday had the situations snowballed. Call it instinct, calculated guess, whatever, but I was confident that wouldn't happen. And thankfully my instinct was right. You see, It was August of 2017, The US were facing a North Korean threat and North Korea's militarised zone lies barely a hundred kilometers North of Seoul. Half day DMZ tours are very popular with the tourists, but I've seen enough borders in conflict areas in India to want to see this more. I was told that fewer tourists visited Seoul that season, especially from North America.

The second one was the Indian and Chinese standoff after the Doklam kerfuffle. A couple of days before I flew out from Mumbai, people were beginning to worry. War with China, even a limited one had started to look like a real possibility. It appeared more serious than past standoffs, and I was going to go to HK which is after all, part of China. Someone in Seoul asked me the North Korean situation didn't scare me off when I told him the grim reality of our situation back home. I told him that we are in a constant state of a proxy war with not only Pakistan, but China too. And this flare up for us is just like any other Thursday. We hate it, but have to deal with it to get to Friday. He Said he knew about the Indo-Pak conflict but not about the Chinese problem. Yet, he wasn't surprised: "China is a big headache for us too." Everyone has a Chinese problem it seems. He made another comment that made me think. While talking about his cross country cycling expedition, he asked me if I had heard about Busan. I said I had because the city had hosted the 2002 Asian Games. He looked at me surprised and puzzled. "How do you know about the Asian games?" he asked. "Because my country participates in them." I replied. He thought for a second and said "Oh right... India is such a big country and identity that I forgot that it's a part of Asia."

On the way to Seoul when tensions between India and China were at their peak, I had a flight changeover at HK where I accidentally walked into the immigration line instead of the transfer gates. The lady at the line asked me to get into a separate line for Indians. On the way from Seoul to HK a week later when tensions were diffused, no separate line.

The excitement didn't end at HK though. A day before I was to fly back, rains lashed and flooded Mumbai and caused a lot of disruption. Flights were cancelled, roads were closed, lots of rumours about the expressway to Mumbai being closed were floating around. Friends were updating me on the situation as it unfolded, but I wasn't too worried. Thankfully the situation wasn't bad when I landed. I got a taxi at midnight to my friend's house, and the roads were empty. Caught a bus to Pune the next afternoon and I was home two weeks later after what was a really good trip!

The sole intention of this post was to share links of my trip photos here. I could have easily done without all this text but sometimes I simply can’t help myself. 

Quota- Unquota

Pune Metro work barricades have been put to good use by protestors demanding reservations for Marathas to block the road hundred meters on either side of my workplace building today. I cannot move out anywhere. Thankfully I have some food and water, access a good loo and internet, so I'm not worried. Not till evening at least. Some of our office staff couldn't have their lunch delivered and found a way to get home in the afternoon. I was a bit worried for them, but now that they're safe at home, It's all right. A few of my friend have been posting about the futility of protesting and harping about the benefits of merit vs. reservations. And I should agree with them, right? Merit is everything. Equal opportunity for all. Right? 

Right... But only if we lived in an ideal society. 

Unfortunately we don't. We may all be equal, but as the saying goes: some of us are more equal than others. Abundant opportunity and lack of roadblocks at almost all levels affords me the luxury to cry 'merit over reservations' but that's not a fair comparison. A person who has fought social and family circumstance and (unfortunately) the social hierarchy at every stage of his or her life doesn't have the same luxury as some of us do. 

Others like me have carpets rolled out for us. Our families encourage us, sometimes even push us to get a 'good' education. A major portion of the family earnings and efforts go towards ensuring we get everything to be able to get into the best institutions and do well for ourselves. And if we don't, we get other opportunities equally easily and there's always someone to fall back on in case things go south.  Are we at an advantage? Yes. And a distinct one at that.  

Suffice it to say, I am pro reservations.

I've had a few arguments with people about this. Even with my own family. And I've realised one thing: I shouldn't take the moral high ground. I might be a bigot in ways no one has pointed out to me yet and till then, I'd like to think that I haven't lost my idealism. Though I am more cynical about everything now than I was ten years ago.

Full Bridge rectifier.

(Misleading title alert!)

I visited Baroda eight years ago and came across a tiny music shop while wandering around the market at night. They had one of those small travel acoustic guitars on display and I knew I had to have it. (Despite already owning a regular sized one.) a small guitar is useful for me since I have short fingers. Not that it makes much of a difference to my less than mediocre guitar skills, but It is also very cute.

Anyway, I bought it at a throwaway price. Only much later would I realise why it was so cheap. But for now, I couldn’t be happier.

It started off great! I loved it and it loved me back. We were good together. We made music together, entertained people and traveled together. It was heavenly. But then the honeymoon ended. I couldn’t manage to keep it in tune for too long. Sometimes it would go off within fifteen minutes! The high e started jarring and buzzing. B played differently open vs. While strumming chords.I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. No matter what I tried, it would refuse to tune. Almost felt like I was losing my mojo, you know. Even consulted some friends who simply told me that it’s how it is with these little guitars and that I must live with it. But the other guitars I tuned and played worked perfectly, so I wasn’t the problem, but I would need to fix whatever that was. I worked hard on it. Removed and fixed all the tuning keys properly in alignment. Tried to adjust the nut height (I’m resourceful that way.) Even tried multiple guitar strings. Nothing worked. I kept trying. Kept failing. Then I started neglecting it. And almost gave up. The situation felt hopeless. The last nail in the coffin seemed to be when I decided to visit Spain in May where I intended to get me a new one. But something inside me resisted. I went for a flamenco show and ended up buying cheap castanets instead (Worth every one of the six euro I spent on them.)

I came back determined to fix my little guitar. After a few days of dilly-dallying, I finally managed to take it out of its dusty case, clean it, took a deep breath, coughed (we live in a dusty country) and began working on it. I knew most problems arose because the high e and b strings were touching the first and second fret. I had in the past, tried to adjust the nut. And it was impossible to remove and adjust the frets without damaging the guitar. The poor thing. I thought it’s finally over. But then one day I had a brainwave. Maybe I was tackling the wrong end. Maybe it wasn’t the nuts and the fret but the bridge. 

The bridge! I took a close look and the saddle looked exactly like it was how it should look. But something wasn’t right. I removed the strings yet again, and started adjusting the height of the bridge a millimetre at a time (I really am all kinds of resourceful.)

Bit by bit the sound improved. With a few trials I thought I finally did it. And oh boy was it perfect! It was well past midnight but we were making the sweetest sounds we’ve ever made and I wasn’t about to stop right then. It didn’t go out of tune even once. The e string stopped jarring and buzzing and even the b played perfectly.

And this wasn’t even a one off! I played it again a couple of days later and again and again. It wasn’t out of tune! Just a couple of adjustments and it was perfect again. No more jarring, no more buzzing. No more going horribly out of tune again!

Looking back, I can say that fixing something you love and believe in takes time, effort and commitment. The journey is long, winding and hard. But in the end it’s all worth it. A little flaw was the reason it was so cheap in the first place. But all it took was a small adjustment and some time and a tiny effort to make my little guitar great again.

And after all the bridge repairs, as I try playing some truly terrible acoustic versions of awesome AC/DC songs, you may call me (as the title of the post suggests) a Full Bridge rectifier. 

Things we do to cope with the tragicomedy of life in India.

I came across a video on twitter that shows a mobile traffic signal being carried away by gushing streams of water on the streets on Mumbai in the monsoons. Think about it... the system was designed hundred years ago for probably a hundredth of the current population. There’s nowhere for the water to go. We’ve left no place for it! And instead of flowing through drains clogged with plastic, water- being the way that it is (fluid) finds the path of least resistance which happen to be roads surrounded by tall buildings. This is the perfect water channel. And because it’s narrow, the water flows with a force that can take people and other objects along with it.

Now that video itself is more tragic than comic but the comment with it in the tweet made me laugh so hard, I had tears in my eyes. That’s real tragicomedy right there. The caption read: ‘Pehli baar signal khud road cross kar raha hai.’ This made all the difference between hopelessness and laughter. Its the ‘I live in a shit country but at least I can laugh about it’ syndrome.

But I don’t know how long I can keep making statements like ‘I live in a shit country.’ I have to admit that things are changing quite fast. The current govt is working with tremendous will, force and speed to make saying such things illegal.

That day might come soon. Till then I can say such things because I have freedom of speech and I’m still privileged. We make jokes about these things and that makes it a little better for us to cope with life.

It may also subdue any will to solve these issues but that’s a discussion for another day (i.e. never.)

Handing over.

Earlier this week, I quite ceremoniously handed over to my cousin a relic from what now seems like a very different life. I used to be someone tinkering with cameras and had gained quite a reputation among local photographers as being fairly fearless with them. Cameras I mean. I shot film, experimented with it too. Fixed many cameras which were donated to me since people found no need for them once the whole world went digital. This phenomenon predated the boom of mobile phone photography by a substantial number of years.

I don’t tinker with cameras as much now and I don’t experiment with photography either. My work takes up most of my time and I’m known as an architect rather than a photographer. In fact, most people who know me from after 2014 are completely oblivious to that side of me. It really does feels like another life when I was another person. And I have barely fuzzy memories of it.

I don’t really miss it, so why am I digging it all up again?

Because my cousin who is currently studying Film and Television at NYU wants to be a (self proclaimed) hipster-millennial-pretentious-film photography enthusiast. And I couldn’t be happier! She’s the closest I have to a real sister and I would give her anything she asks me for (Except a pair of earrings we fought over almost ten years ago.) She asked if she could have one of my film cameras. So I went to the store room and looked for my favourite Yashica Rangefinder. I cleaned it till it shone, replaced the old scrawny black strap with a scarf strap I’d made for another one of my cameras. Gave her a quick rangefinder tour and film camera lesson. Explained to her how my DIY battery solution worked and how if she ever faced a problem, should just go to BnH photo video and they’ll take complete care of it (I’ve never been to BnH photo video, but if and when I visit NY, that’ll be one of my first stops.)

When I finally took the camera off my neck and gave it to her to wear, she said that it felt like some sort of a formal handing over. Truth be told, I intended it. I wanted her to know that she’s embarking on something special. Something that has added so much value to my life so many years ago. What I loved most was to see the joy and excitement on her face when she saw how the camera works. The manual controls, the pressure one feels from the levers and gears while operating those controls. The viewfinder parallax, the sound of the film winding and shutter opening and closing... I felt nostalgic. Strangely optimistic and extremely happy. And satisfied. I felt most satisfied.

I didn’t just give her a camera and a photography lesson, I gave her a piece of me. And I can’t wait to hear about all the fun she has and all the fantastic things she’ll do with it.

Fare well my Yashica Electro 35. You’re in good hands.

Furter crashes

A day after my last post about reoccurrence of dreams about witnessing plane crashes, I dreamt about some more crashes. Except that those were helicopter crashes. Crashed righ after trying to hover over the building terrace I was standing on. I think one was supposed to pick me up and take me somewhere.

But I haven’t had any more dream crashes since.