Three things

I turned 35 two days ago and there are three things I want to say:

1. Lately, if I take a holiday from work to finish some personal chores (you know, like one has to every once in a while) I get jittery in the morning and major FOMO for work sets in. I have to remind myself that it’s okay, and others at will handle it. But it’s only after a few phone calls and updates from work do I start to relax and focus on the task at hand. Me from ten years ago would never have imagined that I would ever miss being at work. In the past, I had ability to easily dissociate from work even while I was at work. What the hell happened and when exactly?

2. I still have major anxiety and self doubt. Just that it’s nature has changed and maybe I’ve learned to deal with it better. But it still sometimes manifest itself in the form of really strange dreams. Difference: most of them are no longer metaphors, but direct, full blown references to my anxiety of the moment. My subconscious gives me periodic reality checks in the form of these dreams. And while it hasn’t stopped me from day dreaming, but at least I’ve learned to compartmentalise the effects of my dreams, daydreams and reality better.

3. I finally got over the mental block of wearing clothes with horizontal stripes. Over the years I’ve been told me that only slim people should wear horizontal stripes so I hardly wore anything with horizontal stripes on it. I finally gave up on that insecurity and wore a tshirt with horizontal stripes on my birthday. To hell with the self proclaimed fashion police, I looked good.

I get results.

So CBSE 12th standard results were out last week and it was the usual:

1. Girls outshine boys

2. Students gets 499/500 (how?!)

Reminded me of this incident:
In what now seems like a different life altogether, I was a part time swimming instructor. I did a life saving and swimming instructor’s course in the long-ish break after school ends and before college life begins. I taught swimming to many children and women of all ages between 2002 till 2009. Many of those who came to me had developed a deep phobia of water after trying to learn swimming earlier. One such case was an 8 year old girl who’s mother wanted her to learn swimming but her previous experiences in the pool were, to put it mildly- terrifying. One of these days, she came in to swim and she wasn’t her usual chirpy eight year old self so I asked her if she was ok. As it turned out, she got 80% marks in her exams. Now I am an eternal ‘can do better’ student who was happy to put in the bare minimum effort and be happy with 70% marks. So my first instinct was to congratulate her! She gave me a weak and maybe condescending smile, I’m not sure which one it was. Then her mother who usually accompanied her to the pool explained why she wasn’t too pleased about it. She always got the highest marks in her class, but because her mother needed to focus oh her sibling who was born that year, she couldn’t spend so much time with this girl that year and this affected her results. I felt so bad for the disappointment this sweet eight year old girl felt and told her about how I never got great marks in school but I still became an architect and a swimming instructor (which in my book is a very cool thing to become) and I'm not doing too bad, as she could see clearly. I don't think she was too convinced but maybe she felt bad for me and made a show of feeling better. She stayed back an extra few minutes to take a few more adventurous (and completely voluntary) jumps into the deep end that day.

Hell yea I get results with my students!

Manel

A couple of weekends ago, I attended an award function organised by AESA (Architects, Engineers and Surveyors Association) Pune, which is in it's 50th year of existence. Though we're not members of AESA, my colleague Pooja decided to send in a couple of entries for the awards and our entries looked quite impressive. We didn't win though, and that's all right. Who knows what the jury of that time, that composition and that situation might be looking for? But I do have another problem with the jury featured below and consequently, the organisation itself.

A modern day Manel

Do you see it? A perfect example of what is popularly known as a Manel - An all male panel. Personally, I have nothing against any of the individual jurors. They might be nice human beings, and I've interacted with a few of them in the past. But together, they symbolise a glaring problem in the professional world- An under representation of women. This organisation- obviously started by a few young and idealist men fifty years ago has grown into a well known and respectable not for profit organisation. Memberships have been open to all genders and I'm sure there are many wonderful women who are part of the organisation, though they were close to invisible during their event. The profession of Architecture is very egalitarian and has had a lot of female professionals who have been working for quite a while now but their visibility and representation in key affairs is still a problem. When it comes to organisation such as these which involves giving time beyond work, many women cannot be a part of it because they have another job(s) waiting for them at home- management of the household, children, spouses, parents or even grandparents. Men, however can shirk off home responsibilities easily. And In most cases without getting any flak from their families. This has turned managing committees of organisations such as these into old boys clubs. Nothing against it. In fact this boys club may even welcome women on their panels, but most women are reluctant to want to infiltrate these clubs and break the glass ceiling. Mostly because it involves tremendous amounts of emotional work and sacrificing one's peace of mind. So what can they do about it? Make it easier for women to join and be a part of important decision making. Keep events based on when it's more convenient for parents to be present. Don't relegate young girls wearing sleeveless kurtas to doing menial jobs like bring trophies on stage (Maybe get young, well dressed men to do it too. After all, equality is what we strive for.) Invite senior women architects to be a part of the organisation and jury even if they aren't members of the organisation. There are enough capable and experienced women professionals out there. In fact, the older and experienced a women is, the easier it is for her to dedicate time towards such pursuits, having been freed of being the primary person responsible for children, parents and home management.

I admit that I'm quite the hypocrite when it comes to making extra effort to break the glass ceiling. Instead of actively being a part of these organisations (many of which will welcome me and let me rise through their ranks too) I tend to spend my time and energy doing what I really like rather than fight the set system. I used to think that doing what I like and ignoring the boys club was my way of fighting the system. However, I do think I'll participate in similar events in the future if not join such organisations. Representation in any way and form is what matters after all. Baby steps.

Arrr... C.C!

The colourful concrete boxes of Chennai

Have you looked around your urban setting and noticed the sameness and boxiness of buildings? Rectangular blocks with flat roofs and a disproportionate looking unsupported cantilever at the entrances. Balconies and projections that stick out like sore thumbs aided by the numbers game encouraged by the municipal corporations of our times catering wholly and solely for the ease of developers to squeeze out as much (and mostly dead) square footage for profit. On the other end of the spectrum, we have our ultra designer houses with fancy forms with sloping RCC roofs and pseudo greek pediments and a mix of greek (that I call ironic) columns with elaborate plaster mouldings. building infill walls with bricks and covering up all the flaws of construction with cement plaster.

I'm spiralling into a bottomless pit of despair, but haven't you ever wondered why?

One simple reason is that building materials like brick (baked, adobe or flyash) and dressed stones give us a very rectangular module to work with. Structurally, RCC can take up any form required, horizontal and vertical structural elements - columns, beams and slabs compliments these and make it the cheapest. All this results in simple disproportionate cuboid mass repeated and lifestyles adjusted for the so called modern houses. All you need is someone who can calculate the requirement of reinforcement for your cuboid with allied paraphernalia and a contractor who will build the said cuboid for you. Many a times, they two agencies are one and the same. They shouldn't be, but they are.

Le Corbusier, Maison Dom-Ino 1914

So why and when exactly did we start worshipping this listless cuboid? I'm guessing that it partly has something to do with one of the world's (whimsically) greatest architects of all times- Le Corbusier (Corbu, Corby or Charles-Édouard Jeanneret as he is least known as.) Specifically with his Five points of architecture. Sure, it can be interpreted very cleverly, but  most choose not to. But can you really blame him? Post war (World war I and II) Europe of the 1930s and late 1940s required a certain typology of mass housing, public amenities, industry. A fresh and rather democratic perspective on architecture, similar to the change in the social fabric and political structures in many nations. Many of which were coming out of Monarchy or Dictatorship, (while many of the newly de-colonised ones were on the steady path to dictatorship) and transitioning into democracy or communism/socialism.

Palace of Assembly, Chandigarh - Le Corbusier

The many European architects in the mid twentieth century- the movers and shakers of Architecture, the ones who spoke well, wrote well, and well... designed, moved to the new world- The Americas. And brought along with them the the principles of Modernism, De Stijl, Bauhaus and the likes and coined the term - International style. It was like a big boys club. They decided who could be part of it and who couldn't. But the standards and principles they brought with them never moved beyond the principles of typology of mass factory housing and industry which was the cornerstone of the great European change. Industrialisation, two great wars, and political revolutions which brought about democracy (or socialism as the case may be). RCC was celebrated. Forms never thought of before were being built out of this very material. And it spread across the world like wildfire. Cement is an industrially manufactured standard material, as are steel bars. And the two combined together gave us a standard, yet flexible building material which made building larger, taller and bigger buildings possible. It was celebrated even visually in the form of brutalism without too much reflection. Corbu (Corby, Le Corbusier or Charles, as he is less known as) along with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret and a few other European/British Architects landed in Chandigarh because of various factors which I won't mention here (Pd. Nehru, etc.) The cousin and other architects along with many of their Indian counterparts and planners worked on the masterplan, public buildings and housing for the city. Corbusier not only worked on projects in Chandigarh, but also in the wealthy city of Ahmedabad. The need for mass, cheap housing, public institutions and absolute lack of imagination on the part of public institutions and engineers and some architects, R.C.C. started proliferating. And it was here to stay.

One of the most important ingredients of RCC - Cement has it's own history. Cement in many forms has been used from the times of the ancient Egyptian civilisation and the Romans. Development of Portland cement began in the 18th century, and was being manufactured on a large scale in the 19th century and made it cheap. Standardisation of the material made it cheaper. Using it with locally available sand and aggregate to make concrete made it even cheaper. Using this concrete with some percentage of expensive steel bars to make RCC, one got a very economical and robust structural material. Cement however, is not a very environmentally friendly material. One tonne of cement production releases nine hundred kgs of Carbon dioxide (through fossil fuel burning and the process of breaking down calcium carbonate into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide). RCC and concrete both requires a lot of water to set. It absorbs more heat than brick/mud. And it's not something that can break down easily. A lot of energy is used to break down Concrete structures and recycle them. 

Raddi

This data is available publicly, yet concrete is the biggest building material in large growing countries like China and India. Why don't we use better building materials which most of the times are made with something very local? Or something that is environmentally and financially sustainable? Is anyone working on making cement and the industry less polluting? Why isn't concrete used sparingly and sensibly? We've been building without today's version of concrete for millennia, after-all! As the great Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan famously sang: The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind (Although to be clear, he wasn't singing about cement but it's is definitely blowing in the wind with so much construction happening around us.) Cement is really really cheap. How cheap? It's cheaper than raddi. Yes, the raddi that you sell to your neighbourhood raddi wala in exchage for a few ₹more. The amount of money one gets from a kilo of old newspapers is about ₹9/- here in Pune. Cement costs ₹300/- per bag. Each bag contains 50 Kgs of cement. That makes it ₹6/- per kilo of cement. Take that, sustainability!

Horns and Saxophone

I've had a long running thread on twitter about my favourite songs featuring brass instruments and Saxophone (Yes, it's a wind instrument but hey, my thread my rules.) Compiling them songs here: 

Blue Swede: Hooked on a feeling

Cat Empire: Sly

The Sonics: Have love will travel

UB40: Can't help falling in love

CAKE: Short skirt long jacket

Stina Nordenstam: Little star

Ray Charles and Margie Hendricks: Hit the road Jack

The Jacksons: Blame it on the Boogie

A.R. Rehman: Tu bole main bolu

Amy Winehouse: You know I'm no good

Boyzone: Picture of you

Macy Gray: Freak like me

Stevie Wonder: Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Asha Bhosle: Raat Shabnami

Rolling Stones: You can't always get what you want

Spice Girls: Stop

M83: Midnight City

M.I.A.: Boyz

OMC: How bizarre 

Patric Carney and Ralf Carney: Theme from BoJack Horseman 

Louis Armstrong: When the Saints go marching in

Herp Albert and the Tijuana Brass: Lonely Bull

Apache Indian: Boom-Shack-A-Lack

Herp Albert and the Tijuana Brass: Tijuana Taxi

ABBA: Waterloo

Adnan Sami: Meter Down

Air: Ce Matin-la

Chicago: 25 or 6 to 4

Dee-Lite: Groove is in the heart

Kishor Kumar: Eena Meena Deeka

Ricky Martin: La Copa De La Vida
Santana feat. Rob Thomas: Smooth
Corinne Bailey Rae: Put your records on
Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run   
Suresh Triveni, Surya Ragunaathan, Veera Fauzia Saxena: Life me fair chance kiska?
Ezra Furman: Body was made

Rebirth Brass Band: Do whatcha wanna

This list will be updated with more songs featuring brass instruments and Saxophone.

Next up: Maybe a list of favourite songs featuring the Harmonica

Wonder Thunder

I was drawing a quick comic today.  And this panel specifically when I was reminded of a poster in an ex’s Loo: 

‘YOU CAN EITHER SIT AND WONDER

OR THINK AND THUNDER’

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.