Posts

The dreaded CEED Exam on 19 Jan

-
Image
Time vacuum sucked me in and dropped me on the 19th of January with waking up to give the next exam. It felt like reliving the day I gave my NID exams but now I was seasoned and approached the situation ritually. The day started out strangely similar, with constant déjà vu on my mind as I left the house. I remember this time asking my friends to wish me all the best, as even they had become accustomed to me taking exams now. As I started out with my dad, he had all the confidence in the world that we would reach the center on time. We started out much earlier than the previous exam and I stayed calm and confident in the trip. As we reached closer to the exam center I could see the number of cars increasing, to our surprise a huge crowd of parents and their eager children were already there to give their exams. This included the CEED students as well as undergraduate applicants. Dad, being a seasoned veteran at these ordeals, made the decision to park well ahead of the exam center and w...
2 comments
Read more

Exploring Tipu Sultans armouries and the stories behind them

-
Image
Tipu Sultan's forces during the Siege of Srirangapatna. Introduction : Exploring Bangalore It was a cool sunny morning in Bangalore and I had a day to spend as a tourist exploring the city. Putting aside my fears of being a non-kannadiga, I ventured out with the Metro as my magical no-conversational vahan to take me to a prearranged list of places to visit. It was a fairly fun day trying out thick, crispy dosas, savoury coffee and marvelling the weather as I walked my way from one place to the other. I walked through the roads with colourful Karnataka transport buses speeding to market places with fresh and vibrant flowers along with plastic stationary being sold in roadside impromptu markets. A sight I got to see was Bangalore fort, which began construction in 1537 as a mud fort. The builder was the ruler Kempe Gowda I, a vassal of the Vijaynagar Empire and the founder of Bangalore. Kempe Gowda is honoured in many ways in the city with locations and buildings named after him. The...
Post a Comment
Read more

The day I gave the NID - DAT prelims

-
Image
It was the 5th of January 2025, the temperature was down a couple points; I had to get up early in the morning and get ready for the big day. The previous day was marked with hurried revisions, drawing/shading basics and mugging up theory questions. All my friends wished me all the best beforehand and had made me feel confident for the day to come. As mom and dad had woken up before me, I woke up to find some commotion already in the house. Mom was busy cooking breakfast and lunch tiffins for me meanwhile dad was half asleep as he sat down on the living room sofa. Without wasting a minute, I brushed my teeth, took a warm shower and checked my bag that I had packed the night before. Dad was constantly reminding us the time we need to leave from our house to make it to the exam center in time. Mom was keeping track of how much time she had till then.  As the time neared for me and dad to leave, everyone finished their tasks and helped see me off. I took blessings of success from my p...
Post a Comment
Location: India
Read more

Metamorphosis :: Retrospective

-
Image
Gregory Samsa wakes up to see himself turned into an insect. I llustration by Richard Johnson. It's my routine: I go to sleep, prepared to repeat the same old daily routine or work. But, when I open my eyes, I cannot seem to get up. As I look down, my arms and legs are turned into a bug’s. Even my body has become hard and resembles that of a beetle/centipede. Now, what do I freak on about first? My body that doesn't look human anymore? The fact that my body hurts and cannot move? Or my work and the morning train that I have surely missed? Gregory worries about the latter and the consequences that will follow if he misses this day or even dares to show up late. It takes a unique level of conditioning where one discards their own wellbeing for work. Written in 1912, I am not sure if Kafka’s time had corporate toxic work culture but he was able to accurately predict and satirise a way of living which would be the norm 100 years later.  Myself, my peers and even my seniors have emb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ｂｒｅａｔｈｅ．

-
Image
Render by Author. Change always hits you from around the corner. It’s all smooth sailing to the goal till everything turns upside down. And then you have to have to stop pick up the pieces that remain and keep walking. Or sometimes change the goal because the said goal is impossible to reach now. It is demotivating and people will usually fall in a slumber or a pit of self-pity. For me it was my own self-hatred returning, It takes a long time to look myself in the mirror and blame myself for the situations that have come forward.  I know the person on the other side feels the same if not worse. Nevertheless, somewhere my heart does not want to acknowledge that. My heart takes for granted that it’s always more valid that it is the one that aches and nothing else. Is it romanticism then? That will make me be content with being miserable. Or is it the fact that somewhere, I have grown to think that to succeed in something, it really takes someone to be awful; either in his circumsta...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Morality

-
Image
What part of myself makes me wake up every day, attend to my hygiene, eat breakfast and head out to catch my bus to work? Over 99.9% of the world shares this trait with me; who want to survive and provide for the people they care about and continue doing the same every day. This is including a minority of sociopaths who can go out of their way to hurt others indirectly in order to further themselves. A notable mention of this phenomenon for myself was in May 2020, when the country locked down and mass hysteria filled the news and streets. I was lucky to live with three other people with whom I shared this conundrum. Every day was somehow a positive start for us who came together to do basic tasks like figuring out where to get groceries from and praying for when will the alcohol shops open again. The Haywain by Hieronymous Bosch c. 1490-9 Bosch, inspired from religious teaching, would paint scenes of people rejoicing in heaven, living on earth and suffering in hell. These were meant to...
Post a Comment
Read more

The fault in the Sassoon Docks Art Festival

-
Image
  Poster for the Mumbai Urban Art Festival 2022-23 by St+art Foundation retrieved from paytminsider.com Recently I had the fortune to visit the Mumbai Urban Art Festival 2022-23. This was the second year of the festival being hosted in Sassoon Docks, Mumbai. Sassoon Docks is a fishing port for the koli fishing community, which also includes a bustling fish market, fish related industries and car garages on the site. The art festival is beautifully integrated in the negative spaces of the site, existing in the voids of the daily. The art installations took visual-based forms, where the clear bias for Instagram bloggers was apparent. The installations retained their social message along with their visual flair. The festival in its nature is open-to-all. However, what was common to see an overarching majority of teen to young adult audience who were extremely eager to take a photograph for their social media platforms and covering as much ground as possible in the shortest amount of t...
4 comments
Read more

My visit to the Gun House, Ahmedabad by Charles Correa

-
Image
 Gun House as built in 1960, copyright Charles Correa Associates, courtesy of Charles Correa Foundation * After wrapping up my fellowship at the Charles Correa Foundation in Panaji, Goa, I needed a time-off to think about what I was going to do next. After listening to about a hundred different versions of my future from everyone around me, and disagreeing with all of them, I returned back home only to quickly elope to Gujarat for a well-earned time off. Amongst the places I got to visit & the people I got to spend time with, one experience took centre stage for me. Working on the Correa Archive, I had developed a good understanding of Correa’s work. One such was the Gun House, and knowing I will be so close to it on this trip; I had to make it a must to go and see it. The idea of the Gun House, from its name, shape, to the stories of its current fate brought tremendous interest to my mind. It is rare to see a work of a significant architect that goes through such massive deg...
1 comment
Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
Read more