A Discursive View

Friday, June 25, 2010

restraint

the little everyday things and the big life-questions

the semi-genius idea-flash and the really bad joke

the tell-you-firsts and the dark secrets

the lengthy debates and the quick lunch time chat

the hopes and dreams and anxieties and fears...

... all withheld

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

two sides of a coin

HK: If there's an opportunity to skip a few steps and jump farther, never miss out; you'll eventually land on your feat. If there's one thing I rue, its not having started earlier.

SA: Like Corb said -- "Every time you go to the station you see trains leaving. Make sure you take the right train." I would add that if in case you do not take the right train, make sure that you get down at the next station... there will always be another one leaving from there!

tradeoffs

It's strange how almost at the end of a rather difficult semester here, I have met, in the past couple of weeks, a whole slew of very interesting people. I have always had numerous unrelated, 'individual' friendships but over the past couple of weeks I have actually found the beginnings of a 'community' here and it is rather ironic that it comes at a time when I am almost getting ready to leave.

Thinking of my rather fractured circles in Bombay and the need to rebuild connections there, it would seem rather convenient to have the option to stay here longer. Perhaps I could even wrangle an offer out of SS, which would provide the means to that end. Also, the people I have met have challenged my recently formed notions about a number of things, which has only added to the desire to stay here longer and sort them out.

I wonder though, if this is only a test. This is getting very hard.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

a spring night in cambridge

I set off on a walk last evening, thinking it might help clear my head a bit. It was a perfect Spring evening and even by the river, the wind was behaving itself. Walking past the river houses and turning back up Mt. Auburn, I came up to Bertucci's, where on such a night it is common to find one of the street performers playing. Even in my distracted state, I had picked up the prelude to Sounds of Silence as I was approaching, and thought that I might pause for a moment till the song played out.

The previous couple of days hadn't been the most pleasant. Contributing to that, although only marginally, was my laptop conundrum - I had narrowed down on two choices but there were two ways each that I could buy either of them, and after quite an exhausting sequence of events, I had finally placed my order just before setting off on my walk. It had been such an arduous negotiation with myself, torn between features, price, visual appeal, delivery, and a host of other issues.

At some point while listening to the guy play, it occured to me in a manner that I can't quite explain, that happiness is a choice that one makes, not necessarily a state that one just finds oneself in. Music works in mysterious ways upon the mind, and this time it helped make sense of a number of things - the new laptop, this last semester, Bombay, and you.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

red + blue

Architects can be very eccentric. Here's two - Takaharu + Yui Tezuka - a talented pair of Japanese architects, who presented their work at the GSD last week. He always wears blue and she always wears red, and its not even shades and tints but the EXACT same blue and red. He is the exuberant showman, with an impeccable sense of timing, always punctuating his talk with a joke or an anecdote at precisely the right moments, to great effect. She is the reticent, more calculative half, a great sense of economy in both words and action. Of course, that has nothing to do with their colour fetishism. They mentioned that their daughter is always made to wear yellow, and their recently born son, green, on account of the daughter's possessiveness with her colour yellow. The kids might have to go through some very extended therapy later on in life, I'm afraid.

Mark Mulligan speculates, however, that the colours may be more than just a neurotic streak, but rather a definition of identity. The name Tezuka isn't exactly the most memorable, he argues, and perhaps 'oh the red-and-blue duo' is just a branding tactic than anything else. It's just hilarious, I think, and I'll buy any explanation that anyone has to offer. Their work was very interesting though, you can catch a glimpse on their website. They've amassed an impressively large body of built work in a rather short period of time, for a young boutique practice such as theirs. I'm just happy that architects are wearing something other than black!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

...and found!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

lost

I am a rather sentimental person, and those who know me will readily agree. I don't like too much of anything, and tend to hold on rather steadfastly to the things that I value. This post is about two seemingly simple things that I have lost in the past year... a few months ago, the watch that I had been wearing for the previous 12 years, and just this morning, my glasses, that I had been using for the past 4 years. Very few things have 'fit' me as well as these two did. It is rather hard to find replacements for such perfect fits... and those who know me long enough will recall that I am still looking for a pair of floaters to adequately replace the brown reeboks.

Perhaps these will return to me, as have repeatedly, my tattered oxford pocket dictionary and my black parker with its cracked barrel. Or perhaps, and maybe for good reason, like the nokia 8250, they will be forever lost.

Monday, February 15, 2010

an english summer (of 2009)

It was perhaps somewhere in the middle of my third week (out of 8) in London that, as I lay on my bed after a rather full day at work, I realized that I had already recieved so much of what I had wanted for a long time, big things and small.

It was through Hanif Kara's good offices that I had landed an internship with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris LLP, but it was one of those 'universe conspires' situations of how it actually came about. After my aggressive pursuit of the encouraging leads from the GSD job-fair had ended with no result and much disappointment, San Francisco and New York's loss (at the risk of sounding immodest) turned out to be London's gain. Since the visa application process eroded the possibility of a full three-month working internship, I bargained for a six-week stint, but with a focus on 'observing the firm towards pursuing my interest in practice management'. I do not believe that was the selling point, but more the alignment that Simon Allford and more important, Peter Morris (two of AHMM's named partners) saw in my professional goals with their practice philosophy.

I was welcomed to London by a heat-wave, but I soldiered on, distracted of course by the Scotland trip over my first weekend with the JJ alums. After considering a host of options for accommodation, I more than happily 'settled' for a room in a typical terrace house in Mornington Crescent, a quiet quarter within the bustling Camden Area.

That evening as I lay on my bed I realized that while in America I had always wanted to stay in a house-type different from a flat in a tower, and had never really gotten around to it with the hideous Huron Towers in Ann Arbor and the delightful Sert-designed Peabody Terrace during my first year in Cambridge, MA. I quite enjoyed having a stoop to sit on in the evenings, munching on crisps and watching the passers-by, or reading in the backyard, interrupted occasionally by squeals of playing children that lived in the lower-ground flat. The view from the kitchen window, of the neighbour's backyard which was much better maintained than ours, was particularly pleasing. Perhaps I am making too much of this but it is an experience which I can never afford in Bombay, where even the luxury of a balcony is scanty now.

I enjoyed the city most as I walked a different route every evening after work, allowing myself to be delighted by surprises at almost every turn. I appreciated the city so much more, being markedly different from the outrightly boring American cities that extend infinitely over a grid, for the most part. Downtown Boston and SF with its topography are exceptions, although even they cannot escape the general sterility that is so ubiquitous in America. Perhaps the highlight were the parks, where I have spent many an afternoon over the weekends, snoozing under the boughs of luxuriant trees.

The gastronomic experience was truly unforgettable. For sheer range of cuisines it would be hard to beat London, and of course the eating only gets better when there is good company to go with it, in this case my trusted JJ foodies were mostly in tow. From sushi and dumplings to gourmet burgers and the choicest continental fare, even pretty decent indian food for that matter, it was one big unending binge.

AHMM was the perfect environment for the 'project' that I had arrived in London with. Most important, however, was that they were exceedingly generous, allowing me the opportunity to interact with the partners, operational leaders and senior staff perhaps more than the average employee would be granted. There were certainly some raised eye-brows wondering what exactly was it that I was doing there... I quite enjoyed playing on their inquisitiveness! AHMM are quite like the Beatles - 4 close friends with complementary skills that have combined to build a remarkably formidable practice in a rather short span of time; they celebrated their 20 years of establishment during my first week. The fact that they were awarded BD's Arhcitect of the year for 2009 is clear testament to this.

Perhaps all things do happen for a reason, after all. It was hard to stomach the Harvard disappointment the first time around, but then that allowed eventually, for experience at two top schools rather than one. It was the HARDEST decision to pick Harvard over UCL the following year, and my fair judgement was considerably impeded by the strong desire to live in London. The resultant acquaintance with people like Hanif and the Harvard privileges combined to present this fantastic opportunity, one that I relished to the fullest.

No reason to abandon optimism just yet, then.