chilli

a plant i flew down from guwahati a year ago, its such a gratifying feeling specially since its extremely chilly ;-)

to revive a dead blog

back to the urban jungle of Khirkee extension . . . it never ceases to amaze me. the diversity, density and discernible random juxtaposition of disparate and vastly different contexts under the towering apartments vying each other to stake claim to the skies over roads shaped out of generations of muck!

its no place to live, but fascinating none the less . . . the contrast of the glittering mall that has sprung up across the road further intensifies the complete lack of control and warped scales that our city functions within.

a decade on

i got back on my cycle today, '98 is the last time i can remember riding it. nice sleek street bike, bsa mach 1. a decade of lying on my mom's landing, and it cost me just 600 bucks to get it back on the road . . . its going to take a bit more to get me into shape though, i damn near passed out by the time i reached vasant kunj from yusuf sarai!
well the plan is to do some mountain biking . . . lets see how far that goes, but i think a week of early morning rides is definately in order, its a nightmare otherwise, in the day i mean to ride a cycle!

TWS's

o ‘Bavdis’, ‘Jhalaras’ and ‘Khadins’ fed by artificial shallow aquifers in Rajasthan

o ‘Karez’ or ‘Quanat’ system of tapping distant aquifers in Quetta, Baluchistan

o ‘Kuis’ ‘kunds’ and the par system of Rajasthan and Gujarat

o ‘Eris’ and ‘oornis’ rainwater harvesting tanks in Tamilnadu

o ‘Surangams’, the horizontal wells of Kasargod, Kerala

o Runoff collecting ‘Zabos’ and Indigenous bamboo drip irrigation ‘Cheo-ozihi’ in the North East

o ‘Virdhas’ which isolate potable water in the saline regions of Kutch

o ‘Katas’, ‘Mundas’ used by the Gond tribes to maximize the use of the annual monsoon

o Roof top rain water harvesting of ‘palar pani’ in havelis and temples

o Interconnected rainwater tank systems in Mandu and Chittaurgarh forts

water

Water is essential for civilization, and has governed the settlement pattern and urban form over the years. The mark of a good Monarch after his defense has got to be his prowess at irrigation. A perennial water supply, bountiful harvest, pleasure palaces (what we would call air con today!) all attributed to this marvelous substance which has enveloped our planet, cushioning it from the big bad universe.

Addressing population in developing cities

Living in the dense metropolises of the day, rapidly growing with scarce if any real planning and in many cases infrastructure. Grids of tube wells puncture the earth, glacial fed rivers have been reduced to toxic wetlands, water is carted around in trucks across our cities at increasing prices. What was available at a road side ghada at the chowk is now in a 10 rupee bottle which is a large constituent of the ever piling landfills. The dreadful condition we have descended to and I say descended because (before we were colonized and presented with a bureaucracy) pre globalisation our cities were quite the model water systems. The Old Delhi railway station was after all built on the Roshnara bagh. Chandni chowk itself had a canal flowing through the centre. I’ll admit the stresses to the environment were negligible in those days, I’m not shunning development either but give a man an inch and he’ll take the mile. Apathy and indifference of the average person is facilitated by a sewage system, piped water and hopefully an stp of some sort. Traditional systems are steadily disappearing most get built over in the urban sprawl, some get pillaged for material others just lie defunct.

Learning from some of the age old systems for maximising the utility of rain water and aquifers alike may not be as far away as it looks today!

withdrawal

monday 07:30 hrs 070708
one week out of a two year rut, and the shakes are kicking in.

.Delhi
.Orcha
.Jamudi
.Dindori
.Anuppur
.Amarkantak
.Khajuraho
.Delhi

Mahua

don't read this one . . .

i'm hoping you're listened to me, otherwise i'm going to be in a lot of trouble . . . the thing is i really give up, i can't figure it out at all . . . . i'm at the proverbial 'loss' . . !

one needs a dad i guess . . . . i feel so nomad, rooted beyond belief yet disconnected . . . . not three . . . . but 4 dots . . . ! i tried reading

Desmond Morris

(the naked ape) to see if at least i could get the monkey things right! it did make me feel better i must admit, but no answers . . . what d'u say when our earth gives up on us? if we were made to procreate, why don't i feel the urge? not small tinges . . . the need to root, spread and infect the world with more screaming kids which turn into polluting humans? doesn't somehow sound real anymore . . . forgive me . . . !

the need to absolve intensity with reason

trash the stable . . . shake the still

no the birds gave up ages ago . . . and yes mumbo jumbo . . . hot . . . .
i think i shouldn't do this . . .

aaaarrrrrr

Fuming . . . fury. raving mad

sore. in love. wish i had . . .

to throw away. still be in need
selfless pitiful insatiable greed

i want it all. to deal. discard
use and throw. packaged lard.

chanelise it. make it pay.
get the wings, fly away . .

riding reckeless, one way road
the climb's over . . . over load

outlaw

run run baby
they'll make me pay
rub my nose in it
time of day

i need to flee
fake . . . take off

Tryst with corbu . . !

Well here I am . . . in Chandigarh, supposedly the mecca of urban planning in India. As fate would have it I’m here to accomplish one of the most convoluted and despicable tasks. Fake drawings for approval of an obscenely opulent tempelesque golf course resort at manesar for the mammoth Indian tobacco company. I can hardly decide what part of it is more loathsome!

Well there is this architect here (Mr. Verma) an old dude who as been at it since Corbusier got his way . . . his setup is quite interesting, Joshi ji his pahari major domo is actually what I mean. His take on Corbusier is a far cry from what we are lead to believe in college . . . anyone could have cut the land into rectangles (read 'burfi to koi bhi kat sakta hai'), that’s hardly urban planning he says . . . he also systematically took apart the framing controls, lack of an expansion policy and the sheer lack of understanding of an Indian town structure.

Camp Bharat is up pretty much the same street, big American architect trying to make a Indian style hotel in India . . . go figure

There are a few things which strike me as distinctly strange about the place . . . the sheer lack of identity borne with unfettered uniformity across the city. All markets look the same, streets and crossings could be any other, the most harsh surroundings for someone new to a city. It reminds me of one argument I heard for the organic Indian urbanism, read Islamic urbanism that said the galis were narrow and winding to threaten invaders and make the city more secure. In a perverse 20^th century way, le corb seems to have done exactly tat. And 50 or so years since, the place is still pretty characterless, though it has been invaded by biharis and nepalis and just about any strereotype you could see in an average Indian city, somehow nothing seems in place, its like a people undergoing continuous adjustment.

But one thing i must say corbu figured out . . . road cross sections . . . 2 lane per direction for MV traffic (including buses), segregated NMV lanes, adequate pavements and generous ROW's with double layered planting . . . low pavements with kerb cuts, round abouts at all the intersections, only one entry per face for each sector . . . service lanes at commercial areas . . . quite impressive, its not as if i'm going there for the first time, but first time after i learnt how roads work . . !

and so many trees . . . variety and abundance . . . joy!

daredevils sentiaps - del - punjab 180508

But just imagine what Virender Sehwag would be going through at the moment. He bowled that one over and that turned the tables completely. There was no need to get two spinners in action and he could have so easily managed with Mishra bowling from one end. Sehwag conceded 22 in one over and that was a deadly punch really!

It's not raining at the moment, it's not drizzling too. It's just a mizzle and when I say that, it means that there are only a few spots of rain in the air. The rain was never heavy enough for the play to be called off.

Yuvraj Singh is absolutely livid with the work of the groundsmen here. He wants the main covers to come onto the square rightaway, the game has been called off, I just can't understand why the groundsmen are delaying things.

Virender Sehwag is not happy with the ongoings at the moment, the rain has eased out for sure. The umpires are not happy with the groundsmen here, the covers haven't yet been pulled in.

Kings XI are ahead of the D/L Equation by 6 runs now. So, if the game stops here, Punjab will race away with a win in this contest.

It was constantly raining right from the start, now the intensity has picked up. The umpires confer in the middle and they have signalled the groundsmen to bring on the covers.

unsure yet insecure

think ahead, look behind
find the thread, try refine
start anew, try reskew
draw it tight, redefine . .

in a hole walls closing in
geyser rush the air is thin
i find myself fresh as dew
feigning fighting giving in

we all have crutches, big and small
virtues are the biggest fall
chances came and them i blew
regret nothing, regret it all

as i rhyme i start to think
rising only just to sink
niravana, kids to name a few
directionless . . . at the brink

cv

Tarun Jayaram

Born: 09 10 '79

Address: C1/4, SDA, New Delhi – 110016

School:

'84 to '89 mirambika, Aurobindo Ashram, New Delhi

'90 to 97 Mother's International School, Aurobindo Ashram, New Delhi

College:

'98 to '04 School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi

Work ex:

'97 Pradeep Sachdeva Design Associates, Khirki village, New Delhi

'99 Bindia Thapar

'00 IM Chisti

'04 Water Heritage Series

'04 to '06 Blox Architects – startup firm with three partners

'05 '06 Assistant Curator APJ Media Gallery, Badarpur border, Delhi

Art Director – 'For Real' Sundance motion picture Directed by Sona Jain

'06 to '08 Pradeep Sachdeva Design Associates

Skills:

Multi instrumentalist with a strong background in Indian rhythm

CAD, DTP, Solid Modelling, Video editing, Strategy games and p2p

Rock climbing, trekking and Bike touring

Photography processing and printing

Bamboo working, dying, pottery, paper craft and model making

old school

Some pen and ink renderings coloured in with pencil colours . . . SK Singh
Really amazing what the hand can capture, and how the relevance of the medium is questioned in this day and age, where digital visualisation is taking over . . . it really is heartening to see something which restores your faith in what could be termed a 'waning belief' in the hand . . . not to take away from the monoliths of meghalaya or the river brahmaputra in guwahati, but i can just imagine making a 3d . . . its just a different planet . . . it is all about communication after all, and 2d representations are only for the trained eye, with a hand like that, all barriers of communication with a layman are pretty much shattered . . . truly impressed . .

. . . they are 15 minute sketches too!

do onions have seeds . . ?

yes and really pretty flowers too . . .

.od

what if . . . maybe . . . say suppose . . .
the earth just stopped and spewed some prose
incoherent violent blows
in your ears and out your nose
.reeling .faint .raw .exposed
take your time .overdose.
what to do . . . that’s how it goes

u couldn’t care . . . I am nose

a blatant lie .from friend .to foe
crippled by the scathing blow
burn my boat .row row row
sinking fast down .Down below
disbelief .I cannot know
far away .heave and throw
I plant descent .u watch it grow

Internalize it .let it show

sop of sorts

Masters in sustainable urbanism

Born and brought up in India, a country of vast variety and diverse history brought together by the British who left us united and equipped to deal with the developing world. The sheer lack of efficiency of the bureaucracy we inherited is the only reason for the survival of indigenous knowledge which otherwise fails to find a position in the rapidly modernising and densifying urban scenario in the subcontinent.

Water, land and air the main commodities of an urban realm are no longer easily available, and scarcity is the name of the game. Pollution and dirt spreads around us, landfills pile up, the night sky disappears.

The scary part is that the explosion seems to have just kicked off . . . rearing to go our cities are growing at unprecedented rates . . . the prices continue to rise, and all of a sudden people from around the world seem to want to come here . . . far from planned our urban centers are ill prepared for the rapid densification that ensues, developers and builders far outrun desperately struggling municipalities . . .

. . . amidst all this, the average Indian has an amazingly low standard of living consuming next to nothing as compared to his first world counterpart . . . as we shape our urban form around our heritage, our unique situation and adaptive nature needs to be incorporated to customise our cities according to our requirement. Aping the first world with inadequate resources and a paradigm away in requirement, we are bound to come up short in all regards.

To address issues of natural resources (water, land, air, life . . . ), waste, mobility within the context of a developing country with regard to the inherent tradition of urbanism . . .

solving the puzzle

the americans seem to have invented most of the trusses, but this japanese program 'goya' is an amazing tool for calculating the resultant stresses in the members of the truss . . . slowly simone's truss is starting to make sense, though i haven't been able to model it yet . . . the positive stresses are tension and the negative compression . . ! though most of these trusses are loaded from within not from above . . .

the simone section

someone help me figure out which members are in tension and which are in compression . . . !

guadua

back from madras . . . revit ready, and plunging headlong into a simon velez bamboo roof . . . now thats life . . . :-) we got the fastest machine i've seen in office too, core 4 4gb ram workstation board . . . rocks, generated a dtm of guwahati riverfont in under a minute. but it makes you realise that the human brain is on a different planet, and computing is almost barking up the wrong tree its that far behind. working out the bamboo truss to support the roof of boss' farm house, the grinding grey cells could not be substituted both for end result and sheer gratification. standing on the scaffolding, bolting the bamboo into place with wheat field swaying in the breeze all around, the rustle of leaves in the back ground, really . . . no substitute for the real thing . . .

சென்னை

i know you can't read tamil, and neither can i . . . it says madras up there i think . . .
well i've been here a couple of days, and its starting to seep in, the salty breeze, alien language, crowded streets lined with the variety of a typical indian metropolis. coming from delhi its a pleasent drop in pace though. they've had a metro since the 30's . . . go figure. well i walked the marina beach, and i don't think i've seen a beach that large anywhere . . . and its full of people, fishermen to couples . . . vadapalini is where i'm based, close on nungambakam. but t nagar is where its at as far as i can gather.

. . . off to kanchipuram, dusty temple town north of madras . . .
;-)

ओये . . . क्या चल रहा है?
अबे फोनेटिक फॉण्ट मिल गया । । । कूल !
ऐसे थो हम हिन्दी आराम से टाइप कर सकते हैं, हिंगलिश figure आउट करना होगा । । । पढ़ना थोड़ा फिघ्त है!
चल । । । पूर्ण विराम फॉर डॉट डोट डॉट इस a bit much थौघ
हाउ दो इ गेट बेक टू इंग्लिश । । । हेल्प । । ।
अस्दास्द

page 44

reading through a pdf by tripp . . .

. . . nanded municipality wanted broader mv lanes (we had proposed 5.5m) . . . fire tender and ambulance must pass together . . . that's the reason i heard . . . ! so i got curious about the ambedkar nagar delhi gate corridor . . . . what are they going to give us i wondered . . .

. . . 5.5m wide mv's . . . yup . . . better believe it . . . 6.75 most of the time, but reserve the right to be silent . . . 5.5

they will definately do one thing though . . . and this is a big one . . .

. . . unify the cross section, with a priority to pedestrians.

if you have actually checked out page 44, just notice the carriage way, the lack of level drops is striking if you're used to looking at delhi road cross sections. a 450mm high curb is standard. 150 max in the hcbs corridor. at grade pedestrian crossings. narrow mv's make smooth and medium speed traffic . . . it should work i say . .

. . ;-)

foot in mouth

it sounds very obvious . . .
. . . but where my mouth gets me sometimes . . . . i think my foor would also not get in . . . !

machines no love, no grace

A crisp evening, at the cusp of one of the rare pleasant days in delhi. Biking back from ITO just past midnight, to vasant kunj; i encountered a series of events which all seemed to tell the same story.

Now you are one of two types of people . . . either you are in charge of a machine, or you're not. The type of machine you have may vary, and vary they do. But vulnerability is largely proportional to the size of the machine.

The most drastic determining quality would have to be the presence of an internal combustion engine. cycles is to motorcycles, more drastically carts to cars. Not however to undermine the import of private vs. public owned machines. here they begin to be called modes.

Well coming back to the drive, as i turned to out from behind times of india, an auto toppled, screaming women and a crowd tipping back the vehicle from its turtled position . . . this had an impact on me, and i broke the red light driving cautiously at the right extreme of the left lane. it struck me that there used to be a board at ITO that displayed the number of people lost to the roads, 4 a day used to be the usual figure 5 years ago, i think it would still be the same. improved safety and roads causing a deficit made up for by increase in population. so i decided to study the road on the way back and see if i could establish a pattern . .

the pattern in the use of public space in .the city.

'pockets of private space linked by webs complex mixtures of the two'

space that has been given ownership of to large elected municipalities, to the mercy of the PWD, and nameless others. All of whom provide essential services without which the metropolis of millions would .screech .all of which we pay for anyhow.

transportation is the crux of this public space. Cities like currencies work on the movement of capital. money is replaced by everything you can imagine, for the city moves it all. even the money is transported through our public space in heavily armoured machines. not to mention people, electricity, shit, water the list is endless . . .

exiting india gate on shahjahan road, i encountered three glowing ice cream vendors set in a triangular formation on the left lane. The middle one touching the bus line as if a centre forward attacking the fast lane. this left two lanes for traffic, more than sufficient, i passed within a meter of the cart doing 50. Now shahjahan road opposite upsc has pavements behind lutyens trees and generous ROW's. but its here that they stand ready to attack a drive by, forcing a bottleneck and thus business.

Caught up in thought, steadily right of left lane a beep disconcertingly near revealed a white innova rapidly approaching . . . banking out of the way i realised sometimes the fast lane is the safer place to be. by now i had just crossed lodhi road, and approaching the jorbagh metro station under construction, i almost jumped when i saw a guy standing by his cycle wearing his shirt in the middle of the fast lane (right extreme for right hand drive). narrowly missing him i wondered maybe it is the opposite here. as in the left lane is actually the overtaking lane.

approaching aiims flyover, the ultimate traffic lubricant, i realised how machine centric our public space is. the inherent approval for a metro, a superior machine which disappears under the ground leaving our roads free. heaven sent is the public sentiment. block up lanes to make pavements or more drastically bus corridors, and they're up in arms. there are no pavements on the aiims flyover, there are four free pedestrian lefts, and what average out to 500m detours to go straight.

At andheria modh i witnessed the spectacle of a truck overtaking a laden truck overtaking a even heavier truck, taking up all but enough space for me to squeeze past rapidly from the left. breaking the red light screened by a honda city, i turned home to vasant kunj.

What we need is a truck free city, all goods should passing through the capital should go vide an exclusively electrical means. The ring rail can be used as the core network, five or six high speed arms out of the NCR could form nodes. This would also help get the metro linked to the ring rail.

but not to forget the .pedestrian

why they don't make a pavement on the road, the long walk from andheria modh to vasant kunj is undertaken daily. cycling is also very common not to mention goods rickshaws. If we're getting a metro link surely non motorised vehicles for para trasnsit should be prioritised, or are we going to build mlug parkings at the stations and drive our fancy cars to the metro.

.End note
The PWD laid a fresh hot mix road leading in to D2 for the annual day of the fancy goenka school. less than a week later DJB commenced digging a deep sewer through one of the two freshly laid lanes. 3 months later they have reached the main road, leaving behind ruins akin to a martian landscape.
.this is india
;-)

think . . .

. . for a minute that u're a leaf
can't see a thing, but feel the breeze

pining up towards the sun
all your brothers, everyone

ufo's, birds and bees
pollinate and make more trees

a small world . . .

si . . . . i'm not posting . . . .

there's always a light . . . .
. . . . tunnels are deceptive sometimes though . . .

and to quate babar . .
. . hindu's are unbelievers!

peace
piece
peas