think╫ink

DISCLAIMER: Please be warned that Hemant Sreekumar’s performance at 7:25 pm in blueFROG uses strobe lights and high pitched sounds. It is not recommended for those prone to seizures, palpitations or experiencing heart problems.

2012-01-26T22:32:00.001-08:00

flower running

2011-12-26T06:16:00.000-08:00

Siem Riep

2011-09-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

A quaint old french town at the base of the most spectacular temple complex in the world . . and its totally underwater . . actually most of cambodia seems to be. The Tonde Sap lake which acts as a monsoon storage seems to have exercised its right over most of the country from what i can tell . . would love to see a satellite picture! Siem riep itself is a really touristy place, but its retained an old world pace that eludes even the smallest indian tourist spots. The cambodian people are so happy. The food is amamzing and the beer is cheap too . . not like vietnam, but cheap none the less. Thought I would go to Battambang to see the bamboo trrain, but Siem Riep seems to have superglued me . . :)

Vietnam

2011-09-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

Communist, socialist or capitalist . . it really makes one think . . definitely not democratic, but after Bush I have to think of that as a tainted word . . . I have grown up respecting the power of the people, and it has been reinforced time and again . . . even as recently as the mad marathis nation bandh. it defintely seems great. the power of the people, freedom of speech, freedom of laziness and freedom of anything. at least that's what they'd have you believe . . . more and more it is seeming to me like an argument for limitations . . . here in this third world country, everyone is equal . . yes its a small country, one tenth of our size and population, but none the less . . there is something to be learnt here . . we can't go on using democray as a veil for capitalist exploitation and hiding behing and archaich education system and a social heirarchy which has been abused beyond belief forever . . how long can we keeep our women behing the scenes . . how long can we act like biharis are not human beings . . i sense some serious myopia.
Its really been a gift . . the experience of a society . . not an affluent society at all, but one which breathes a common spirit . . and if it was a hegemoneous society i would not grant it so much favour, but though it does appear such on the surface, the complexity of the social strata is very much there, much as it is there in say Delhi . . .
I guess its an economists game at the end of the day and that;s what i really hate about it . . .
:)

:)

2011-09-07T01:33:00.001-07:00

The latitude and longitude of Phuket, Thailand is:
7° 53' 0" N / 98° 24' 0" E

D D Kosambi on Marxism in India

2011-08-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

"Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma
based upon 19th century prejudices. Marxism never was a dogma. There is
no reason why its formulation in the 19th century should make it obsolete
and wrong, any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday, and Darwin,
which have passed into the body of science. Those who sneer at its 19th
century obsolescence cannot logically quote Mill, Burke, and Herbert
Spencer with approval, nor pin their faith to the considerably older and
decidedly more obscure Bhagwad Gita. The defense generally given is that
the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are
objectionable. This is generally argued in English, the foreign language
common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of
production (the bourgeois system) forcibly introduced by the foreigner into
India. The objection, therefore, seems less to the foreign origin than to the
ideas themselves, which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to
be based open violence, upon the class-war, in which the very best people do
not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology
encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement
to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to
those in the divine Gita."

2011-08-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

Living in what is commonly known as the worlds largest Democracy, I can hardly feign surprise to the spontaneous anti corruption protests rocking the masses. Anna Hazare, I'd never heard of the man before he decided to stop eating to protest corruption! Now he's the next mahatma all of a sudden. Nothing about the man appeals to me . . the obvious saffron connection, the recklessly anti democratic totalitarian solution to a problem which is so wide spread that it would be difficult to isolate it from the system at all, and not least, the obvious political agenda of opposition. Not to say that I am a big fan of corruption, but I for one believe in respecting the enemy and assessing the scale of the war before i jump into the battle field.

There is no doubt that the Hazare led movement has tapped the support of large numbers of disgruntled citizens, for that and that alone I have to applaud the movement. They have made blubbering fools of our elected representatives, not that there was much going for them anyway. Unparalleled disparity, military occupation within the country, an economy flexing its muscles and reckless destruction of natural resources apart, there came a point in the second term of the UPA when it became blatantly autocratic. Their attempt to arrest Hazare and thwart the movement just shows how far down this road they have come. Behind their 8% growth they hover like vultures.

Corruption. Misuse of power for personal gain. Much as I admire the blaket of vague that a democracy protects its citizens with, there are some things I just can not fathom. The dichotomy of personal freedom and disparity is at the root. The problem is actually quite simple, its just been around for so long that we look right past it as if it doesn't exist. Freedom. The ability to speak or act on ones own behalf without restriction. Responsilbilty. Not to harm others, to abide by the law . . . Now the problem comes when we bring in money. freedom to become rich. but to become rich at the cost of trampling upon others? Any right comes with riders. They are there everywhere. Even a cursory glance at the economy make it obvious that there is no attempt to bridge the gap.

We live in a world inured to the stratification of society. For thousands of years humans have coexisted side by side in ever increasing numbers, shaped by the rules of society. These very rules that we know so well in India, like sati or caste, are at the basis of the acceptance of the status quo. It is these rules that we need to question. The NREGA does exactly that. Ensuring a minimum wage even a fraction (tending perilously we might add) has been a fight fought over many years. The answers are there I presume if we head a little towards the left and ask ourselves how the Dalai Lama could show compassion even to the Chinese, we shall be well on our way, but that is not going to happen. The thermodynamic whopee that we are so addicted to belies any expectation of the revolution.

Anna I suspect will fade rapidly into oblivion, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was all about us winning the last world cup as much as anything else ;)

2011-07-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.torn.com/1558790

ELP site up

2011-06-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Just finished the skeleton site for the Organisation for Early Literacy Promotion (ELP) . . an organisation founded by my mother to address the special educational needs of children coming from backgrounds where reading and writing is not prevalent at home. The division of the hindi alphabet into five stages makes it far easier to grasp. There is also an emphasis on sound symbol relationships, meanings and context. The child is taught 5 characters, then he makes words with them and poems with the words. Thus without having to rote learn the entire alphabet, the mystery that script conceals slowly starts to reveal itself and the joy of learning is established. A far cry from the standard curriculum, which is catered to a very different social setting. The program has been developing over the last five years, and studies already show decreases in the drop out rate at rural schools in Rajasthan. With the help of a teaching kit designed to facilitate the teacher to implement the methodology in the classroom ELP really breathes some fresh air into a system so rusted one almost feels scared to push!

Check out the page . . and do donate to mom if you have some spare cash . . :)

2011-05-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

some go
some stay
live on the fringes
just make way
heed the flow
take the day
sweat it out
disarray
constant twinges
rock my world
niggles bends
torn unfurled

trouble

2011-05-18T14:03:00.001-07:00

Trouble by emni

follow my website

2011-05-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

just got down to learning enough dream weaver to get a site online . . watch it emerge :)

watch it froth and glow

2011-05-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Analyse the bitterness

See if from within

Shapeless till withdrawn

Formed when forsaken

Seldom is there clarity

To live within ones means

Wasted hope seeds freedom

Ticking through the seams

Take time for compassion

Redirect the punch

Pay heed to the emptiness

It never meant that much

Seeking nothing seemingly

Beating through the bone

There’s simply no denying that

The heart is always home

Twitching restlessly the tongue

Wants no more to know

Bitter bitterer bitterest

Yearning for the glow

Sweet nothing then is far beyond

What ails and weathers men

Tangy sour and tasteless blend

What’s now is never then

Thinking through the bitterness

Re tasting thick and thin

Reminiscing the bold embrace

The glow takes me within

School for Democracy

2011-05-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

The School for Democracy/लोकतंत्र शाला

down the drain

2011-04-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

where does our water come from? where does it go? can the Yamuna ever be a river again? These are some of the questions which led me to explore traditional water systems in the country as well as looking at a direction for our metropolises of the day. Focussing on Delhi, the pretext is that we actually get enough rain water to meet our needs, yet ever increasing large scale projects are endlessly under construction, I smelt a rat . . . decentralised solutions, which are small scale, community managed and cater to the immediate locality obviate the need for transportation and drastically reduce the footprint of a community, but there is little scope for large scale corruption . . thus the saying we need a 1000 1000$ projects, not a million $ one!

the new delhi graffiti

2011-04-23T02:40:00.000-07:00

2011-04-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

teeming with uncertainty
the point sharp yet unsteady
no more than eternity
palms will weld the soul to me

shock so gentle bullet proof
mean to mingle be va koof!

2011-04-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

The space I inhabit is wide and free

flipping from sunny to desultory

encased in caring possibility

makes me wonder dream then be

if space needs bounds just to exist

and infinity lies in my closed fist

what shackles then do i resist

for this is one train that just can't be missed

nose to the grind

punctual swift

help me unwind

get on my drift

time out of mind

sands gently shift

oscillate slow

three one two three

up the tempo

and its melody

minds eye window

have a look see

of them paths breaking through my wall

muddle my world engage it all

singed finger tips sculpted rationale

some call it mayhem others gall

time it will tell as i enthrall

rock or rocket fly or fall

we won

2011-04-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

no biggie . . it actually felt thataway . . but it was some grit there . . crazy . . :)

we DID

2011-04-02T11:39:00.001-07:00

kudos to dhoni for coming up the order. just what the doctor ordered!

will we or won't we

2011-04-02T01:56:00.000-07:00

on the brink of inking in the 2011 deep into the psyche of a nation. the team selection seems spot on. we're batting second, that's a good thing. love to see india chasing, even though the record isn't so great. but they say the ball will swing a bit. go msd!

2011-03-29T14:38:00.001-07:00

i know its trouble
when i fall
from frenzied race
to steady crawl
the urgency
which should have stilled
seems just to age
and strike a chill
make not that urge
still not emerge
distant traces
fabled word
dream in fragments
shatter proof
maybe madness
coming through

the cajon in action

2011-03-26T10:07:00.001-07:00

Cajon jam with assorted grinders and drills by emni

cajon making at asim's workshop

2011-03-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

purring didj's

2011-03-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

This whole vibratory deal may be specific to neuron health and as possessors of a few billion of the suckers humans might be well disposed to 'purr' occasionally. What better way to do so than with a Didge. It's a thought.

dawn

2011-03-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

the first day of the rest of my life
dawns so crisp and chill
my sixth sense it brought it on
was never one to dwell
idly on coincidence or thoughts so jumbled that
they come at you in saw tooth waves
and test the mettle well
clinging yet to sliding scree
i guess its just who's me
i can't no more though
play the game
nor run this farce till free
a day of joy
illumination
the union of true love
makes good back ground to test the tale
of one clearly unsound
the rest though shines
it makes my path
it draws my every curve
the algebra, or the quirks they play
moments jump time stills
obsessive yet a mellow me
wants to fight stability
no longer for the fear it holds
but for the misery
beats will save me tune will kill
the melody instills . . .

resonance

2011-02-27T04:05:00.000-08:00

ever since i started playing a didj the significance of resonance has suddenly become a striking reality for me. I have played instruments ever since i found my first . . probably a pot, or my dad's guitar. Maybe a dhol at some wedding or at a lok utsav at tilonia . . a colourful childhood i have had the fortune of having . . but resonance it took an aboriginee instrument to make it real for me . . not to mention a new york busker who introduced me to the concept. didjeridoos i have known for some time . . having frequented the israeli destinations (read tourist spots) of india . . out of lack of option trust me . . i have seen them for quite some time . . but not being well versed in wind instruments, the flute being the only one i had flirted with previously . . . i guess i thought it was outside my domain. also hanging around hippy tourists playing the didj never really felt attractive. though amar would vouch that it gets you laid ;) none the less . . when i actually made the cylinder resound and that bass boom reveerberated the room to its roots, i knew i ha hit on a discovery . . not an invention, a discovery . . that's for me the essence of the beauty of the didjeridoo. at asim's installation, amar suggested that we should make a didj as fate would have it mike arrived to couch surf, i got my tabla skins changed after like more than a decade so musically inclined, we hollowed out a bamboo at the installation (it was a bamboo installation, so there was a wide selection) and he blew it and my life changed . . that's the beauty of life :) so resonance . . .
. . googling it led me to this interesting counter word . .

Sonorant

apparently vowels, l and m sounds are sonorant, this means there is no interference in the airflow through te mouth. so they are pure resonant sounds modulated with the mouth cavity and the positioning of the tongue . . i guess i am rediscovering or discovering for the first time that i have a mouth cavity . . no actually, i click and whistle, so i figure i k=have played with it before but the didj really makes it so much louder :)

so . . . resonance . . i know from playnig the guitar that the length of the string is the wavelength of the sound wave and you can make harmonics which correspond to octave shifts as well as a couple of other ones which don't really fit into the western division of the octave. so i figure that the frequency with which my lips buzz (that is pfff's per second or hz) is the same as the length of my didj . . well not the frequency, the wavelength, but they must have something to do with each other . . let me break it down . . you have an amplittude, a wave length and a frequency . . . ok this is now going to need research which dhoni is preventing me from doing as india seems set to make 400!! so next up :)

how much rain do we have anyway?

2011-02-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

We have one of the rainiest countries in the world, even in the arid part where delhi lies, it rains just over 2 feet a year. The catch is that it comes all at one time of the year. But if we stored this water, is there enough? A simple calculation taking the area of the city and dividing by the number of people will give us the area per person. With 1483 sq km and a population of around 15 million. We get almost 100 sqm per person. At the annual rainfall this gives us 65,000l per person per year. at the dub norms of 135lpd the amount required is 49,275l . . so we're in the green with quite a margin.

bhopal 2011

2011-02-05T01:51:00.000-08:00

Bhopal

February 11

By the banks of the motia talab looking onto the tajul masjid, the dhobi‘s furiously pounding away at the ghat, the constant sound of the horns varying ever so slightly in their tone when say a truck passes by can almost be likened to the drone of a tanpura over the fabric of the city as it cascades out of reach below to the new city of Bhopal. In the Benazir college building, an old old building complete with stained stained glass wooden floors and strangely indo Islamic cornices and brackets, is the perfect setting for a conference on Bhopal’s most persistent and serious urban issue. I talk of none other than the disastrous gas leak from the union carbide factory in 1984. I was five years old then and oblivious to both Bhopal and the gas tragedy, but its unthinkable that nothing has been done about the place even till today. The chemical plant still stands, or as much of it as has been able to hold out against the weather over the decades, poisonous chemicals leech into the ground, the people living near the site who lost many near and dear ones all those years ago are still living in toxic waste, breathing and drinking it in.

The disaster site is really a beautiful place, an oasis in a filthy crowded city. The lack of human access has created a haven for the plant and animal kingdom. An eerie kind of a silence, through which the occasional owl hoot competes with the distant locomotive, for the perfect resonant pitch. I did the unadvised and climbed the monstrous MIC tower, though the view and sound from the top was awesome, a swarm of bees decided that I was not a welcome guest. I have seldom run so fast or so purposefully out of a place before as far as my memory serves me. Not without the complimentary dozen or so stings which serve as a fitting reminder that the site has a life of its own!

The daily review is all set to start . . . now’s when I find out what’s happening in this quaint lakeside urban consortium . . . well they’re all a bit obsessed with the idea of a memorial, and stake holders seems to include DOW, its all a bit confusing, maybe I need to take a closer look. On the face of things though there is very little talk about much outside the site or any real involvement of the communities. There was however a talk by Jeet Iype who has designed the Sambhavana health care centre cum community centre just outside the factory, which I was to see today if it wasn’t for the dratted bees. The institution has taken on the role of community reconciliation and provides the locals health care, refuge from the crowded city as well as a green clean model for future building. Truly a ray of light in the darkness.

Set in the planned part of town the administrative hostel, where we were put up, is a sprawling complex, green and laid back as only a government institution can be. A longish auto rickshaw ride got me to the bada talab (big lake) after a sumptuous breakfast I found a lakeside promenade to walk along to the base of the old town. The lake is huge, a favourite with migratory birds, it being a Sunday there were several amateur fishermen trying their luck. I spotted a kingfisher of Malaya fame. As I circumvented the old city to find a different route to the conference, I kept coming across pond after pond. The city has a profusion of them ranging from the dirty puddle up to the big lakes which actually extend way out of town. The lake by the tajul masjid is like the highest lake, and there are lakes at every level of the undulating landscape, much like the cascading lakes of chittorgarh fort. Bhopal itself is quite a novel city. It’s not small by any stretch of imagination, but it retains a certain character, which only small towns have. There is also a disproportionate amount of planning and infrastructure by Indian standards. All in all it seems like the city doesn’t have to contend with a large rural influx, the only reason I can fathom is that the tribal population of the state is more than happy with their forests and have left the city to migrants from UP, Bihar, and the rest of India.

To get back to the problem of the Union carbide factory . . . I have been getting everyone’s opinion on what they think is the way forward. The overwhelming common factor is that the government needs to be greased into motion. The inertia of two and a half decades is something that makes it very easy for the status quo to remain and that is probably the biggest issue. I haven’t really heard any ideas for how to take that forward. Ballu seemed to think that its best to let things play their natural course and some time or the other the government would come around as it always does. Krishna had an interesting idea, sell off a part of the site for say apartments and use the proceeded to empower the community to do what they will with the remainder of the land. This brings us to the second important issue. The involvement of the communities around the site. I would personally like to err on the side of giving them too much power. Turning the site over to them perhaps and letting the indigenous social structure evolve its own answer to the trauma, the land and the obvious lack of basic civic amenities in the area. But as Krishna rightly pointed out, what’s to prevent them from commercially exploiting the land to its maximum and ignoring the greater common good of the society. The rule of the fittest unfortunately is pretty much all the social structure that we really have left. That said there is bound to be a way to empower the different groups with say some major activists heading the council and a certain democratic order to keep things in the realm of the greater common good.

One thing that I think would be a good reference is the national rural employment guarantee act. Via this scheme employment is guaranteed to all rural folk for a hundred days a year. This has for the first time actually seen money percolate from the central government all the way down to the village household. As a system it is a revolution in India, but it lacks focus and much of the work undertaken is tangential and pointless. From my visits to the union carbide site the biggest issues are fresh water, sewage and garbage. Now the problem with finding solutions to these issues is that our governance is based on a top down approach. A landfill far away, a prohibitively expensive and impossible to maintain sewage line and tankers carrying water from presumable a deep bore. These are the solutions that form the standard set. Using the site and the revenue generated from land it seems to me very possible to take the current activity of recycling which forms the main business of the site surroundings and extend it to garbage and solid waste. By creating the infrastructure for waste recycling, the area could be turned into a profitable urban farm where the waste of the surrounding areas is transformed into a resource (food) and brings revenue to the people as well as employment. The key in Dr Bhawalkar’s words is to understand that what we call waste is actually a resource that we just don’t want to (or don’t know how to) deal with. This outlook would also turn the focus from the past to the future, instead of letting the factory stand and making a memorial that will always hold the weight of decades of inaction. The site could be a model for urban centres across the developing world, showcasing the resilience of a people willing to get up and resurrect themselves from what was possible the worst industrial disaster ever.

Coming back to the site, there is all this talk of the pollution that has never been cleaned up. Jayaram Ramesh came to the site, picked up a fistful of mud and declared it clean. And though this caused a tremendous uproar at the time, I am inclined to go along the same lines, instead of fighting over a way forward, let the earth return to the tiller and lets see what the pollution holds for us. Believe in nature and her eternal inexhaustible powers of healing, and move forward. What drives this seemingly insane thought process is nothing but the state of the settlements outside the factory premises. Dirty is not the word, there are stagnant puddles of filth everywhere, garbage over flows bins where the rare bin appears, children muck about playfully in the stench. In the factory there might be pollution, but on the face of it it’s way cleaner!

I just got back from the factory, or more accurately a parikrama of the factory I was really curious to see what was happening around the boundary of the famous union carbide plat. It was surprising to say the least. “Dig at least six feet to bury your children’ proclaimed a sign by a dirty nala leading from the site. Right next to what obviously was a garbage dump but now seemed to double as a child cemetery were lush vegetable gardens growing cauliflower. The factory itself is surrounded by dwellings on all sides. Ranging from the tiny shack to the modern concrete house, the aesthetic though is unmistakably characteristic to the region. The wall itself though mostly standing is punctured in strategic points to allow cattle to go in to graze. There is sufficient open are in patches, but it seems to be full of small mounds every where. After the children’s graveyard I couldn’t help but wonder what the story behind all those mounds was. All in all the fact that there was a deadly chemical plant in the neighbourhood which had many years ago caused a catastrophic loss of life seemed very distant. Life in the shanty towns seemed happy and normal. If there was any problem due to pollution, it most certainly stems from the garbage and sewage that they are is inundated in. I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to find some 25 year old pollution in the middle of all that muck and chaos.

Bhopal needs to send a message to the world. In the words of Kai Weise, the memorial started to take a shape I could finally comprehend. The disaster and the following decades of inaction are possibly the most public face of the city of Bhopal. The time has come for the city to take its image and propel it unquestionably into the future. The concluding session of the workshop was indeed a fun day. From shadow boxing with the issue to GPS driven paths across the site. The methods and ways forward were as interesting as they were varied. The most important thing that emerged in my opinion was the need for a management body solely in charge of the disaster and its myriad effects as well as the memorial.

Any industrial disaster that we have inherited from an alien imperialistic capitalistic (read evil western) system of thought should be countered with equal force by a indigenous solution based on the vast traditional knowledge base which has sustained us for centuries before we were conquered by Persian planning and European civil work.

tabla didjam

2011-01-29T06:26:00.001-08:00

Didjam by emni

siang submersion

2011-01-25T05:56:00.000-08:00

flooding of the Siang/Brahmaputra after the lower Siang hydro power project. the Yemne, Siom and Siang rivers will be flooded for over a hundred kilometers by a 86m high dam near Pasighat. Read more at Kalpavriksh . . by Neeraj Vagholikar.

if there is one thing which defines climate, it is change . . .

2011-01-23T23:03:00.000-08:00

and aptly similar is the chase the scientific community is giving to the evil factors behind it. When I was in school, it was called global warming. James Lovelock had just discovered CFC's in the atmosphere, though no real harmful effects were identified till the ozone layer depletion hit. Compressors, Aerosols and what seemed to me to be all american things seemed to be teeming with this lethal flouro concoction. We slowly eased away, either by finding alternatives like in the case of the aerosols or by doing what we do best, sticking our head into a television and ignoring!

The Gaia hypothesis was around back then, proposing that the biosphere is a living system that actually controls the systems on the planet as in say a human body. Maintaining the delicate balance of temperature, gases in the atmosphere, complex hydrological cycles like currents this system of which we are just a minuscule part was not to be understood as a lab experiment. The famous swallow flapping its wings to cause a hurricane a continent away is the most poetic example of the complexity that we are the most arrogant part of.

What I found funny was an article in the hindu which claimed that the influx of cosmic rays were the main cause of global warming as clouds are formed with help from the rays, and the lesser the rays the lesser the clouds so the more the penetrating solar radiation! But that's not the funniest by a long shot. The methane that the billions (?) of cows fart was my favorite. Then there was the whole confusion with the coming and going of ice ages. the nina brothers and assorted chaos . . i love the climate debacle . . its just so much fun.

. . have to sympathise with meteorologists though ;)

religion

2011-01-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

to mr Dawkins

animal husbandry along with agriculture gave us settled lifestyles . . but of for civilisation i think the domestication of human beings was the key . . . brute force is the obvious factor for subjugation, but the humans are a twisted bunch . . religion and blind faith have been so inherent in the subjugation and control of the majority by a minority hardly superior in anything save cunning and perhaps white skin; that i fear it is invisible to us . . . so in sticking to Douglas Adam's revelation, it is not the answer that we are seeking, it is the question!!

. . and mr Diamond

environmental education

2011-01-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

the shit has obviously hit the proverbial fan if environmental education is now a mandatory course in school! Attending a panel discussion at at 'Quotes from the Earth', a toxics links film festival at IIC on whether environmental education is confined to moral relativism, i really got thinking . . . walking through the pristine jungles of Arunachal, watching first hand the tussle between instinct and rationale the striking similarities between a Heideger speech on the duality of thought and the development conundrum suddenly gleamed strikingly clear! Education, not just environmental education has suddenly taken on devil like proportions in my mind. With that on my mind, sitting through the panel discussion the nagging thought was that there is a nice fancy rug and sitting on top of it we discuss the state of the floor.

The focus of the discussion seemed to be on how exam oriented education is and that takes its tole on a sensitive subject like environment. Real experiences being invaluable in disseminating any meaningful environmental awareness. Now here I am wondering back to my school days where by class nine pretty much half my class was on full fledged IIT or Medical preparation, all set to don the professional jacket and go out into the world and join in the shining growth we glimmer in these days! As David Orr puts it, the sustainability of a person's life style is inversely proportional to their educational qualifications! Adding an environmental education syllabus to the whole shebang is nothing but a mild placebo at best. Not without its evils though as an engineer with a vague environmental consciousness is probably far better at disguising the impacts of development than his merrily oblivious brother.

Another thing which seemed strange to me is how lopsided the understanding of the word environment is. People just don't figure, nor do adapted environments like urban scapes. Its all wild life and forests, rivers and wetlands. If social disparity, human habitat and development is not seen as part of the environment in this day and age i fear we are cuddling up in an imaginary world.

Not to be defeatist, i feel that education really needs a revamp. The relevance of the schooling system and higher education should be thrashed around a bit . . . linguistic skills, basic mathematics and the like form an essential skill set with which you could say call someone literate. Why that requires a 12 year education beats me. I may be ignoring the need for an educated elite for the time being but that really has enough going for it anyway! A 3 year syllabus without the exams and competition, aimed at simply imparting literacy and basic education should really be made out. Now that it seems we might actually have a census of everyone in the country, Mr Sibal should make sure that all the kids have the opportunity to avail of this stripped down syllabus. Further education should like most first world countries be divided into academic and professional. Why are our masons not trained? Or our mechanics? Its sad to see great mechanics languishing in their old age when they could be teaching or researching . . . In not the disparity in pay scale directly linked to the undervaluation of manual professions . . . should this not be the goal? Rather than continually train armies of engineers who then need environmental education to rein them in from their inherently consumerist progress driven education! The last thing which I feel is really important is the localisation of education. Being an architect, it is probably in my field more than any other (apart from agriculture) that I see the disconnect with local knowledge having the most dire impacts. The concrete boom fuelled by the large corporates and government policy gives us a world we aspire towards. Now I can't take away the dream of a comfortable home free from the worry of the rain carrying away your roof or snakes hiding in the corners, but I know that a solution to local problems exists in every situation, maybe it is concrete maybe it isn't! Empowering the local knowledge base and integrating it with the present is the way forward. Strikingly, all the engineers I met in arunachal come from a rich tradition in bamboo craft, house building, the works . . but in one short generation with the aid of education they have lost all interest in the craft. It is all but alien to them. So instead of a promising tribal youth who has studied engineering working on innovative ways to take the bamboo craft further, he is simple alienated from it all together.

Sometimes the mind really needs a purge . . . cheerios for bearing :)

january brrr

2011-01-05T06:46:00.001-08:00

its that time of the year again when i can heave a sigh of relief and comprehend why it is i live in this city after all! the biting chill!

i'm sure there is no cause to elaborate on the striking imbalance that the temperature curve of our beautiful city has towards the hellishly hot! so if nothing else it is for the contrast that really get the winters going. But then this is no ordinary winter is it? You guessed it, the delhi metro is what has really transformed it for me. Its like walking suddenly got catapulted up the transportation ladder . . way up. Isn't that just la dee da . . . now i can go for a 10 minute walk and find myself on a train to chandni chowk. And what is it with the clean clothes, lack of groping, spitting even staring is decidedly on the decline. I never realised it would be that simple to tether the endless mass of people unburdened by civic sense or god forbid politeness!

Then you walk out of the saket station to find a row of 10 dudes peeing right on the main road! So its only till the confines of the brightly lit sanitised corridors policed by the CISF that this sea change has its hold. But hey in the winter even the piddle centrals don't smell as much!

The street food is another of the reasons . . the endless array of small eats and the insatiable hunger that accompanies the cold just ice the walking cake!

I just wonder when Delhi will actually get Buskers and street art . . . even if only for 3 months a year!!

2010 hippy hoppy

2010-12-30T21:54:00.000-08:00

a year . . 365 sunrises . . :) i love looking at disaster and rationalising it! one its a fun past time, making the sublimely ridiculous fit some kind of reason and the other is the obvious excess of ridiculous disaster!!

that said, it been a great year . . lots of walking coupled with healthy doses of doing absolutely nothing, ok maybe too healthy!! all the same, 2010 is not going to be a year i forget in a hurry . . . there is a certain charm to coming of age i suppose :)

now that's just the way it is . . . there is no turning back!

peace to gypsy, hopefully some to duryodhan as well . . . !!

2010-12-16T00:43:00.001-08:00

there comes a smile
that holds your breath
hard to fathom
impossible to get . . .

grease or snow

2010-11-29T00:54:00.001-08:00

Wipe my ass with grease or snow

Just advertise it with a neon glow

Harp about it or shrink within

The market’s got us spiraling

Out control of even common sense

Collars will feed as the planet it bends

Corporate nonsense packaged and sold

Inciting a greed with no use for the old

Disposable, pre rigged, obsolete, out of fashion

Insane methinks what to do but cash in

Shantiniketan

2010-11-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

I came to take a look at Sohei’s system and left with so much more . . . Just came from a meeting with the government chemist on apam napat’s wbsite . . he was a bit cagey about talking about his secrets as so many Indian scientists seems to be, but I gave him a bit of my mind and soon he was fascinating me with his list of inventions . . purifying activated filter wall for a well . . . micro water purifier based on the nakamoto model. He also seemed to be very involved with ground water extraction and the effects it seemed to have on their way of life. The ground water in shantiniketan varies from 10 feet below to 30 feet below the surface. There are a million lakes large and small all over the place! Their sewage of course flows into these lakes and then into the rivers. Sreeni’s segregated tanks with the aerobic and anaerobic filters would work like a charm here! I tried to sell hi the idea bit by bit. An indo german joint venture water supply scheme has been founded in the town, but it draws ground water and pipes it to the people, which people can already see the effects off in their declining water table. The irony is astounding, in a place which has never known water shortage, to pump up the ground water in a centralized large scale manner and pipe it across the city is sheer wastefulness of resources. At a huge human and evironment cost as professor chandan pointed out the further the water table recedes the less productive the soil becomes.

Sohei’s new water tower project is also interesting, drawing water from a water wheel in the river, thus eliminating the need for electricity. The ideas Sohei has are indeed noble but dealing with Indian conditions and the execution standard here as well as the apathy of maintenance can reduce the greatest ideas to ruins!

What can be done, a simple pond based water treatment system and community level water treatment plants seems to be the obvious answer. It would best come from the municipality, but that’s a whole new story. If a german company can make water extraction and treatment plants then I figure an Indian one could try its hand at sustainable water supply and treatment systems too . . . it would have to be il&fs type touts, actually not really, through high level government links a lot can be achieved in the dimension of greasing municipal wheels!

The earliest yoghurts were probably spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria.

2010-10-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

I am horrified at the way we breed and reproduce our ancestral bacteria and eat them alive . . . curd is truely the epitome of all evil. bacteria hamari mata hai. look on the tip of any nandi's nose and you'll know what i'm talking about . . . but then maybe we all need to get rid of our intestines . . . now wouldn't that be nice . . 6.3 billion human corpses . . bacteria party . . . what are you waiting for . . . insert hand swiftly and brutally and remove all bacteria!!

Gaumukh

2010-10-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

5 years on I saw with my own eyes how a glacier recedes . . quite something . . its caved in completely from 2005 . . . amounting to a recession of around 30m is my estimate!!

Common wealth

2010-08-27T06:30:00.001-07:00

Of countries conquered by the royal crown

Suffocated bled and left to drown

Wealth was there

Most everywhere

Just not for any yellows blacks or browns

Small wonder then that we are still to find

Prosperity with noses to the grind

Steal while you can

From god or man

From masters we have learnt to ape the blind

Shortsighted though we find ourselves

Raiding our own pantry shelves

Not just a pun

It has begun

The hunger wells as we descend to hell!

Of cities roads and stadiums large and small

Tenders contracts brother have them all

Skim off the top

And hear the pop

Sand for mortar bubbly flows a ball

No wonder then that roofs cave in

Roads just crumble and we begin

To have repute

As black as soot

Substandard work is wherein lies the sin

a billion

2010-05-01T19:38:00.001-07:00

In a country of a billion people, all aspiring towards a first world lifestyle, the impossibility of the situation is striking. Not only are there not enough resources to go around, the very basis of the development module followed by the west is discriminatory, and it would come crashing down way before everybody could reap the benefits.

That is not in any way to say that the standard of living and prosperity of the common man can not be vastly improved. It just requires a sea change in the way the ideals of development are envisaged and the benchmarks for progress are set.

Rather than aspire to burn fossil fuels at the rate an american does or deplete ocean resources like the Japanese, one should treasure our sustainable lifestyle and strive to enhance it from within.

The average Indian uses far less natural resources than any first world citizen. Be it fossil fuels, water, productive land or ocean. Instead of trying to indescriminately increase the amount of resources consumed one should be trying to maximise the standard of living through a participatory and bottom up technical revolution.

We send our children to schools and colleges in order that they may get educated and have a better life than us their agrarian or woking class parents. When will we realise that we are creating an army of diguised slackers who sit in government jobs and produce precious little. Even say the child does do well and fein a direction in life and make a good living, he is still working up a path made by colonial powers, a path of discrimination and inequality. A path which is simply not designed to be inclusive or for that matter relevant to the context of our country.

The child thus grows up to be a disllusioned youth, unemployed or finding himself reduced to 'menial labour' after the promise of a white collar job and an assured income. Should we not stop weaning our youth away from a plethora of indigenous knowledge and life systems in order that he may ape the west and turn out a lost baseless adult without a clue as to where he fits in?

2010-03-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

Paris,

Or rather Europe, as its my first experience is as developed, actually more so than I had imagined. There seems to be so much order in the city. Such an old city at that. I know Delhi is an old city, but that's not eve in the same league. Much older though it is, the medival ruins and ravaged old cities of Delhi are far from the development miracles of Paris. Streets shake beneath my feet disconcertingly as i drink cider in a roadside bar at 4 inches above the cycle track at Denfert Rocherau. Thousads of skeletons lie buried beneath me, not to mention 3 metro lines including a direct high speed RER to the airport De Gaule. It really is amazing to see the order that prevails in the public space. there are lights every where and people actually follow rules. Not tat it is stayed, there is every it of individuality and acts against the system, yet these come grounded in a basic order and a highly evolved sense of space usage in order to maximise throughput. There are a lot of cars, the buses huge as tey are run on te tiniest of streets. But everyone has a place, and every one has a light. No one horns at each other and they literally wait at empty crossings. but the time it takes them travel is drastically reduced. at any rate the tension involved definitely is.

The metro system is amazing too, evidently displaying the sheer wealth amassed by the colonial empire . . . it is so convenient, and it cuts across the reasonably large city with ease and fluency. Merged with the velos on hire and pavemets ad curb cuts every where, it makes for an amazingly convenient and efficient system. I saw a senior governmnet official with a fancy hands free on the most unassuming of cycles, busily talking into his hands free. Can we ever raise the standard of our cities, our people to this level. Its desirable i will have to admit, there's so much in it for all of us, but the fact that there are way too many of us looms large. Left skint broke by British, with a currency worth nothing, I don't know why the world revolves as it does, but I sure don't like it! Perhaps we need to evolve a drastically different strategy . . .

When I see musicians in the metro or poor people begging, I again wonder how these people are poor. Dressed properly, drinking some fancy looking wine often playing some freaky instrument. I saw a duo with a double bass and a accordion! And there was a folk singer belting out David Bowie in Chatlet, full with amp and mic. In the blistering chilly air that thunders down the subterranean tunnels the music takes on an ethereal charachter, very timeless. Rushing to and fro some kissing, a few lingering on to hear the song, magical.

Parc de la villete and the suburbs today! And hopefully the Gare du Orse :)

graffiti in delhi

2009-09-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

Graffiti

The art of painting on walls. Subversive. Explosive. Infantile yet skilled.

Only recently have the youth in Delhi got their hands on the can and headed out to do some serious tagging. The drop in the price of what's known as a dollar can, influx of graffiti tourism is what I can figure . . . and of course the city obliging us with flyovers practically everywhere! Zine was the first tag I noticed around and it spread all over the place, followed by a bunch of others adorning or defacing to some the walls of the city at large.

Over the last six months I have seen more and more appear, elaborate signatures, scrawled tags, artistic stencils, jilted romantics, plain trippers and even spread the message evangelists are now to be seen on this once virgin and seemingly infinite canvas. Perhaps it’s a case of you only see what you want to, but I have always had the impression that graffiti was a first world game and unless some political cause or religious fervor was fueling the adventurous, it remained in college campuses and gents rest rooms.

We paint with brushes and blackboard paint, it’s the cheapest, I remember as a kid writing up save the narmada slogans to protest the sardar sarovar dam. Slap slap with a brush to get the message across. In Calcutta, the writing on the wall, though invariably undecipherable to a non Bengali was that of inherently artistic people. In Delhi we have none of that! The most common graffiti I saw as a kid growing up in Delhi was FUCK OFF, often misspelled and I'm guessing scrawled by some drunk with left over spray paint from a car touch up. It wasn't till I hear of the wall project in Bombay that I realised what Delhi is missing out on. Far from artistic creativity, in Delhi most obvious graffiti walls function as urinals. From this we shall rise!!

Let us all rejoice in being toys, and letting our voice be heard. Let cars not rule our planet, let the haze of oil and its myriad incarnations be lifted, let us produce for once not consume . . . at the risk of sounding like Obama, we need a change.

iminent doom :-)

2009-09-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

Daily consumption of Oil stands at a staggering 90 million barrels a day
Out of which USA guzzles over 20, China 7.5, Japan 5, Russia, Brazil, Germany, Canada and India around 2.5!

And production peaked at 80 mb/day last year!

with an approximate 250 billion barrels, that gives us 3000 days or less than 10 years at consumption levels . . . in short . . . OIL IS OUT!!

And in case you're thinking 'ok, i'll walk and cycle', oil is electricity, its plastic, its even food in lots of cases and it is definitely trade . . . collapse of the world as we know it is imminent :-)

I'm pretty sick of it anyway, there are too many people and too much isolation! Living in a city of 16 million and feeling alone is a paradox that is going to get us! Well at any rate the earth and life will survive, and we deserve to die for all the life we've snubbed out so what the hell ;-)

What really gets me is fully aware of this USA continues the thermodynamic whoopee with fossill fuels, waging wars to secure the same! When you're up against a wall you can really become myopic!!

YOKOMONO - sound composition with 30 auto-rickshaws

2009-09-02T23:43:00.000-07:00

pin parvati

2009-06-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

19 05 09

delhi to pulga

pulga is half an hour walk across the river from barseni, the road end. we stayed at the forest rest house above the village (get permission from the forest office in Bhuntar). An old world wood and stone bungalow set above the village, really nice place, spent the day exploring the swagini maidan and trying to get as much altitude gain as possible. the fresh bread and pizza at pulga took us by surprise.

21 05 09

pulga to khirganga

12 km - 6hrs

a well defined path embarks from barsheni up the parvati, there is also a smaller path on the opposite side, but we were warned of avalanches. up till nakthan the climb amongst boulders and the odd patch of forest is on the easy side. after crossing the river there is a steep ascent to the top of the ridge where the khirganga hot spring emerges. we got a room in the only untented building masquerading as a dharamshala which had apparently been lost to an avalnche a few years previously. we spent the next day at khirganga again climbing up past some meadows above the hot spring and its assortment of shacks.

23 05 09

khirganga to tunda bhuj and on to laile

18km - 7 hrs

picturesque forest climb interespersed with a few meadows and several streams where we met the gaddi just getting ready to go further up. we reached the meadow of tunda bhuj at around 12:30 and decided to move on. the next two hours we walked out of the tree line and across the river onto this large meadow with several campsites. it then proceeded to rain on us and the weather worthiness of our tent was seriously tested, it did make it through despite us having to line it with our plastic sheets in several different spots depending on the occasion!

24 05 09

lalie to pandu pul

6km - 4 hours

amid our attempts to find a suitable glacier poking stick, obviously after crossing the tree line, and vain attempts to dry our tent, we managed to leave the grassland. going down to cross the river to thakur kuan on a cable span where we met the last of the gaddi's. a couple of hours walking along the valley with kullu eiger looming ahead and we reached the massive boulder bridge on the parvati famed as pandu pul. here we were engulfed in a sudden snowstorm which forced us to take shelter in a cave shelter with copious snow and ice for company. the storm was intermittent, but came down reenvigorated ever half an hour or so forcing us to camp outside the cave. when it cleared we managed to get enough fire wood for dinner, though we had to use the muddy parvati water as the nearest clear stream was across the river and down the valley, 20 minutes away.

25 05 09

pandu pul to bara dwari thatch

10km - 6hrs

the walk past the eiger and the onto the final stretch of the parvati river has a spectacular view of the two parallell ridges of the mantalai damn bisecting the valley with the parvati glacier beyond. after the initial climb from the pandu pul, much of the way is level meadow, but large snowfields forced us to ascend on morraine and scree. by early afternoon, we reached the large boulder patch just before the mantalai dam, decided not to proceede further as the afternoon is not conducive for beginning a walk on the glacier! camped near the river at bara dwari thatch cooked up dinner in gale force winds, pondered over which valley we would have to turn into and turned in.

26 05 09

bara dwari thatch to mantalai

5km - 5hrs

Walking along the parvati, we ascended the parallell ridges to view the spectacular frozen mantalai and the undulating snow fields of the receeding parvati glacier all covered in fresh snow. slowly poking our way forward through rapidly softening snow, we found an open temple poking through the snow. true to schedule at 13:30 the snow engulfed us, seemingly coming from all directions! desperate searches for shelter bore no fruit, and we had to clutch our plastic sheets and plod on till we found a campsite. A small rocky meadow with a semi frozen lake as water supply, overlooking the nallah we had to cross to get any further. Here I undertook the adventure of making rotis for dinner!

27 05 09

mantalai to glacial camp 1

An early start down to the stream which was forded with due numbness of feet following. reached the base of the off shoot valley to the east that we had identified from the survey of india map, opposite the hanging glacier. Slowly traversing up the steepening snow slope, we saw what appeared to be the lowest point in the snow ridge ahead. We mistakenly tried to approach it instead of skirting around on the rocky ridge, and hard snow did us in, a 30 foot fall arrested by a gap in the snow field where a naullah was gushing down. Some drying out and then some rock slimbing got us to the top of the ridge predictably to see a whole lot more climbing ahead! Done in for the day we decide to camp to some apectacular views of the parvati running down from mantalai.

28 05 09

camp1 to camp 2

melted lots of water and amidst cups of hot tea and biscuits made off by 8:30. 3 hours of solid climbing up on steadily softening snow and we ascended into what felt like a glacial meadow with a gateway in the ridge leading onto the to the main glacier at the far end. Prespiring from a tiring climb and running out of water, we were suddenly in a white out. Painfully we made it through the strong winds to a seemingly secure spot behind a snow mound on the far side near the gap in the ridge.

30 05 09

camp 2 to camp 3

It snowed down on us that night, and the next morning it continued till 10:00. we were getting worried as we were getting on to emergency stocks and retreat was looming, but it cleared and we were quickly off. Through the gap in the ridge and onto the most spectacular glacier cradled amidst high mountains, but no sooner had we taken in the view it dissapeared in a white out. We were forced to sit out the day in our tent and it finally cleared only once the sun had moved into setting mode.

30 05 09

across the pass to chochden

18km - 8hrs

Camped at 5000 m we slept fitfully to wake up to a spectacular panoramic view the chortens of the pass visible on the near ridge. Shoes frozen solid, we didn't put them in the sleeping bags, we waited for the sun to thaw them up a bit. Down and up to the pass, across the vast glacier, skirting round a huge depression just under the pass. Spell bound by the view at the pass, we glissaded down to the pin in no time. The survey map indicdated staying on the right bank of the pin but it appeared too snow bound for us and we crossed over. This proved fortituous as there was a discernable path and we made good headway on the scree interspersed with snow nullahs. As we approached the bend in the valley where the trail to bhaba valley disappears into an enticing valley we met a pair of yaks. There are several camp grounds, but the streams appear and dissapear mysteriously behind massive piles of scree. We camped above the bridge.

30 05 09

chochden to mud

12km - 4hrs

all along the road lined with green and purple mountains the walk was an easy downhill barring a few snow cornices which cost lengthy detours and adventures on scree. Crossing into mud we found that we were the first people to cross this season . . . too early.

tamatar te baingan

2009-01-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

chilli

2008-11-02T22:17:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-22T22:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-08T03:53:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2008-06-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-23T05:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

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 . . !

2008-06-06T04:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

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 . . ?

2008-04-25T10:04:00.000-07:00

yes and really pretty flowers too . . .

.od

2008-04-25T03:20:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-09T04:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

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

guadua

2008-04-08T01:20:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

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 . . .
;-)

2008-03-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

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
;-)

2008-03-04T20:22:00.001-08:00

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 . . . .

2008-02-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

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

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

peace
piece
peas

there's no view from ontop of this hill

2007-09-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

here i am, earning a steady salary, contributing to my city making a difference, upgrading government schools, developing river fronts, giving cyclists and pedestrians their rightful share of the road . . . loads of good shit. working hard, more or less regularly, and almost meticulously . . .

. . . i still manage to travel quite a bit, and the trek to zanskar was unparalleled . . .

why then do i feel the impending doom and pointlessness at every instance
why do i have to run away
why am i stuck in a inertial gel

they say you climb the mountain to see whats on the other side, strangely there seems to be none

disillusion is a part of life i have learned to believe
but drive is integral to the machine'
its strange to be headed nowhere
at no particular pace
not that i'm not used to it . . . but things change when the metophorical climb seems to be going downhill and the elation of the ascent got missed somewhere along the line . . .

. . . i want my own tree,
see it grow and fruit
wither and blossom
permanence . . . eternity . . .

lets hope there's some more climbing up ahead . . .

padum on kadum

2007-08-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

phhew . .

2006-12-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

just tiled all of guwahati on google earth!

new roof . .

2006-11-12T20:42:00.000-08:00

well, i finally managed to move out of raabiya's place! chattarpur! really nice stand alone two bedroom house, just off the farmhouses, amazing atmosphere in the place, like delhi kinda missed the colony and flew by, the first night always gives testimony, and if the soundness of sleep is anything to judge by, it rocks!

done

2006-11-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to where time stands still
No one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
Just labeled mentally deranged
Dream the same thing every night
I see our freedom in my sight
No locked doors, no windows barred
No things to make my brain seem scarred

Sleep, my friend, and you will see
That dream is my reality
They keep me locked up in this cage
Can't they see it's why my brain says “rage”

Build my fear of what's out there
Cannot breathe the open air
Whisper things into my brain
Assuring me that I'm insane
They think our heads are in their hands
But violent use brings violent plans
Keep him tied, it makes him well
He's getting better, can't you tell?

No more can they keep us in
Listen, damn it, we will win
They see it right, they see it well
But they think this saves us from our hell

Just leave me alone

Fear of living on
Natives getting restless now
Mutiny in the air
Got some death to do
Mirror stares back hard
kill is such a friendly word
seems the only way
for reaching out again

to quote

2006-10-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

i have this disconcerting feeling that its going by too quick. i realised my poor blog hasn't been posted on in all fairness, its the too many blogs syndrome. so i import, resubmit, highlight, attempt to slow down and enjoy!

so this is the brief e diary of my last trip to the tip.

from clutch

Thursday, April 27, 2006

9000
parikrama over, back to erode! its been quite a hardcore two weeks, tamil nadu and kerela make one hell of a pair! erode, kodi(yes we scored mushrooms, but dry mushrooms are fuck all you have to come in september!)then adi left for his daddy! and the pace quickened for a toddy guzzling enraged driving bout with swastik.madurai, rameshwaram, dhanush kodi, eruvadi, tuticorin, tirunelveli, nagercoil, trivandrum, enter kerela! varkala beach . . . jew town cochin . . . pannor beach, tellicherry, waynad, ooty, erode. . . awesome circle. the roads were also great leave a few!now i plan to drive up the centre, lets see how fast i can manage it! its about 2500 . . . my average has dropped to just 200 km/day since i met adi! cheers!someone post
posted by tj at 2:09 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, April 12, 2006

(-;
we're upto 3! almost managedfour but the big gada andhisoldbike couldn'tpartfrom bangalore.so now tik adi and i go further down! we've reached erode . . . adi's mansion full with blasting music, net servants dogs and aircon! the mushrooms are calling!the drive down the centre of the country was really something else! the plateau is quite spectacular! never expected such expanse . . . and then some! not to mention ajanta ellora daulatabad bijapur hampi where we decided notto bunk the entire coast and head out to gokarna . . . truely one of the virginestbeaches i have seen! golden sand transparent waves and lush green mountains crumbling stonily into the surf . . . beats the pants off goa!nh17 hasclimbed up to the top of my favouritehighways! udipi manipal managalore bangalore erode . . . the drive from banagalore to tamilnad is also something else! you can sensethe peninsula petering out bouldering southward! the last leg promises to elevate!cheers!
posted by tj at 12:35 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

4500KM AND GOING STRONG . . .
hey! with trepidation i tread on a blog worn with posting! whats up with the biketr bunch? vasant kunj gatherings . . . at moni's place in meera road, bombay. quite a contrast from cuffe parade last night! feels quite cool to have reached the fast city, and now that adis with me . . .we take on the peninsula . . !its been quite a crazy last two weeks, delhi, tonk, bundi, bhilwara, mount abu, bhuj, narain sarovar, lakhpat, kaladungar(khavda), junagadh, bagodra, baroda, daman, mumbai and tonight meera road!from hewre we go north east towards ajanta ellora and daulatabad . . . adi's bike is quite cool standard a350 god knows what that means but it rides cool. found a good mechanic in andheri set up adis bike all right, he trained it up, so broke the indicators, and break lever and stuff, also his point was worn and gearbox dry! but we seem all set to roll . . . there is so much to say, its dificult to sift thru the experiences!adi just walked in with a couple of cold beers so things are looking up!cheerstj
posted by tj at 7:20 AM 1 comments
Thursday, March 09, 2006

off . . .
finally, its something preparing for a solo trip, or maybe i'm just paranoid . . .
posted by tj at 6:46 PM 0 comments
Sunday, March 05, 2006

got 'em
the very one in the picture. quite cool, better on the outside than inside though! rearing to go . . .
posted by tj at 1:47 PM 1 comments
Friday, March 03, 2006

ideas for the bags
oye peoplewe can get some idea about the bags we are wanting to achieve from the website mentioned.www.cramster.inthe picture is that of 'stallion' - the series this comapny makes for bullets as such....it's a bangalore based firm and the bag in the picture costs about 2000 bucks.
posted by lvs at 9:57 PM 1 comments

hey babe . . . take a walk on the wild side!

2006-09-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

sounds like a dream!
at a large scale a job may be fulfilling, i sure learn a hell of a lot, besided doing a lot for a change! but really this couldn't be the answer!

i'm designing a historic precinct and a riverside of a small town. the powertrip hardly chinks through the gaps in the sheer flood of work involved! not to mention waking up at 8 every morning! then the whole ball game of actually having to pick up your phone whenever it rings, saying goodmorning to 20 enthusiastic colleagues, i could go on . . .

3 months is too early to weigh the balance, at least i know for a fact that its not a very tilted scale anyway. boss is really cool actually and that makes it possible and worthwile!

this blog stands updated (-;

as is drags . . .

2006-06-03T03:18:00.000-07:00

there's something about going downhill . . . the sheer fatality of the situation! security! over the bridge they call it . . . well whaterver . . .

gadi bangla aur bachhe'

not to forget the naukri!

it seems like a bit of an extreme step towards never ever getting out of this place, but if i look hard, it could be a stepping stone. none the less, i'm quite petrified of growing roots. ge plans to make 10 billion dollars here by 2010 . . . i guess thats my deadline then!

going thru all the shit i've done in the last decade or so since school is quite a wild experience . . . a bit of a drag putting it together in comprehensible/appreciable form, but the reminiscing is cool! it wasn't all faffing . . . thats kinda a relief in some vague way!

anyhow here goes i think . . . bring on the leash or saddle or whatever they strap on (-;

belated new year posting . . .

2006-03-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

i guess its the too many blogs syndrome, i haven't posted here for months, just to make up for it, i shall be posting trip updates here as often as possible. cheers. keep the party rolling . . . : - )

2005-12-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

the bhagirathi making its way down to tehri.

days go by . . .

2005-12-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

loose end . . . i'm fed up and hope u die.

2005-10-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

sunning around almora . . . watching a free eye camp!

kebabs

2005-10-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

eternally ghalib kebab corner oposite lal mahal nizamuddin
but today khushboo opposite bari masjid hauz rani really impressed . . .10 bucks plate of 5 seekhs or tikkas . . . not quite the ghalibs attitude, but more wholesome, if you can apply such a wuss adjective to the bigger flesh!

2005-10-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

earaly moring routine chex . . . at dhaba on nh24

back . . .

2005-10-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

and what a blast it was! 5 bikes has got to bethe ultimate power trip. fused with the meditativeness of biking in the hills . . . phew . . . thats stressing language a bit too much. my first trip into kumaon (beyond nainitalm ranikhet et al) truly magnificent. the pahari capital almora took my breath away. what a city. not to mention the obscenely cheap hash. i shall post snaps as soon as lvs has conceeded to pass them on. the 35mm's will take some time as i don't have the money to wash them! but will keep posting.

meanwhile, the german video art is coming up at apj media gallery. a retrospective of mammoth proportions featuring namjung pike . . . collossol show to say the least . . . lookin forward to it. . .
cheers
tj

off to the hills . . .

2005-10-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

finally . . . we are off to munsiyari, utranchal! 5 bikes and an indica should be great! lvs, nadeem, hemu, jeetu, tj, madhav and joshi! here we come so watch out thc!

2005-10-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

a more explenatory snap . . . the reflections in the gallery are really cool to play with!

2005-10-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

i stop dreaming of biking . . . the mexican architecture exhibition is 3 days away . . . this id a piece from crosstown traffic, from fact liverpool . . . dryden goodwyn.wait . . . putting it up was quite psycho, but well worth the effort. a 5 screen magnamopus . . . centered around slomo's of people waiting for various things, to get married, for a goal, at the airport . . . to take a snap . . . the soundtrack is also spectacular . . . climaxes and low bass . . . on the whole a subliminal piece . . . i m ust have watched it over a dozen times!

2005-10-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

. . . and i thoght i was important . . .

2005-10-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

on the way to kargil, epitomizing the region, the gompa perched on the megalith! the skys in the himalayas are almost as breathtaking as the folded plates themselves!

2005-10-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

looking up at the leh palace . . . more accurately what zoravar singh left of it ! when i printed this snap, i couldn't for the life of me make out what it was! so therefore its one of my favourites! red light does have a way of romanticising things . . . !

2005-10-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

victoria and albert museum london . . .daniel libeskind

2005-10-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

playing around with the templates! blogspot seems woefully short of options . . . was wondering how to upload my own background images and stuff . . . even the links tab seems to have disappeared! i guess its to the html for me . . . any tips or links are welcome . . . i just wish somebody would post a comment . . . getting desperate! sunday morning enthusiasm . . .

2005-09-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

invite 4 all