The Red Light Man

Sitting in that auto with my mother and sister on either side of me, I spotted him today, the red light man. He was holding this wooden board with those obnoxious little wobbly flowers that everyone seems to love to perch on their dashboards nowadays. And then he passed out of my line of vision.

I had just found my portkey to time travel. I flew back to a time some twelve years ago, when school was about silly games like ‘lock- and-key’ and ‘ghost-in-the-graveyard’, and children running out of grey metal gates towards the waiting cool of an air conditioned car. I plonked myself in the front seat and turned on the radio, 102.6 FM, the only one we had back then. At the Ashram red light, my face lit up as I saw the nice, knobbly old man selling magazines. Like always, he came right up to our window and made faces at me. I laughed, rolled down my window and shook his hand, and told him that I was going home from school. Then the lights changed and I waved my byes to him.

Dissolve. That memory and the picture dissolved.

Cut to seven years later. For whatever reasons, time, etc, I hadn’t seen the red light man in many years. A little part of me, at the odd time, fearing the worst, prayed for him, and with all my heart I wished him luck and happiness. Then one day, at the Ashram red light again, I saw him. My heart jumped, an initial yelp of joy. But by then, my mind had undergone a certain mental conditioning, as the initial yelp was muffled under observation, apprehension and hesitation.
How old he had grown, his jaw stuck out, the teeth were missing. My heart went out to him. He was selling water bottles, from car to car, in the blistering heat. I half wanted him to come to my window and half not, not knowing how I would react. It had been so long, I felt a sense of having betrayed him (and my childish innocence) and moved on.

He stopped at my window.
I looked at him, with a deadpan expression, trying to silence the little girl who wanted to scream, “it’s me! From back then! Do you remember?”
Our eyes met over my clenched jaw, he held my gaze for a fleeting moment and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition. My lips almost turned upward and I was on the verge of flashing him a beaming smile, when he turned away.

He turned and went to the next car. My heart sank.

Why in that fleeting moment, did I feel that he waited for me to meet him halfway? Why was I so reserved? Because he was a man at a red light and I was a young girl in a car? I felt a deep sense of shame, an innate repulsion for myself.

Today, I sat in the auto, and saw him again... feeble and bent with age, yet resilient, selling his wares from car to car, a life force that refused to give up. And I felt nothing except respect for this man. No desire to try to appeal to his memory, nothing. I asked my sister if she remembered him, (I don’t even know his name); she said she was surprised because she was thinking about him too.

Perhaps he was like this with all the children he met at red lights. Perhaps they’d openly recognize him till date. Not like me.

Would he remember me? Perhaps not. And why should he? I was nothing and am nothing special.

But I will remember him. Him in the sponsored T-shirt of whichever company was paying him. He who embraced the harshness of life and entertained little children.

That knobbly faced smile that knew no boundaries.

The Red Light Man who made faces at an uncorrupted me.

Evolve

I was sitting on my couch, watching TV, flipping through the channels aimlessly, mindlessly. Finally stopped on a news channel. A very unclear video...probably from the VGA camera of a bystander's mobile phone, was showing the Taliban gun down a couple in Pakistan.

The Taliban gunned down a couple for wanting to be together.

I was mortified.
What has gone wrong with the world?
Are we so steeped in our mindset towards 'religion' that we fail to recognize the basis of it all?
The most basic emotion? The emotion that ideally drives religion?The emotion that drives humanity?
Love?

Religion has made sadists of men. God is no longer the focus of religion. Everything but Him, unfortunately is. A few wise men, ages ago, thought of a common good, a common ideal. They meant no harm, and charted their own courses towards Him. Soon their knowledge attracted followers, and soon there were sects. Of course those Wise men couldn't live forever. And there were no heirs to THAT kind of 'knowledge' without dispute. So, the sects developed. People, too scared to shun the common ideal, started choosing. And then they had children. And their children had children. All the while, down generations and generations of men, religion was tweaked to suit one's own needs and desires. Advice became rules. And still more rules came into play. And people kept choosing. Not knowing, that a few more generations down the line, things will start happening.The very first Wise Men would turn in their graves, knowing that their ideal of the common good, was so mercilessly cut up; and today, stands defeated by human foolishness.

We're killing each other. Because of how different our respective 'wise men' were from each other. But weren't they supposed to be? They were human too. Their respective 'religions' have taken on their characteristics. And the common good? It still reverbrates in the hearts of those very first souls that seeked truth and God.

Love God. Love humans. Love life.
It's a beautiful world.

Candid Can-do

Haha... I amuse myself with absurd titles.

So basically a lot has changed since I last ‘blogged’. I’ve travelled a bit, lost some, won some, given up on my old goals, found out that planning is NOT better than dreaming, and I think I’ve grown up. Maybe gone back to being a child by letting go of the lines and boundaries I drew around myself. It’s a nice place to be actually, where I am now. I’m happy.

I credit myself with this absolutely creepy (but nice) ability of waking up one random morning with a fresh, clean slate, having pushed that refresh button and cleaned up the desktop of my life. Changing my frame of mind is like changing the wallpaper of my desktop: it sits there in the background quietly watching everything that goes on, but at a very basic level dictates the mood of the desktop. One morning, poof, new background, new rules, and the game has changed yet AGAIN.

There are certain experiences that one needs to go through, good or bad, just to know what it is to have been through them. This world is one crazy roller coaster; I’m bound in my seat and gagged by my apprehension. But I’m strapped in nevertheless. My mind is a perfect globule of gravity defying liquid, ready to be messed with. A buzzing live-wire, I AM ‘Potential Energy’, holding my breath, watching... waiting for my moment of kinetic release.

I sit at the precipice of a teacup called life, ready to take the plunge and drown if I must.

I’m not scared.
Are YOU?

Dumpling Delight

When you're scanning through Masterchef recipes, and you're really really not doing much with your life at that point, you don't mind going for technique intensive recipes, as long as you have all the ingredients, or, they are within walkable distance of your house. You actually kinda enjoy it.

And so I woke up early today in the morning, dropped off my brother for his cricket practice at school, and popped the lid of my laptop open to the Masterchef recipes page. Since my judging panel is composed of just my one demanding and fussy but awesome sister, I ran my list of cook-able recipes by her and lo and behold she chose:

GREEN TEA CHICKEN DUMPLINGS WITH CHILLI OIL, ORANGE, AND GINGER VINEGAR

No kidding. Once you've gotten over the name, I'll get down to explaining how I gave up on sleep and rest to make these beauties. Most of the morning and all afternoon!

Let me say this to people who make perfect dumplings first: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

There is no dearth of things that can go wrong.

By now I'm almost perfect at kneading any kind of dough on demand so the green tea dough was cheesecake (pun so not intended). The stuffing was an entirely different story. I had to mince my chicken myself: wash it, boil it, rip strips off the bone and shred it in the grinder. Learning experience! Post that, the stuffing came together really well.

The chilli oil and ginger and orange vinegar were intriguing: I didn't know you could do that! I was so proud when I smelled the delicious and so very appetizing aroma of my chilli oil post-infusion.

Now the parts where the little disasters started happening.

Disaster no. 1: I HATE actually physically rolling the dough to paper thinness and stuffing it.

I had to make 24 little circles rolled to paper thinness and spoon fine stuffing into it. Can you imagine the patience required for that?

So I got lazy and took a leisurely break in the middle and watched some TV, to the super-annoyed looks of the kitchen staff. :P

Disaster no. 2 : The recipe required me to golden-brown the dumplings before steaming them in a fry-pan. I went a wee bit-overboard on the golden browning and for some reason I now had 4 little fried dumplings (did them in batches THANKFULLY). Then I tried steaming them for damage control (also just to adhere to the recipe) and now the fried bits actually peeled off and stuck to the pan. I had some yummy-ugly looking stuff right there.

Yowzer.

I was displaying all signs of distress and abandoning ship when one of the staff was like hey, this happens, just think clearly and do what you think is best.

So we formed a party of 3, with one person making little dough balls of appropriate size, the other rolling them to paper thinness, and a third spooning in the stuffing and sealing the dumpling.

To my joy, what had lingered all morning, was done in 20 minutes :D

Now for the actual cooking. I pretty much said: ohkay screw the pan, bring me a pot of hot water, a metal strainer mesh and a big pot-lid.

I threw the dumplings into the mesh hung over boiling water, and sealed their fate with the lid.

35 minutes later, they were done.

To my surprise (not so much actually, now that I think about it), my last minute gamble had worked. The dumplings looked tender and pretty and nothing seemed to have exploded under the lid(yes those are my culinary fears).

So I pulled out a glass dish, set the dumplings about beautifully, poured the orange and ginger vinegar around them, leaving pretty long strips of ginger on top of each dumpling.

Then I spooned the bulky part of the chilli oil onto each dumpling.

The combination of both sauces unleashed some beautiful smells and I went about proudly serving the dumplings to family. :)

I feel like cooking dessert tomorrow.

Hmmm... Masterchef into thy hands, I commend my spirit.

*raises toast*

To Green Tea Chicken Dumplings with .... oh bah whatever.

:P

Taking on Masterchef

In architecture school, you pretty much HAVE to stay up entire nights working on your design, most nights of the week, especially in third year. More often than not, what you end up slaving upon throughout the night is an execution of design ideas: drafting, drawing, rendering, formatting, model making et al.

Well, beyond the designing stage, it's basically not mentally engaging, which means I can have the television running in the background. And thank God I do. Because I discovered shows I know I wouldn't ever have thought twice about during the day. Also, God bless the 1:00 am re-run of Masterchef Australia; it has changed the way I look at food.

:)

Cooking has always been an art, but true application of culinary genius, in preparation AND presentation never hit me till about 2 months ago, when this whole Masterchef ordeal started.

From a pinch of ground rosemary, to a careless dash of liquidy meringue, by jove I was hooked.

Never did cooking look so creative, never did I see endless possibility in ingredients and their various permutations and combinations. Ordinary food became boring and looked lovelessly cooked, as I gazed longingly at the forms and colours of food swimming in front of my eyes.

A year or so ago, I saw 'Julie and Julia' with the amazing Meryl Streep playing the amazing-er Julia Child. Basically it's about a young woman (Amy Adams as 'Julie') who takes on recipes from Julia Child's cookbook on French cooking and blogs about her progress through 524 recipes in a record 365 days.

First off, I have no such intentions, OR inclinations. But I DO want to cook for the sheer joy of it.

So the semester has ended, and I need to indulge my creative side, AND my sister (a victim of the CBSE 12th Board Exams).

So yesterday, I tried my hand at my first Masterchef recipe (click to go to the recipe):

HOT SALAMI PIZZA

Let me state right at the beginning that I know what most Pizza chains in the world do wrong in their pizza: the base.

I've been to Naples, the birthplace of pizza, and TRUST me the base is supposed to be more like naan than the insanely thick oven-browned bread that we are used to.

So there I sat, on the kitchen floor, kneading pizza base dough, throwing in much more than just flour (the base has it's own flavour), then rolling it out to 3-4 mm thick circular elastic awesomeness. I did try the chef pizza base hand-spin, but I sucked :P

Everything else, from the tomato-base sauce to the grated mozzarella progressed smoothly.

Some things in the cooking technique changed, obviously, like I didn't have a ceramic tile to cook my pizza on, so I used my limited baking knowledge to butter and flour steel plates to cook my pizza in. And I switched parsley with basil, well, just because it's my favourite food ingredient :P

'Complete' is a good word for how I felt when I pulled those plates out of the oven.

'Happy' is a good word for how my sister felt when I 'plated up' and put the pizza in front of her.

'Proud' is a good word for how my grandmother felt.

I wanted to click a picture, but my parents have run off on a vacation with my camera. Sorry!

AND...

Thank you Masterchef! Partners in crime, you and I ;)

An Architect

View Ar. Peter Zumthor and Ar. Romi Khosla here.

Theory of Design Project.

Madrid, for Theory of Settlements

The Evolution of Madrid, Spain, by Amri Chadha, SPA Delhi, A/2044/2008, for Theory of Settlements, 5th Semester, 2010. Click HERE.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B8TpBgr9CENWOGYwODVkZTYtOWQyOC00MzA0LWIyMGQtYjgyNzMxNDhjM2E2&hl=en

Invisible Cities Sketches

Argia, Cities & The Dead 4

Zora, Cities & Memory 4

Urbanism

Job Opportunities...

Infrastructure...

Services...

Connectivity...

Branded Necessities...

Loneliness??

Transcending Time and Space

INVISIBLE CITIES- Italo Calvino

(Copyright © 1972 Giulio Einaudi Editore

English Translation Copyright © 1974 Harcourt, Inc.)

‘KUBLAI: We have proved that if

we were here, we would not be.

POLO: And here, in fact, we are.’

And thus is captured, the essence of ‘Invisible Cities’, by Italo Calvino.

As one leafs through the first few pages of this book, one finds the conventional notion of a ‘book’, shattered. Fiction within non-fiction; what was, shrouded by what cannot be, as you try to make the book speak to you in YOUR language, peeling off layer by layer, as though in pursuit of an unattainable goal.

As references to planes and airports; San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles crop up in this 13^th Century setting based on the interactions between an emperor and his explorer, one really marvels at how the author has treated this same setting as a portal to times and places long gone, to times and places that may or may not come, and most prominently to times and places that CANNOT BE.

The whole narrative is a spin off from human nature, its complications and eccentricities, and how the same is expressed through the built environment.

For example, two parallel perceptions of the same city of Despina, which sits on a lip of desert jutting into the sea, include a sailor gazing onto the city, comparing it to a camel rising from the desert, and a camel rider gazing onto the city, comparing it to a ship looming on the horizon. It’s like looking at two sides of the same coin.

Then again there are cities which push the limits of human imagination and perception.

The city of Argia is made completely of void spaces and mud, the city of Octavia is hanging between two mountains and Ersilia is 'survived by' literal threads of human relationships.

There are certain points in the book where the author plays with the natural human train of thought, where his style of writing leads you on to believe that the city of Sophronia is made of two halves, one permanent and the other temporary. One is made of houses, offices, mills and courts; and the other comprises ferris wheels, carousels, rides and motorists. Yet you see, with every season, the houses, offices, mills and courts come down and move with the permanent city, the one of ferris wheels, carousels, rides and motorists.

The book moves through the darkest of human emotions, to the lightest of human aspirations, using as a medium the cities it explores, or rather Marco Polo explores, in the quest of human satisfaction in relation with space, which also, surprisingly, when I re-read this very sentence, comes across as a dubious claim.

Looking back at the narrative, I would say it was a fairly inconclusive account of human imagination interspersed with the imagined perceptions of two very important people from Medieval History.

Reading the book was like taking a holy dip in the river of imagination, wherein it flowed long before you came along and will certainly flow long after your time, and how your little immersion will not affect the river, but will definitely change you for life.

For me, the book did not finish with the last page, and even though I spent an exhaustive 40 hours reading it, I daresay, it had not even begun...