VIEWS OF COMMERCIAL COMPLEX @ RANCHI..........................

commercial center..............................

it's been a while.............

here is what i have been doing..............

this is the tee shirt design for this year's ZONASA...................

and these are views for a tourist information kiosk for Jharkhand designed keeping in mind the local art and building forms......................

coming soon................

Ranchi's highest appartment building & mall........................

Lovin’ it


When a regular folk walks into a restaurant what does he see and think? “Great ambience, pretty chic, hope the food is good.” But what do you say about a person whose brain buzzes thus, “ hmmm mosaic floor pattern, gypsum board false ceiling, diffused lighting, 2m passageway, hope they let me into the kitchen to see the service flow.” Well this is an architectural student in love with his field.

When you begin your life as an architecture student it’s all very hazy. Some come from families where everyone is in the profession, some are good with handwork and were cajoled by relatives to give architecture a try and most wanted to be engineers but landed up here because of a lower rank in the entrance exam. Whatever be the story, nobody knows were they are going. To mix-up things even more they see the sheets made by their seniors and sink into the gallows of depression-----the task not only seems difficult but impossible.

But as we turn in our registration slips each one of us is endowed with a special something. It is something equivalent to Shiva’s third eye. Let’s call it our architectural eye. It is a 6th sense which makes us see, feel, hear, smell and experience architecture and architecture alone.

For some it happens in the first lecture when the professor talks about the ‘noble’ profession they have chosen, for some on a field trip when they see their work in the real world, for some in a sociology class when they realize it goes beyond concrete and mortar, for some when they read Fountainhead, for some in a design problem they give their body, heart and soul to and for some unfortunate souls it never happens at all.

Once awoken the passion for architecture is all consuming. You will never see a gate without noticing the details, never a drain pipe without tracing it back to the toilet it came from, never walk through a space without reading rhythm, harmony, balance written all over it. You will wake up in the middle of the night to experiment new things on your butter sheet; you will close your eyes and experience your creation. Days will be spent on the drawing board without food and water and without a word of complain or fatigue from you. When this day comes you will become a true architect.

MEMORIES OF SECOND YEAR…..

So you fell in love with the damn place. What can you do? The heart has a strange way of its own! You go back after a two month break and it all seems so beautiful. You get a funny tinkle in you stomach when you get down at the station. The auto walas increased their price again. Then comes the blessed BIT more. The gates of the placed you cursed last time seem like the very gates of paradise and guards like cute angels. You drop off the boys in their hostel. Its five in the morning, the guard is sleeping and you decide to go in. the one and only time you get to go inside H-6 and see those rooms. Double rooms for boys…..about half the size of the single rooms that girls have in h-8. tut tut. Some boys in their towels run for cover at the unexpected sight of a girl.
Happy? Had your fun? Got your kick? Good! Now you head to your own den. The sight of your friends makes you very happy. Oh! How you missed these rascals. Some are coming in form the station and some are gearing up to move to H-9. Ah! You almost forgot…..you gotta change your hostel. Leave the comforts of h-8, the super clean bathrooms and single rooms and move to h-9……it’s what some girls call going to sasuraal while others say it’s moving into the real world.
Well all that registration drama happens and you loose some running around and then gain some hogging in the canteen. The “ get-together-for-another-great-semester” thing. Even that food seems good!
All this love-shmuv lasts a week or so. Honeymoon over! You get back into the grinds. The schedule of everyday life takes over. All the ‘ I’ll learn Spanish this semester’ or ‘I’ll learn to tap-dance’ is replaced by the more realistic ‘I’ll submit my assignment on time……hopefully’.
All things are similar to last time……except……there are some new kids on the block…2K6! You see that just girls ,girls and girls…..that new reservation thing. Few of your friends, the ones in the limelight, have a tough time accepting that the limelight has now shifted……it’s about the kids now. We old guns otta move out and enjoy the show! And its quite a show…..the same courtship games, the same ups and down in the fests, the same hoo-haa about 9 pointers………you see it all. The game is the same….only the faces change. And thank god they do!
Then you get to see that the new chicks are about substance too. They call up GP when you go to rag ‘em! Hells Bells! Oh! How you love ‘em and wish you had that kinda guts………..
Elsewhere a lunatic cooks up the idea of THiNK and lures you in. it’s fun….starting a magazine from scratch. You learn and un-learn a lot of things along the way. You attend meeting where nothing logical is ever discussed and all the real decision are taken over phone. Well all is done and you are waiting to see the first edition sometime soon.
Then your beloved BITotsav ’07 happens. All goes well as long as 2k3 toes the line but how much can a man take? When the goons flex a muscle or two the guys decide they’ve had just about enough. They hand over the keys and say try running the show you old guns! It all falls to pieces when they leave. For the first time it was students against the administration, en mass. Nothing happened and nothing changed but at least they tried. You and all others you know ain’t forgetting Kranti ’07 in a hurry…..

Other things were more or less the same and as the session draws to a close you start cribbing again. You hate the damn place. What with all the rules and regulations…..the in-time, the dull life…..sheesh! You gotta get out and fast…..

Right now you are sitting at home, away from the monster and what is your prime occupation? You visit it’s group on orkut, you check out the forum, you hop and skip on the blog of fellow BITians and right now you are writing about it.

Strange are the ways of the heart…………………

My Buddhi Bahadur Strongest


It began in Dagshai, a small town lost somewhere in the mist of Himanchal Pradesh. We lived in an old lonely house on an old lonely hill. My parents were at work all day long and at parties all night long. The little gaps of time thus created were filled by Buddhi Bahdur. This brings us to the question….Who is Buddhi Bahadur?

He is a resident of Nepal who served in the Indian army for the past 25 years, fought many wars and is finally retiring and going back home. But when he was in Dagshai with us he did a few other things as well. He was our nanny and one hell of a nanny was he!

In the evenings he took us bird hunting. My brother, being elder, got to handle the gun whereas I was assigned the task of spotting and recovering the prey. Later in the evening we used to sit outside the house and roast the birds and eat them semi cooked. Nothing can taste that good!]

He never stopped us from pillow fighting each other to death, from keeping weird pets (hens, chicks, bats, and owls) or anything that made us truly happy. But he was strict about getting dressed for school at time, polished shoes and impeccable uniforms.

I’ve heard he was a fearless soldier and has served in Kashmir for a long time but there is another side to his personality as well. In Dagshai, he used to live in the mortal fear that the alleged ‘Maim ka Bhoot’ will come and get him. So often we would find him at our door at two in the morning, covered in sweat because he had a feeling that the ghost was calling out his name!

He has the tiniest hands and feet and the gentlest tone when speaking. He played all our games, listened to our tearful tales, cured all the boo-boos and sang us to sleep. This same man was an ace shooter, a platoon leader and a meritorious soldier. I salute him and the many roles he played and played so well!

CHICKEN IS MADE IN VARIOUS STEPS..........WHICH I DISCOVERED ONE AFTERNOON IN THE MESS KITCHEN...........
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Why THiNK………….

First think about your web-life. Has it not changed rapidly? You no longer mail friends…..you drop by scraps. Your photos are up for display to the world. You have suddenly started preferring random videos on YOUtube to chat shows with famous personalities. Where do you go looking for information, not Britannica but wikipedia. Firefox and Linux spreading like wildfire. And the biggest one of ‘em all……THE BLOG.

WHY?

Because, as Time magazine suggests, the spotlight has shifted to YOU. We don’t want to listen to the general on a news channel briefing us about the situation on the warfront when we have a soldier pouring his heart out on a blog.

We don’t want one professionally made movies anymore……some moron with a camera filming an average day in his dorm seems much more interesting.

We don’t want telephone calls or even e-mails when social networking rocks.

GLORIFYING MEDIOCRACY???

Are bloggers just a bunch of wannabe writers doling out crap about non-consequential things? Should a regular Joe be allowed to tamper with the baap of all information- the encyclopedia? What is so good about the amateurish video clips the world is going crazy about?

I SAY,NO

Because blogs, wikipedia, YOUtube and the gazillion social networks are not trampling upon the already existing ways of information interchange. They are carving a new space for themselves, an alternative. And like it or not everybody riding this wave( now officially called WEB 2.0….though nothing official about it!) is lovin’ it. We have lived linearly too long relying on a bunch of specialists to tell us what we know or do. Its time for a different perspective.

CHANGE

Maybe it’s time when the junta jumps up from the ‘ people’s poll’ corner of the newspaper and spreads to the pages.

BUT, WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

Because bitrip and now THiNK are both a part of this phenomenon. I might now recognize many of my fellow BITians on the road but I get a peek into what they think and do from their blogs. Calvin and Hobbes may tickle me a lot but it is an altogether different experience to read a comic strip about the life around me done by someone living in the adjacent hostel. A book on famous one-liners may be good but it cannot beat the nonsensicality of H4ism. News channels with hundreds of investigating teams blew up the death of a student here but Rhea’s simple observation and remembrance was closer to the truth.

So….START THiNKing but don’t forget to open the lid of your head when you do so that the world can peek in.

COME and be a part of the first THiNK forum/meeting/briefing/celebration on 24^th January……

BECAUSE it’s time ME AND YOU took over.