Namesake – forced or forsaken

Failing to understand one’s name is small compared to failing to understand oneself. Was watching the movie adaptation of the best seller book ‘Namesake’, and I realized the importance of the values imbibed in me by my family. No matter how open minded or modern I may become, the moral police that those values instill in my sub-conscious is something to comprehend and deal with. I never felt the power of culture, society and community in this fashion. Even though lately have discussed these at length with my classmates. I guess still not clear enough.

The world continues to bewilder me, as I try to see it this time around. Many a question and even more troubling feelings which can’t be put to words. Studies, random statements made out in some context; make more sense to me in ways not meant by the speaker. The other day my faculty said “vernacular is everything when one resorts to one's own capacity”, and I was drawn to note it down even though I didn’t understand the gravity of the statement. Now it dawns on me. I can write a book on vernacular, but not today.

Tonight (30-09-10) India sleeps in a kind of anxiety and may be fear that my grandfather might have experienced at the night of 15th august 1947. Ayodhya the jinxed land awaits a verdict later today. A verdict no matter which name of the god it sites, will surely have repercussions which may redden our streets. In all my sanity I wish for nothing of this sort. Who decides what’s vernacular to that once sacred and now a Pandora’s Box. Does anybody live upstream?

Valuing the sacred is the theme for Berkeley prize essay contest this year. But I believe valuing the name is more important nowadays. I don’t know what’s so sacred about something, but yes if you can put an appropriate name to anything, it turns sacred.

“It’s been going on for two million years, and this is the way the world spins.” This line made me fume in the context it was made, but the meaning holds value. Not for the environment as put by my ‘I know all’ friend, but in the context of culture and emotions. I was juggling the differences and relations among culture, society, community, ethics, values, morals, and humanity. But now I know just one thing for sure that humanity is something which exists when all the others cease. I so much wish I could understand the rest or at least what I am writing right now.

Value the sacred or scared, kill for your identity, impose it on others, escape from reality, do on to others as they do on to you, or may be to everyone who carries the similar name. In the name of culture, in the name of vernacular, in the name god, ultimately to forget all in the flowing blood and to be as human as nature allows.

Everything resorted to one’s own capacity.

What’s in the name?

It’s all in a name.

By the way my name means unruffled.

Spirituality - Physical or Meta-physical

Spirituality. I hardly understand the significance of this word, leave alone the meaning. Its sometime seems fancy and at others unreal. I got thinking about it few days back due to some very strange reason. I’ll get back to it later, but today watching a documentary on Louis I Kahn – the legendry architect, known in India for his design of IIM Ahmedabad and Capitol Complex of Bangladesh, spread some different light on the ambiguous word.

Well it all started with a pun intended attribution of seven deadly sins among my circle of sinners. We never zeroed on the final distribution, but yes ‘lust’ found its rightful sinner. The curiosity about his recognized sin, the sinner went on to research the lecherous sin. His findings were earth shattering as he went on to describe lust as “something beyond love, a state of oneness with the god”. Don’t give me “wtf”, but that what it boiled down to ‘Spiritual Lust’.

‘Spiritual Lust’- such an oxymoronic phrase, how can such an earthly/bodily thing have meta-physical acceptance? Was my pornography obsessed baby faced sinner mistaken, or he unknowingly unearthed something absolute? I’m still perplexed.   

This perplexing state made me observe things around me from a different angle. The euphoric celebrations of janamasthami (anniversary of Lord Krishna) by fellow students in hostel, denial by university to provide a common ground for similar celebration of Eid, then university offering a certificate course in “Ethical Values”, the rumors of two of our fellow students converting to Islam and of university granting holiday to just Muslim students for Eid, to even the discuss on population density and area distribution among different economic groups in a housing scheme. I hope even you can see the apparent spirituality and lust in these happenings.

I don’t know what I want to point.

Was Gandhi justified in criminal negligence of his son’s aspirations for the greater common good, was Louis Kahn justified in his quest of architectural brilliance at cost of this family and parental responsibility. What Gandhi and Kahn achieved was a body of work which the world now regards as spiritual, by means which I can positively define as lusty. Then, am I justified in debating the rights of homeless to shelter at the cost of land’s commercial and real estate potential.

Is lust spiritual or spirituality lusty? Dilemma!

Spirituality is something which on and off gets associated with religion. Do religions define what is spiritual? I don’t know, but yes billions follow and practice religion in quest of this.

“I’m a very spiritual person, but not even remotely religious”, I have read and heard this statement so many a time that now it sounds “I’m the essence of humanity, but not even remotely human”

Spirituality is a state of mind, but the point remains this mind resides in this body.

Love all.

"Leh" - Passion or Fashion

My head is ringing with so many ideas that I’m confused what should I start with. Should I talk about the imaginary institution of money or should I elaborate my point of view on the current struggle in Kashmir. Both of these have consumed my thoughts and readings for some while now, but these will be too out stretched a topics to start with.  I rather talk something more grounded and less politically volatile. And I think I have just the right thing: Leh.

I’ve been highly troubled by the recent catastrophe in Leh. It plagues my conscience. Why? Well there are many reasons, but here I would like to discuss it from the point of view of morals. I decided (rather fate decided) to study in the state of J&K. For past 5 years I’ve being using the resources of this land to train and educate myself to become a competent architect. I don’t know if it was a just decision on the part of this state to invest its valuable resources and time in me, a non-native, a person who shall eventually never work in or for this state (to be noted that even if I desire I can’t because of the constitutional status of my foster home). But it’s quite evident that my decision to use J&K resources puts me under a moral obligation to serve this land. That being said, now I would like to point out why Leh becomes so important to me now.

In the final year of my professional nurturing (read B. Arch.), Leh with its ruins presents to me apt opportunity to fulfill my moral obligation. I can not only do service to my foster home but I can do it by providing the services it has trained me for. In fact this is the time that she needs my services the most. Talking in the same breath, being the one and only school of architecture in the state, it becomes not only mine but our moral responsibility to help rebuilt Leh. And it hurts that I’m writing this sitting in the comforts of my hostel room and not from the survival battle field of Leh.

I researched what can I do, and results pointed that right now they need relief work more than reconstruction work. Moreover, me just landing up there with nothing to offer, shall generate more problems. So, I went about talking about the idea with my classmates, hoping we might be of some help when actual reconstruction activities start. I admit I was a bit influenced by the story of Bhuj earthquake of 2001, where the whole batch of CEPT (premium architecture school of Gujarat) dropped a year to help reconstruct the devastated region. Not because they were asked to do so but because they felt the moral obligation. Anyway, I went around. As Justine Timberlake sang “what goes around comes around”, my talking came back to me. One of the most socially active personalities of our class summoned me to discuss the issue. She was much moved and informed me that some faculty (not of our school) also shares my point of views. She was all charged up, she wanted to do something. I was happy. The proposition of writing to the university VC was thrown in the air. All was shaping well for almost 2 minutes now, and then came reality crushing in, which made me go ‘what’s the point!’

Wonder what happened? Nothing much, just an innocent inquiry (after all the proposals) from the passionate: “was it an earthquake that happened in Leh!” 

Note: for those who still don’t know what happened in Leh on 6th of August 2010, I would make your life easier it’s called flash floods. If you don’t know what they are, please Google.