Untitled poem by an Anonymous Poet
Tag: inspiration
Chew on this
Two quotes you need to chew on by two people who have really proved their worth and come up in life :
“You become what you believe”
– Oprah Winfrey
And to add to that is :
” I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid. ”
-Zaha Hadid
Makes sense?
Coca Cola Kid
You meet someone for the first time.
Filled with words that you think to be wisdom.
You hear with utmost curiosity.
You make notes and click mind-images.
You’re bubbling with excitement
waiting to froth all over the place
with appreciation (and flattery?)
but you’re sitting cross-legged.
Weeks turn into months.
And by now all your friends and neighbours
know of the person’s glory.
It tops Sunday-night-dinner-discussion.
As all pumped up things fizzle out
so did your bottle of coca-cola.
And now its nothing but flat sweetness.
The novelty wore off.
Now the person is just someone
who used to make a lot of sense.
And now you don’t even care
to attend gyaan-sessions.
You’re just working by yourself.
A warm bottle of flat coke.
Wondering where your judgement
drove off the hair-pin bend.
Masters you’ll meet many
But who eventually quenches your
intellectual and artistic thirst
is who’ll keep your fizz alive.
Journey
You stumble and fall.
You get lost.
You join nomads.
You abandon travel-mates.
But you’re still walking.
Sometimes running – out of breath.
You never stop.
Life doesn’t let you – that’s its cruel sweetness.
The unseen beauty of how things work – the process in continuum.
You choose some of the paths you take.
And the others choose you.
You find companions on the way.
Some stay while the other have a way of withering away.
Some demand your time. Some are free.
You’re either a nurturer or a wanderer.
You choose companions – for life or for the moment.
That’s the law- break it- and you feel lost within your Universe.
You’re always thinking- too less, too much, deep or shallow.
Reminisce – nostalgia -memories give light.
Fears. Challenges. Betrayals – bring dusk upon you.
You breathe. You sleep. You cry and then look up at the constant sun.
This journey that our lives have begun – ends only at the beginning of another.
Harold : This is real nice. Makes me want to do somersaults.
Maude: Then why don’t you?
H: Because I’d feel stupid.
M: Harold…everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves.
You can’t let the world judge you too much.
This Life
Take a step. No, wait. Think about it. Twice, thrice – repercussions. This will haunt you forever. You can’t rewind life. The past always makes an appearance in the future. Phew.
Thorathi varattum. Paakalam.
The truth is, time is running out. The other day when we were just chilling in a friend’s room watching Modern Family and Hailey went about saying she is twenty-one I realised I’m going to turn the same age in a month. Adulthood is getting more real by the passing hour. And soon I’ll have a job and vacations will be unpaid-leave and not something the college lets you have so you can come back afresh for a new semester.
And I’m not restricting myself to the code-books of appropriate living anymore. I’ve done everything right up until now when it comes to getting into college, deciding on a career, being a nice person. So now I want to live a little more.No, don’t worry, I’m not going off to Himachal on a horse. I mean to say, I always hold myself back everywhere, thinking too much. Worrying about this and that. And yesterday was an important day and I realized that I lost some really important things and people because I gave into the pressures of life and apprehension. And now I can’t undo any of it. So why should I follow rules that are breaking me?
I rewound to Goa. Sushi, Hrishi, Priyo and I were chilling together after walking the entire evening along DB Marg as out Professor explained the urban heritage of Panjim. We saw many spots we wanted to stand a little longer. But we couldn’t so as soon as our teachers left us Scot-free we decided to retrace our path and walk back to the hotel. And on the way we just walked, laughed and thought of nothing. Just did what we wanted. I remember happily singing and walking with them on a bridge where they were burning something for a ritual while some others were fishing with their own private fishing rods. I had never seen those things before in my life and I was giggling merrily in my state of bliss.
I want more carefree moments like that. I want to be an independent person who makes memories. And takes risks and uses opportunities without thinking a million times. I know when to draw lines; when to say no and when to sleep instead of dancing.
I will write when I get ideas. Scribble. Dance on the road. Meet that guy I missed last time before he went off to the States. Read more, more and more. Debate. Involve myself in political debates. Put my head into things I’m not so aware about. Make mistakes. Get corrected. Get looked down upon. Be judged. Cry about it. Wake up stronger. Laugh about it with friends. Learn more. Write more. Explore my interests. Hate on ex-girlfriends who still have a power over these nice boys. Have food with both hands. Not brush my hair before classes. Wear BATA sandles to everywhere I go. Eat cold pizza right off the fridge. Throw things. Lose stuff. Let it go. Create art. Talk to new people. Create more original work. Listen to good music. Have my own opinions. Express them. Evolve. And just be happy. Learn to hug right. And not get awkward when cute guys talk to me. Be proud of the movies and music I like and not try to be someone I’m not. Instagram whatever the shit I want to. Tweet remind my first love indirectly that he’s missing out on the priciest chic in the town. Haha. Prank people. Meet my Blogger friends. Laugh with them. Love them and their many stories and personalities.
Spend more quality time with the parents and the sister whom I’m missing out on, majorly. Take them out to dinners and show them places. Cook burnt dinners for them, decorate the house for festivals with them. Catch up on everything our life made us miss out on. See my sister become something great. Be there when y parents begin cribbing like Piku’s. Read my poetry to them even if its for an estranged boyfriend. Haha.
Careers happen. Degrees come and stay in folders and walls. Pay for the niceties in life. But these moments make us who we are – make us sleep with a smile or a tear on your face. Make us human. And I want to live them all. To the best of my potential. I want the heart to burst with joy and be able to cry when I want to. Live the entire spectrum of emotions.
Not run behind the right people but Make it Right for those whoa re actually with me. And make merry. Cherish every last cookie in the jar.
To a life lived with love. Meet me soon, I don’t want to miss out on any of you. I want to know your stories, share mine, see places with everyone who knows me and write about our adventures. Laugh. Cry when you leave and hang pictures on my wall. Let nostalgia keep me awake and dreams put me to sleep. While I live now.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope you realize what you want of life, too, if you haven’t already.
Charles Correa – An Elusive Image
“The complex and ambiguous relationship between man and nature is central to Indian Architecture.”
Charles Correa (1930 – 2015)
Bold openings introducing you into the mind of a Master whose simplistic approach to finding contextual answers for urban issues, challenges our very own understanding of spaces. The way one Hall leads you to a stepped-central courtyard impacts the way you perceive things – his work moves you; pushes you and at the same time defines the program with a form, flawlessly. Sensitivity gives character to an Architect’s work. Capturing this feeling in built form is one the many talents Correa possessed.
Intangibility – the entire idea of it consumes the mind as it finds a way to trap it within the physical realm so it can be revealed to another. This trapping is an art-form wielded by the Master to bring life into his buildings. One such element is Light.
Light in its myriad of playful forms – the harbinger of sight- is one the most intangible elements in Architecture. If scanty it blinds us and on the other extreme, it glares. To keep it from scorching us in its entirety- channelling its beauty into a spatial form- activating its ability to make someone feel is a ruse that Correa applies in many of his creations.
Close your eyes, expecting nothing, stand underneath the pergola and let time pass you by. As the sun makes its journey across the cone, the way light falls upon you in a pattern heating a portion of your skin while the next is a shaded strip, brings your senses alive. The alternative bands of sensation make you see even though you have closed your eyes to light. That is the magic of arresting the intangible.
To evoke emotions similar to the ones ebbing within you is a talent of its own. This sets apart the Actor, the Artist, the Performer and the Architect – the Director of space- from a common observer. Beams of sunlight that filter through the gaps between the thatches and the morning sunlight entering the kitchen window inciting the tendrils of smoke rising from the boiling-milk into a smooth waltz, have a natural splendour of their own. Sun light has always been a focus in traditional architecture -be it purifying water tanks in Agraharas; bringing life to membranes by turning them translucent or as a means to portray symbolism. Charles Correa brought dynamism in the Static by bringing light into play- in all of the element’s forms translating traditional motives into contemporary milieu.
Exposure- the very word launches in your mind images of doors opening as two districts conjoin via the Threshold – the element of transition. Exposure creates form, creates movement just like your pupil dilates as you recede away from light and contracts as you bask in it.
Correa’s spaces are characterized by the experience they provide you as he varies the level f exposure from open-to-sky spaces to shaded porches and pergola-covered terraces. The shadier, more intimate corners ease you as you feel protected by the scale of them- the walls backing you up. A mezzanine platform that you’re perched upon- turns into a realm of your own as you personalize it because of its exclusivity in spatial terms. But as soon as you walk into vast, open courts- where the lightest breeze can rouse a tingle in your spine- the space affects you according to your persona. You’re either intimidated by its agoraphobic scale or stimulated so that your mind breaks through the shell and a barrage of thoughts rush past you- consume you. Or you recede into a pocket of your own- customizing a haunt of your own to reflect deeply.
When you look around the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, a playful Lord Krishna playing his basuri– painted in hues of black and white- on a boldly coloured wall is a sight you see after climbing a railing-less staircase edged to a wall. The vitality in such art- the Vastu Purusha stretching over the concave curvature of a dome or the stripes adorning the British Council building at various levels and staggered faces of the facade- have a language of their own. They speak to every viewer in a tone suited to their liking, under the broad umbrella of Correa’s objective of their creation.
Art in Architecture is a phrase that comes into play not only in two dimensional manifestations but are also ingrained multi-dimensionally like the way the spiral staircase is articulated in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Centre in Pune. Materials bring unity while the colours he chooses mirror the intended vibrancy of the spaces. Colours activate a stimulus in our system that we respond in insentience. Our mind has pre-associated generic colours attached to nostalgia. And when they show up, our environment transforms within our mind frame.
Correa provides spaces that mean different things to different people through his artistry. And that is how he complements the multi-faceted yet unique nature of the humankind.
Visual connections transcend physical barriers. You can lunge forward into a space just by looking at it. Your conscience can be hauled from where you stand to where you want to be if you can simply see it.Correa’s Levels do that to their users. Being present but at the same time, detached from the activity around you just because you’re at a different pedestal is a bequest Correa offers to you.
The ethereal elements that he believed connect humans to their surroundings as life progresses – the Light, the Exposure, Colours, Visual Play and the plethora of emotions that they stir up in us evolving our capacity to experience spaces as they are subtly intended to- are elements that Correa’s Architecture is conducive to.
His will to defy norms where he believed they needed tweaking; inspire change, to respond to multi-layered contexts both climatologically and culturally, keeping in mind the larger scope of things led him into being the phenomenon that he will forever be remembered as. He is the personality Our Architectural Era will be remembered by.
The gems he has left with us will be sewed in the tapestry we, as his successors, create and pass on as our collective legacy.
(Article for The Indian Arch Magazine 2016 by NASA, India)
Light
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our l fear, our presence automatically liberates others.Marianne Williamson
QOTD
To be beautiful means to be yourself.You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don’t try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.
– Thích Nhất Hạn
COURTESY : Berlin Artparasites
It’s all in here.
Come on, its tough but you deserve this freedom. Don’t you?
Thank you Ari 💚
Love Always,
S
{blinks} 