Hor de so (Tell me more)

Note:  Sorry  I've taken so long to post again.  This site has been inaccessible to me the past three weeks or so, making it difficult to post this.  But those troubles are over, and here is an entry I wrote two weeks ago. I will soon follow up with an entry just for pictures.

The new car smell is gone.  Well that might be a poor analogy because the smells haven’t receded by any means, but let’s just say the shock of living in India is definitely not as strong as it used to be.  It’s a strange feeling when I think about how quickly the time has gone - yet at the same time I think about being here until June and its relation to ummm….eternity.  In nearly 10 days my first semester of teaching will be over (as a side note:  it’s a lot less stressful thinking about 10 days left of studio as a teacher, you don’t have to pull all-nighters wondering how will you ever finish covering the syllabus in time) and I’ll be able to enjoy a semester break trekking through Southeast Asia with (hopefully) a little help from home.  I think I’ll enjoy a warm beach this Christmas.

“La Familia” is settled quite nicely into the house.  For some reason when we feel guilty for speaking English we automatically switch over to Spanish instead of learning the appropriate Hindi (happens a lot when we are trying to use numbers, as if the guy at the drink stall knows what cinco means).  We have not hired a cook, which forces us to eat out or order in every day for dinner.  There are about 6 restaurants we like to patron, but we order pretty much the same thing at each place.  “Can we have Dal Mahkni (like red beans, in a way), Cheese Tomato (hunks of cheese in a tomato cream sauce), Bangin Bhartha (spicy eggplant), Fried Rice, Raita (yogurt), mixed veggies, butter naan (flatbread), and some mineral water…ummm gracias?”  I think it might be time I spread my culinary wings and see what I can do in an Indian kitchen.  Other house news is that although being advised to by our neighbors (they have lots of suggestions), we have not hired a gardener.  We have a front lawn that could be hidden if you parked a suburban on top of it (not to mention it IS hidden from view by our fence) but I guess we should get this in order as to not give the neighborhood committee a chance to say “there went the neighborhood” as soon as some goras show up.  We have a maid; well probably more of a correct statement is that we had a maid.  We could put up with her “lack of cleaning”, but then she coupled that with a bad attitude so one morning she got a pink slip.  No cook, no gardener, and now no maid….. I don’t know how I am supposed to live here anymore. 

So if Diwali is a festival that signlas the triumph of good over evil, I couldn’t agree more.  It gave me one week off and the chance to get out of the “wild, wild west” that is Punjab and into “you can get anything you want” Delhi and “every hotel is full of other goras” Jaipur.  I laugh when I think about using the word “vacation” to describe a trip in India.  Usually vacation conjures images of a break from our busy lifestyles, relaxing somewhere while we forget about the rest of the world… not exactly true in this case.  Disney could make a roller coaster called Vacation in India. Whatever it should be called, it was actually what I needed in place of the normal 6 day work week.  I’ll let the pictures and video give a glimpse of our trip because I think JoJo’s video transcends any words I could use (trying to keep up with the pictures in the video is a lot like trying to keep up with your vacation)… well, except for these words.  It doesn’t happen very often, but I have moments in my life where I am struck by the awareness that there is nothing better going on in the world, no better place to be, then to be where I am and be doing what I’m doing. Those moments of realization may be the only times in my life I can truly remove myself, the times I feel a real peace.  I had this moment laying down on the roof of our hotel in Jaipur; surrounded on all sides by a 3 hour (I only stayed there for 3 hours, but think midnight of New Year’s Eve….for 8 hours) constant barrage of fireworks that illuminate an antiquated city nestled between mountains dotted with giant fortifications.  Those moments don’t happen very often, and you seem to wake up the next morning a little differently then you did the day before.  You can never force them to happen, you can’t expect them, they just happen.  I guess since I couldn’t feel this “all is right with the world kind of peace” sitting in Bryant-Denny Stadium (remember, Diwali is the triumph of good over evil), Jaipur fit in as a nice replacement. 

 Sorry for the ridiculously sized image (provided by JoJo).  Anything smaller serves an injustice. 

I’ve been blessed with the opportunities to spend time away from home, great cities like Paris and Washington D.C. and exotic places like India.  It’s provided to be the perfect companion to my education, giving me more than what’s possible from books or studios.  For me the benefit is (at the very least) twofold; it allows me (as a person)to find out what I want for my life in that how it relates to what I want from a place, and secondly it allows me (as an architect) to consistently be introduced to new ways of thinking about my beliefs in architecture.  I feel the first benefit probably does not need any explanation since we all have this feeling in one way or another, but let me try to give one example for the second.  Beginning with my last three architecture studios I have been consumed by what it means for a building to occupy more than just the space between walls, to extend a building program further than the site boundaries and activate the public space surrounding it.  I’ve tried to include this in my designs by manipulating the program and facade to be a direct influence on creating activity by sliding, folding, opening, allowing or making sound, etc. trying to create an intimate relationship between pedestrian and building.  As an architect I guess it’s difficult to completely admit that the lived experience is more important than physical form, or maybe more honestly stated is that physical form may have no effect on the lived experience (did I just suggest architects are useless? Deep breaths Matt, deep breaths*).  The physical form of Delhi looked exactly like every other city I have been to in India - yet I have never seen a city that can be defined as alive the way Delhi can.  Over the course of the day there is an identity to each street that changes with the hours.. literally, each street – the lights and colors strung above the street, the smells from food vendors as meal time changes, the traffic from shoppers at one time and commuters another, the noises from craftsmen inside the stores and shoppers haggling, people using their balcony to lounge and hang/take down laundry– it all has a life that makes this place a Place in the absence of design or designers.  Whether any of that made sense or not it boils down to this - It is in these types of struggles, in being questioned on all the things I know or think I know, that I realize how lucky I am to be immersed in the type of place that teaches me. 

So what I am about to admit is meant to be both an afterword to the last paragraph and a shout out to NOLA -The homesick feelings have started to creep in from time to time…. and I love them.  It doesn’t make me sad or make me want to leave India.  I usually feel the need to play some Snooks Eaglin or Guitar Slim, daydream about what I would do if I was back in New Orleans and lean back with a smile.  I find it as a comfort that I love a place so much, and it’s that comfort that allows me to leave it – because I know I will be back one day, and that day I’ll be back for good.  The city, my family, my friends – in some twisted way it’s how I ended up in India, so thanks.  No matter what happens, May will come at just the right time.


*I’ve reconsidered – Architects are not useless

Street side kitchen in Delhi.

Front porch of the hacienda. 

Back porch and Mari's laundry.  We live next to the Defense Colony, and apparently the army is planning to build 4 towers in our back yard.  It's not loud.....yet.

Jai Mahal (Lake Palace) in Jaipur.

I've been trying for a while to capture this photo.  I don't think an explanation on how it works can replace actually seeing this iron.  Give your clothes a nice charcoal scent.

Early morning lounging.  From the roof of our hotel in Delhi.

The Red Fort in Delhi.  Place is huge.

Nothing accessorizes a bike like a baby.

They call this the book market.  It follows the sidewalks, leaving barely enough room for two people to walk past each other.  The book market then becomes the clothes market, then the shoe market, then the zipper market, etc.  We walked for three hours and never escaped the sidewalk markets.  If I lived here, I would run out of bookshelves in 6 months.

Golden Temple.  I wanted to see the inside of the temple, but nothing looked fun about waiting in that line.  I like to believe it doesn't get much better than the view from here.  I am a believer in mixed-use buildings, but when it comes to religious temples I do not know if it's legit to rent out the entire exterior to shops.  Then again, I went shopping, so I guess there's something to it.

Dying fabrics in Jaipur. 

Artist in Delhi. 

I had no idea dog shit was one word.

At the monkey temple in Jaipur.  You have to watch these guys, I think they spend all day plotting on unsuspecting people like me.  I was feeling surrounded and had to run out, but not before some drips fell from the trees on my head.

Check out the little guy.  Those are not brown pants.  Sorry, the camera has a mind of its own sometimes.

Temples in Jaipur.

Cricket on a side street.

The Indian-Pakistan border closing ceremony.  The Indian side gets pretty wild, I got caught up in the excitement.

JoJo wanted a henna tattoo.  JoJo got the worst henna tattoo in India.  My name almost made it worth keeping, but he washed all of it off an hour later at the American Embassy, I mean McDonald's.