Yea Yea.... I know

Yea Yea, I know.  Welcome Back.

It's taken me a very long time to revisit this blog.  I apologize to those who have been on my case to make a post.  I've been busy but that's not the reason it's taken me so long.  I think for a while I lost the inspiration, the things I was trying to make sense of didn't seem to be something to share.  Maybe a little too late to regain the inspiration as I have only two more months in India, but I have a feeling there will be much to share as the end nears.  Hope you enjoy. 

My Christmas vacation in Goa.  We rented scooters for a day with no real agenda and found a fort overlooking the coast.  Goa was occupied by Portuguese until 1961, making it a little different than the rest of India but most notably the percent of population that is Catholic is a trademark.  Beaches, Seafood, 80 degrees with sun and a bunch of people celebrating Christmas served me pretty nicely.

Agunda Beach, Goa.  I stayed at a beach hut for 8 nights on this one mile stretch on beach.  I never did see more then 50 people covering this one mile stretch covered with restaurants serving $2 shrimp and calamari plates.  The beach huts, by law, have to be temporary structures and to own land on the beach you must prove local heritage.  When the rainy season begins in May, all the structures from the beach must be removed until it stops in August.  You feel like you're in a slice of heaven that no one else knows about.

Sunset over the Arabian Sea.  Agunda Beach.

This is from the southern most end of Agunda Beach atop the rock coast.  That stretch of beach is the entirety of Agunda Beach.  It really is the most beautiful place I have ever been to.  Sitting in front of a beach hut, eating $2 seafood and drinking $1 rum drinks with only a few people there to bother you is the closest place to paradise I could imagine.

My two beach mates, Christian and Christy.  Miss you guys.  The area around Agunda is just a fishing village, this being the main harbor.  Outside the restaurants would be ice chest displays of giant prawns, lobsters, calamari and all types of fish that I have no idea what they are called.

 

Inside the fort in Goa.

More from the scooter cruise.

The only thing our fishing guide let us keep from our fishing trip.  We had to negotiate with him to let us keep some of the fish from the fishing trip we paid for.  We had both of our fishes fried by the kitchen at our huts with some shrimp and calamari.  Successful day at the beach.

A typical dock in Goa.  These are exactly like the boat we went fishing on.

A 3.3lbs Lobster, a.k.a my Christmas Dinner.  There's no question that I missed home, but I would rather my family and friends to be barefoot on the beach eating lobster with me then to be in Louisiana.  That was one empty carcass.

After my trip to Goa I went on an 11 day trip with thirty-something of my students to Varanasi.  Varanasi is the place you think of when you think of India - people bathing in the Ganges, Gurus with long hair and face paint, hundreds of temples, the smell of incense, etc.  It's located on the Holy River,  the Ganges, and they city has roots here as far back as 4500 years ago.  Truly an awesome place.

I ate at the same restaurant nearly everyday for lunch while I was in Varanasi.  The waiters noticed when my students also came to the restaurant they would always come to my table to tell me hello and the manager wanted to know how these students knew me.  The students told them that I was their teacher, and for the next four days, in the amount of english he could relate to me, told me how happy he was that I was their teacher.  It's awesome when you have these moments with people, because he could not say anything to me to make me understand yet his smile was so genuine I knew exactly what he meant.  Being forced into so many non-verbal interactions since August has probably taught me more, at least about people, then if I knew Hindi.

There used to be this rumor that cows don't like stairs.  I heard that they will walk up stairs, but not down.  I had to jump out of the way of a cow running down stairs in Varanasi.  You can put that rumor to bed.

Between the three teachers, we divided our group of students and went on a hunt for residential buildings to document.  You can learn tons inside of a studio, but there's just somethings you need to go see for yourself.  Lucky for these students they have a teacher that will ramble on and on for the half an hour walk every morning and evening. 

The ghats (the steps leading to the river) are full of life.  At sunrise the pilgrims and locals alike will begin bathing in the holy (and really, really dirty) river and it continues all day.  Every night the gurus host a huge ceremony at the main ghat to pray.  The city is interesting to me, architecturally, because the ghats are one of the two (more on the other in a moment) that are available in the city for public space .  Its where they do laundry, play cricket, take a nap, pray and bury their dead.  The city streets are really no wider than alleys and buildings are so dense there is never an opening of space.. only at the river. 

Mom, it's only my feet.  I guess the place is really spiritual and it got the best of me. 

Raised in a city whose life is owed to a great river, I couldn't help but think about how different our relationship to the river is.  I consider the ghats the park in Varanasi, every turn reveals a different relationship between people and river.  Hopefully that changes for us.

Some people are just naturally photogenic.

Varanasi is the holiest city in India, the center of the Hindu world.  For those who are buried in the river Ganges, they believe it ends the life cycles and gives the soul peace.  I lit this candle to remember my friend Chad.  Others in the boat also lit candles, but  my flame was so much bigger and wilder.  It was Chad's candle, it made sense.

I told you this city was old.  Infrastructure means different things to different people.

I got the chance to hang out on the rooftop of the residence my students documented.  I realized the river ghats were not the only public space in Varanasi.  The buildings are so densely packed and streets so small that no one spends time in either.  All the activities of the houses and streets are forced to the rooftops - Cooking, bathing, laundry, lounging, playing.  It creates this landscape unperceptive from street level.  One of the best results from this landscape, as you may be able to see from the pictures, is kids in Varanasi love to fly kites.  At anytime during the day, you look to the sky and see literally a hundred kites.

The Ghats.

The "Kerala Boys" in the front row, the "Punjabi Boys" in the back.  The entire 11 days was photo session for Mari and I.

 

 

 

The pictures only approach is so much easier haha.  I leave in two days for another trip.  I have been bad at making promises on this blog, so I won't now.  But maybe, just maybe, I'll post soon with more.  All the best and thanks for the patience.

Matt

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.

Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut

I first blamed it on jetlag, but then after a week it couldn’t possibly be jetlag.  Then I thought it was the heat, but I learned to stay out of the heat and still felt the same.  The new work schedule perhaps, I was not used to working 9-5, six days a week?  But now it’s been 5 weeks and the feeling remains.  In any other circumstances I would have adjusted quickly, so why not here?  I’ve come to realize that once you land in India, you cannot escape it.  And maybe a gora just isn’t hard wired to keep up with it.

It’s a feeling we all have had, when your body is contempt to keep moving but your brain wants no part of the rest of the day but inevitably it has too.  There seems to be some reason to be optimistic, my brain used to quit around 2 but now it has the decency to wait until after I get off work.  I guess this is why it has taken me more than two weeks to create a second post…..

It is a sensory overload - head on a swivel, noise in the air, keep shaking off the bug that just landed on your forehead, ears desperately trying to find a quieter spot deep inside your head, don’t step in that (probably too late), and wow that really was a brick that just fell off the top of that building (I no longer use buildings for their shade against the sun, apparently it may kill you).   My brain has to process in 2 hours the same amount of information I processed in 2 days back in the states and there is no escaping it… literally, as I write this, 12:15 am, outside my window there is a pick-up cricket game with 100 students cheering every 5 minutes or so.  I can’t help but laugh, because as I sit here thinking about what follows that last sentence, there is a cricket inside my room that started chirping.  I could not make that up if I tried. 

So Eyes Wide Shut isn’t just about my subconscious not being able to deal with a full Indian day, mostly I think of it as a way to describe the things that my eyes see and just can’t figure out.  What boggles me the most? I was 4 hours into India, halfway between Delhi and Jalandhar, and my bus stopped at a Haveli (term used for mansion, but in this case it is also a popular restaurant/attraction) for restrooms and food.  I picked up some food, ate outside in the courtyard and looked for a place to dispose of my trash.  And since, as we have previously covered, the security guard watched my every bite, when I was done he quickly showed me how to throw my trash on the ground… as if there was a method.  Don’t worry about trash cans, because even if they have them, there isn’t the infrastructure to deal with it.  Well that’s not true, because there is a whole army of stray cows and dogs that deal with the trash for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  You see it everywhere. The highway has piles of trash like they are safety bumpers. Even the spiritual climb up the mountain to visit the Hindu Holy Site is littered with trash (check out the pictures).  It’s hard to grasp….People here keep their personal space clean, but seem to have no regard for cleanliness in public space, even temples.  Add these few examples to the list - men holding hands (any time of day, no matter if you are in a crowd or alone), sweeping the floor with a 2 ft long broom (so you have to bend over while sweeping with one hand), four people on a motorbike - man wearing the one helmet (wife and two kids have rubber heads? I see this a lot), politicians can outlaw the sale of alcohol for two days surrounding election days and also outlaw the sale of non-vegetarian food on any day for any reasons (this strikes me as anti-democratic, especially when I am about to watch a LSU football game). There are things you can grow to understand, and there are some you can’t. 

I hope this picture can help explain India.  We all know these speakers, the ones that are disguised as rocks so that you can hide them outdoors.  Its a nice idea right?  What's nice about it is it serves a certain utility (as a speaker) with a certain aesthetic (camouflages into a natural scene).  Whether we are conscious of it or not, designs like this "rock speaker" (aesthetics + utility) surround us everyday and we use them based on the way they were designed to be used.   Not true for most things in India.  This speaker, whose purpose is to be hidden, is elevated by a cut stone inside a locked cage next to the walkway.  It could not be in more contradiction to its design then it is here.  I see this, in so many different ways, everyday.  What is great about India is I can struggle everyday to try to make sense of existence here, and then it gives me this picture. And then I understand.

In other news, we found a house!  It’s a beautiful house, great floor plan in a nice, quiet neighborhood.  There are 5 of us moving into this house, which costs 25,000 rupees a month.  Here’s the best part about that – 5,000 rupees is $108.00.  On the other hand, it is completely unfurnished which in India means no air condition, no hot water, it needs fans, needs lights, refrigerator, needs a real good scrubbing,  and of course furniture.  Let’s just say it’s still cheap even after this added costs, but it has not been easy.  The house took us almost every day of three weeks searching for it and it’s proving almost equally frustrating to coordinate the move in.  Let me remind you of my motivation – hot showers, hot showers, hot showers, hot showers…  Don’t ever take them for granted.  The house made me realize the reason why I’m so exhausted - nothing in India comes easy.  Nothing.  Pictures of the fully furnished and inhabited house will be posted shortly… hopefully.

The title Eyes Wide Shut came to me after I was leaving one of my studios as a perfect way to describe my students.  I realize I am new at this teaching thing, I realize I need to constantly find ways to be more effective, and I also realize that there are cultural differences – we understand things differently and my Chalmette accent is a tad bit different then what they are used to – but the reality is despite all my effort the students do not meet expectations.  It’s not because they are unable to because some students do so, inconsistently, but rather it seems like a disregard for their education/future.  You can tell them and show them the same thing over and over and over again, and the next class they will bring back the wrong thing. Again.  My students went through their first big pin-up last week.  Most rose to the occasion and met expectations (maybe my numerous threats had something to do with it) but still some students simply did not care enough to complete the work on time or did so with a minimum amount of care.  What completely scares me about this situation is this:

In the United States, an architect must have completed a professional degree in architecture from an accredited university.  After his/her study, they must complete an internship broken down into specialized areas of work for nearly three years.  In addition to this internship, they must also pass 7 independent exams before becoming a licensed architect.  It’s considered impressive if a person completed this task within 5 years of graduation.  All of this, of course, costs a shit-ton.

In India, an architect must have completed a professional degree in architecture from an accredited university.  After his/her study, they must pay 500 rupees ($10.86) to process the paperwork.  They are now an Architect.

Buildings don’t change.  They have the same complexities and necessities over here as they do in the states (basically).  The only thing standing between my students who right now don’t care enough to re-do a one hour drawing and in a few years building an office tower is me.  I use that viewpoint when I grade, and why shouldn’t I?  It may seem rash but its reality.  A reality that to me, is sort of frightening.  Another addition to my work that was conveniently left out of my contract is that I am now a thesis guide for 3-fourth year students.  One year removed from my own thesis and I am the expert.  Not to be outdone, these fourth years, in their final year of their not-so-grueling study, may be lazier than my first years.  Sounds like a challenge.

CHALO, away from the dorms.  You know that feeling of sleeping on someone’s couch and living out of a bag?  Maybe you do, Maybe you don’t, but that’s exactly how I have been feeling when living on campus.  I leave my room at 8 30am and return at the earliest at 10pm.  Every moment of the day I am in a space I cannot call my own and surrounded by people.  I cannot wait to move into this house.  O yea, hot showers.

Matt

I know this is gross... but you come to the blog for the truth, right?  In India, if you step in "mess" you also need to figure out what kind of "mess" it is.  Dog? Cow? Goat? Human?  In this case..... Human.  Thanks for capturing this moment JoJo, instead of warning me of the impending doom, you focused the camera.

Sneaking a peek at what's for dinner.

Can the door be any smaller?

Trash disposal off the side of the mountain.  A man came from behind me with a metal bin full of trash and threw it over.  It tumbled down until I couldn't see it anymore..... that whole trail is full of trash thrown off the top of this mountain.

My graphics class.  They love drawing elevations in the sun.

Outside my office, constructing a new wall.  They throw handfuls of cement against the brick, and then smooth it out.  "Built it with my own two hands" takes on a whole new meaning.

The hallway outside our first review.  If it rains, the building floods. 

Christian reviewing first year projects.

Our first review.  The school doesn't have a tradition of such a formal critique.  A lot of the older students came after their class to figure out what all the noise was about.

JoJo in first year reviews.

First Year space model.

Bamboo scaffolding around a water tower.  I have no idea how they build it straight.

Riding on top of the bus into Jalandhar.

We found a snake charmer! When they ask for money with a snake, it's a pretty effective method.

Sipping coffee on the balcony, watching the neighborhood cows.