Waiting

Waiting on destiny,
To live up to the hype,
That it has been creating,
Through the words of many.

Waiting on change,
To get uncomfortable,
While searching for comfort,
In unfamiliar places.

Waiting on soulmates,
To make their mistakes,
So they can aim to get closer,
to meeting the one.

Waiting on wisdom,
To make me realize,
The only way to gain,
Is losing it now.

Waiting on love,
To bloom in the lands,
where barren is their fate,
But hope is strong.

Waiting on the wait,
to continue its course,
As the only answer,
Is to wait.

An incurable romantic

Long time ago, a storm announced it's arrival to a village. It was a beautiful day, the clouds seemed happy courting the sun, unlike us, fighting to own people and tying them down to our lives. This storm was not like the usual ones, but then, no two storms are alike, this one was unique just like every other storm.

It started at a pace it could pick up, so silent and beautiful, it was curious. It didn't feel like the speed was like it imagined, could it go a little faster? A little fierce? Maybe, add a mysterious touch to it's form, grow bigger. Look really mysterious, nobody must know.

It roared, going past things like a casual saturday evening walk. Flipping trees, throwing things in the air, going past everything like it never existed.

And then it reached the village. The village that survived so many attacks, threats and punishments of nature, the village that repaired itself immediately after every disaster. It was a virtue, the storm couldn't fathom. It felt challenged. It felt eager to run past the village, destruction was the only language it spoke. Some people or things are made to balance the good in the world, they are the bad guys we hear about. The guys who would make that heartthrob look beautiful in your eyes, that cute guy who stood up for you in class when the baddie was poking fun at you, why are they not given their credit? Isn't it unfair?

These were the thoughts of a little girl sitting on the porch, in the village. Should we try to know why these exist? Why must we worry and hurry around saving our things when the storm visits, of course, it sure does know it isn't welcome. Why must we refuse an opportunity to start over, pick things up and repair. Out bodies do it, the planet does it, the microorganism does it. Repair is how we function, it's a necessity.

Meanwhile, the storm picks its prey. Tossing and turning everything in order, no regrets.

The courting clouds are back again, this time, the sun is reluctant to be seen with them.

Hit and go, Typhoon Haiyan.

Please appreciate the ability to lose your thoughts, confuse yourself and change your mind often. It is in this process that you re-discover what you really want and discard the rest, for later use. After all, what is life without a little recycling? If you are reading this here for the first time, I'm sure it was quoted by someone already, like I said, recycle.

Thoughts, ideas, design, everything comes from an epicentre of pre-conceived and existing options. Art and its history, the numerous periodic shifts it has taken is an example. Even renaissance came in with a bang with precocious ideas and principles. Is originality far too over-rated?

I picked my paint brushes and dusty art materials from every nook of the house and read more about art these days. A constant barrier from the beginning of my design education was distinguishing art and design. Though it seemed very ambiguous in the beginning, it slowly dawned upon me that if art were the vivid colors of a Van Gogh, design would be his skill to create such art. But in today's world, where and how do we differentiate art and design? How educated are people around you to appreciate good design and great artworks?

I've been fighting this phenomenon of late, where the word 'design' would talk only about the attractiveness of an object. Or worse, a Rangoli (it's a highly structured design btw) or any excessive mindless decorations that we indulge in because, for some reason we believe excess is excellent!

One isn't entirely wrong referring them as "designs", however one isn't entirely right when they say the milk-man gives milk. How do we educate the world about design? Why is it important? (O.K so I did spend a whole lotta money on my education, but that isn't why) Do we ignore any acknowledgement towards design that makes our life smarter, easier or more comfortable? If so, why?

Before I begin answering my questions (in case, you thought this was about me educating you about design, no, it is me obsessing with questions and trying to answer with whatever I know till date, to come back five years later and snigger at myself), let me discuss this recent incident that took place that may be a revolutionary design/idea that can be an excellent disaster management tool. And also a brilliant example to explain my argument.

Super Typhoon Haiyan has caused massive damage to the Phillipines, estimating the largest death toll so far. Mind you, just an estimate. The city of Tacloban and other badly hit areas have been mapped online by millions of volunteers who with the help of online mapmakers, spot the Typhoon hit area, roads that have been damaged, building missing, landmarks that will identify the hit-areas so rescue operations would run smooth and provide care and relief to places that will be identified with the help of these online mapmakers.

And this is possible just because of the internet.

This isn't the first time online mapmakers were used to detect disaster hit areas to rescue, but this is one such time that the Red Cross has tied up with OpenStreetMap (OSM) and planned to rescue people who are struggling and missing. The best part about this process is that, the mapmakers weren't difficult or confusing to users. It was simple to track roads using satellite data, areas and edit them online. See where this is going?

    Image taken from: www.telegraph.co.uk

Now, how does this actually help the entire operation? The data will be collected and printed by the volunteers, distributing it among themselves. Just take a look at the amount of inputs by the people that brought in this edited map of the rescue areas. Not just that, offline editing can be done too. Workers can pin, cross buildings and roads on the printed maps as well. And people who have contributed to the online mapmakers? Well, they tweet. They post the areas, the landmarks, the area covered, the major hit locations that needs emergency rescue. As quick as possible. And this is how a plan can be devised, this is managing a disaster with evidence and proofs of how to channel workers and plan operations that will not only be resourceful but time-conserving.

This is technology and design coming together and giving solutions to a problem, people would take a whole month to assess, contemplate and provide half-true estimate values and news. This is design.

But whoa, wait a minute. How can it not have loop-holes? Of course, that is the best part about design. It need not be perfect and it can never be. It's a process that endures enormous amount of changes, iterations and more often than not, leading to several other solutions for different problems.

There will arise a few questions when discussing this design solution. Geospatial mapping and its uses have been popularised and have benefited many a time. However, when predictions and warnings have been given, do we not take alerts seriously? Considering previous small storms and minute occurrence of heavy rainfall, do we tend to take it easy during such disasters? Also, is the prediction time and warning time enough for people to evacuate and run for their lives, in shelters or other locations? Do such places exist where the government provides shelter and basic needs before the occurrence of a natural disaster? And, just because this is another alarm, doesn't mean we glide into worrying and obsessing over climatic change, global warming, sea levels rising, etc. Don't even start your religious discourse on "sins" and "evil doings" by humans that affect us back. This can go on for ages and can be forgotten too easily. What we can do, is repair. Rise back as soon as possible, one must move on and technology can assist in that direction tremendously. Design alters life, it provides reasons to look for hope when there is nothing but black and muck around the worst possible occasions. It is not a single man's job to clean up after the damage is done. We can do much more, bring in more possibilities of a future where such incidents can be managed well, not saying everything is in our hands including the end of the world, but you get the drift that design has to offer right? 

Design helps you co-exist. And art makes your design understood.

Rest in peace, you were braver than the rest. I pray for your peace, people and pain to heal quickly.

Love,

Snigdha Nanduri

Sources: www.theatlantic.com, www.science.time.com, www.telegraph.co.uk. 

What's going on?

Part of my days end up in thinking about what's life going to be like? After all the ups and downs that I've faced, frankly my childhood was perfect, can't point a finger at anything wrong from that phase and then comes the adulthood, pretty much everything from 16 to 20. Ever since I hit 16, all I've encountered was confusion. This new introduction to bewilderedness and unpleasant situations never made sense. Why would I always want things I could never handle? Even as a child, I'd prefer drinking water from glass tumblers than normal stainless steel ones, just to have a different take at drinking water, different from others. Glass tumblers were slippery in my hands, I'd end up dropping them (pretty much all the time) or once I almost bit the top of the tumbler, for what joy I can't remember, but I'm sure I was annoyed or something. So I bit the top chunk and it was shaped like a broadened U. Fifteen minutes later my mother started panicking about the missing piece of the tumbler. They searched the sink, the utensils, the kitchen, my room, my dress, everything that made them think it would be lying there. My father probably joked about how they should hold me upside down and it would pop out of my mouth or maybe tomorrow morning it would be in the pot by itself. My mom for sure didn't appear to adore his sense of humor at that moment. While I watched everyone panic, not comprehending the situation, I was keeping busy.

It didn't bother me till somebody suggested that they must take me to the doctor immediately. Mother must have panicked worse after that, imagine a sharp glass piece in my tiny stomach. Imagine the number of cuts my intestines would have to endure, the internal bleeding, the unconscious damage my body will go through and slowly, mind you, slowly kill me and choke me. Or maybe bleed me to death till morning and if I weren't operated upon, I'd just live 5 years on the planet. Imagine what my parents must have gone through. Those moments when somebody suggested that it's high time I was rushed to the hospital, mother could have been worried, sweating drops of fat sweat and praying that nothing damages my throat-oesophagus-stomach etc. My father was the man who'd control his nerve in situations like these. I guess, that's where I get the 'I don't lose my cool so easily' from.

While all this chaos was taking shape, I was still unsure what's the hullabaloo was about. I'm still sipping on my green apple soda and wondering what I would give to go back into that moment and remember what I was thinking. Was I scared? Was I enjoying the sudden shower of attention? Was I anyway interested? Did I understand why my mother was panicking? Did I want my father to lift me up and hold me in his arms? Did I want to sit and watch tv letting the chaos settle on its own? I don't know. But I do remember it was this guy who used to help mom with the household work, this guy called Rangavalli, who came running with the glass showing the chomped off area. I wonder what he is doing now. I wonder if he has naughty children and a nice wife who cooks and takes care of him and the kids. I wonder if he's making any money, enough to send his kids to school and give them a good education. Making sure they would be a hundred steps ahead of him, he was after all a bungalow peon. He wouldn't want his children to grow up and be him. Every man who has worked for us, probably secretly wished that his children grow up and be somewhere like Dad. With the designation, the respect, the confidence, etc. Why won't they?

So back to the missing glass chip that everybody assumed was inside me, already cutting my young cells and internal organs that will not like the bleeding one bit. Mom tried to get me to puke my guts out, well really, puke my guts out, hoping that the part would fall off with the dinner I just had with water from the almost famous glass tumbler. When would I jump up and cry? When would I scream and run around the house in pain? Would I cry loud that the neighbors would curse and come running too? Would I choke? What if it's too big to go through the throat? Would I gasp and cut my throat further? What would I do?

What did I do. 


A good 45 minutes later, when everybody was ready to leave the house and rush to the doctor, Rangavalli was asked to take care of the house. He went back to his zone, the minding his business around the house zone, the zone which gives him the liberty to breathe easy, boosts confidence where he knows what he was doing, oh frankly, mom always thought he was a little cuckoo. Like if she asked him to get two litres of milk and a dozen bananas, he'd bring two bananas and a dozen packets of milk. Know what I mean? He was the typical Suppandi character from the Tinkles that I used to read as a child. This zone was more than just work. It would let him dream about a future that he would want to have, a future that lets his self respect grow by day. A day without anybody cussing him or his ignorance. He must have left his village with a local uncle who must have promised a job, he must have jumped onto a train with him without paying for the ticket and landed where we were and as luck would have it, mom needed a person to help her with the house and cleaning. (I somehow find servant very derogatory, also, mom didn't trust him with everything. Not the actual "trust" trust, she didn't trust that he understood what she wanted him to do around the house. So it was indeed "helping" my mother.)

Was I being carried downstairs? We lived in a big apartment of sorts called 602/J. It had two houses on either sides with a staircase going the usual straight way. We were on one of the top floors without a lift so we had to climb down. A minute before leaving the house, when daddy was probably checking his wallet and checking for the bike keys, mom was quickly pulling her purse and me, I was unusually curious about the events.

Rangavalli suddenly comes dashing to the living room where my parents are and with a bout of overflowing happiness holds the glass piece up. The world suddenly didn't have hungry children, dying animals, old dying people, terror attacks and crime, the world didn't have any of these for those couple of moments. Perhaps they celebrated a little, perhaps they laughed it off and all of this is my exaggerated version of what really happened or they were relieved and fell asleep holding me really close in the big bed the three of us slept in.

Perhaps. 

But here's the thing. When your childhood was so well taken care of and crafted, you will possibly be unknown with the fearsome and trouble waiting to jump onto you as you grow older and realize that life is not just about being a happy kid, surprising people in trains with precocious conversations that would lead to truck loads of compliments to my parents about how they're bringing me up and how I would one day grow up and make them proud, how I would grow up to be a sharp human being.

How I would grow up to be a very very smart human being. 

I still don't know what everybody meant by that. It's not funny when everybody you talk to end up saying that, not boasting but it gets creepy. After creepy it gets crazy, you would actually want to sit and ask them what exactly do they mean by I would be smart and grow up outshining? What is this smartness that I already don't know about? What's with the need to outshine and make the world notice me? Why the need to compliment my parents about how I was brought up. Why the urge to always judge kids based on how they make conversations or how they act grown up when the rest are still immature and ignorant?

No, really. Sometimes, the values and judgements of people are so baseless that you'd not find faith in anything to believe in. There will be a time in your life where you wouldn't believe anymore. The word belief would be reckoned as acknowledgment of the existence of a subject or idea. Until I find the right meaning and explanation to what goes on around me, I would cease to believe in anything people say about it. From crushes to people you've never met, if everyone ended up saying the same thing while the world is crumbling and falling apart with the never ending stress added on top of an already stressful schedule without any promise of fruits being produced by the plant called future and the roots called attitude.

I shall sip my never ending green apple soda and say loudly, "This too shall pass" while a couple sit across my table try really hard to order something to eat and not sound lame while ordering the right food, incase the other person judges them on their choices, oh no, wouldn't that be so sad? Imagine, somebody wouldn't have a second date with you because you didn't know what Bolognese Cheese it or  why a particular sandwich has been named "Manet" in a coffee shop that is partly an art gallery.

My world with it's never ending problems and beautiful music shall run its course and keep me on my toes from time to time, someone's always coming around and I'll be collecting a million pictures of them, a million sketches of things that made me feel something more than just normal everyday feelings, something that will redefine the history that Ive carried over my back since I was born. Something will come my way, that will slowly, very slowly blow me away, although I'm actually that person who would jump and burst in excitement immediately instead of letting nature take it's sweet time with the course of events that it wants to shape in my life.

       
But I've got to creep down the alley way, 

Fly down the highway, 

Before they come to catch me I'll be gone. 

Somewhere they can't find me. 

I still let it play.

There are songs that play and finish. And there are those that hit you in every single dimension, mind you there are at least twelve. Bob Dylan has always been a mystery to me. Imagine, you have an entire night to work for an assignment. You cut your self off that stupid social networking site that only troubles you. It's weird that your phone doesn't run out of charge cause nobody calls you, your i-pod and you are inseparable because there's nothing else that makes you feel good in a day and there it appears, like it was meant to at that very moment. Like it's written in God's manuscript that you will listen to this at that very point and it will hit you. In places un-fathomable.

Bob Dylan has it in his lyrics. And when the song reached it's half, there's a furor of emotions. That anguish and blame that you put on yourself, that feeling of something hanging at the pit of your heart, the emotions that you spend all your life trying to avoid, come guffawing. And you know what? It's un-avoidable.

BOB DYLAN

Here's to the master, who has the "restless hungry" feeling to thrust him forward. With a voice so calm, it's difficult to spot them.

When we first met, you were full of regret, 

And so was I.

Ran out of tears, shame hidden in your pocket,

I dare not ask why. 

Maybe it was my mind, 

I grew less fierce

Maybe it was you, 

so hopeless and strong.

How did I get here, 

when nobody could pierce,

the anger, the hatred, to who it belonged?

The winds that wipe, 

the whispers they bring to me

Of affection gained, 

too good to be free. 

Pitying, I drop a tear, 

as I watch the grey skies, 

I billowed under the cloud, giving away my fear. 

I think about us often, 

lie not cause it's true

Of things unspoken, 

I hate to believe. 

What memories were made

filled with fumes of love and hope 

but ideas and theories everybody forgot.

Turn back the time, 

embrace my mistakes.

Who am i kiddin'?

I cannot throw away.

Take the beaten track back home,

run on my toes,

Reach before you close,

I am not who I set to be. 

Something about old conversations makes  me feel really nice. It's a big tub full of emotions contradicting one another. Pieces of chits that got passed in the class to gtalk saved chats, almost all of it makes me wonder what really happened that makes me stand away from the normal stuff?

Needless to say, these conversations don't take place anymore due to various reasons. Pushed them away, have better things to talk about, cannot stand their opinions and many more. I'm no queen at being the best but I think it's my doing. I see myself slowly run down hill with whatever strength i've left in me.
It's hard to make a conversation with anybody. People get offended, annoyed and confused. I wish I stopped caring. :)

I have my exams going on. If you knew me for really long, you probably won't believe this: I haven't stepped out of my room except for food and the toilet or writing my exam (!). Very minimal exchange of words and presence of another person in the same location. It's different. It's good? I don't know. Makes me save a lot of time and affection.

I feel a lot more calm. It's strength that was restored, which i lost in the last couple of years. Honestly, what the worst thing that could happen to me? I'll find a way to deal with it. I've grown so weak and vulnerable, which quite frankly annoys me. I was the BACK BONE before. People came to ME for support and assurance. And now I dig it. How the fuck did I think that is being strong and epic independent again?

Anyway, I have become v.organized. It's not funny. I have finally started feeling normal. This is what I used to be. Chirpy, organized and careful. :)

Alright then. I will finish my exams, make myself a little proud and do some hiking maybe?


Love.

Stop judging me. Get a life, loser.