...non periodic oscillations...

Image source: http://bit.ly/2ZAGiQ0 I have heard a lot of people talking about the virtues of “hard work” wherein sacrificing everything else in life is considered normal and almost always, expected. In my limited experience, I have learnt that nothing can be further from the truth. While I have never shied away from responsibility, I have generally ignored such “well meaning advice”. Recently, I came across two posts that brought this thought to the fore again. The glorification of a sixty or eighty hour work week or similar nonsense is the clarion call of those who are terrible at managing their work or are generally clueless about what their priorities in life or work are or believe that employees should be available at their beck and call or worse, plain exploitative. I have personally suffered at the hands of those who loved to schedule team meetings on holidays or wanted to have a discussion after six in the evening or regularly set unrealistic deadlines to ensure tha...

#Entrepreneurs and #Business owners: it is absolutely fine to feel pride in the business that you are building or have built but please stop "talking" about setting up #systems and #processes within your org if you think they are only for your team/staff/employees to follow. Stop talking about #accountability, #delivery and #results as if only the team/staff/employees are responsible for it. Stop talking about #attrition, lack of #passion or #enthusiasm unless you are willing to #introspect, and honestly at that. Stop believing that all #rules, #policies and #regulations are only meant for the team/staff/employees while you are not accountable to anyone. Your accountability to “yourself” is pure #convenience, so let us not even go down that path. Stop #blaming everyone else. If you pay #peanuts, you will get #monkeys. If you encourage #sycophancy, you will get your #shit worshipped. If you treat your team with #disrespect, you will be left with #unmotivated and #pass...

We were in a mall on Christmas Eve (I know, right!) because we had to get something. While passing by the otherwise dull inventory on sale everywhere, we chanced upon a tiny kiosk run by Scooboo (https://scooboo.in/) selling stationery and we just had to take a look. You know what happens when you stop at a place selling stationery? You tend to lose money quickly. That is exactly what happened. We saw these lovely gel ink pens in two varieties - one was a black ink with a big bold alphabet on it, and the second was a box of ten with nine colours. The black and white body pens both have black ink. This box is also available as a set of twenty pens. The Initial Pen with black gel ink Anyhow, long story short, pens were bought and money was handed over. I was so enticed by the beautiful, black satin finish fountain pen but held firmly to my resolve of not hoarding any more stationery. It feels good and bad - at the same time. So here is a random piece that happened as part of...

This very interesting piece of research - "The business value of design" ( link ) by Benedict Sheppard, Hugo Sarrazin, Garen Kouyoumjian, and Fabricio Dore, published by McKinsey Design - talks about how design affects a company's bottom line. What I found interesting while reading it was that I have seen a lot of organisations whose core business is design yet they do not understand it entirely. They make the same mistakes or lack the same commitment towards a design led approach to their own business as mentioned in the article. Design organisations get tied down by the lack of design in their own internal processes and business outlook, all the while trying to sell a “design product” to a client, claiming how it will improve their life or business. This is one of the main reasons why most designers live a chaotic and disoriented life, taking pride in their utter inability to streamline even the basics. This attitude is sold to the world as the romantic...

Architectural internships, for most practicing architects I know, are either an unnecessary headache or a means to get some affordable “hands on deck”. For the students looking for an internship though, it is a critical juncture of their lives. Many are of the opinion that internships aren’t required at all while many consider it a rite of passage to professional practice. The way I see it, I believe it is a good thing to give students a flavour of what professional practice feels like, before they step in to the big bad world. Academia is such an insulated, cocooned life that for some students, internship can be a pretty harsh awakening. For some interns, working in an architectural practice helps them to understand what skills are more likely to get them employment quickly. For others still, applying their thoughts in a real world scenario is a thrill. The problem with internship though, is the manner in which it is implemented. The Council of Architecture (CoA) is, of cour...

01/01/2007 Moving into another new year, I look back today and reminisce about the one gone by. A year that was full of hope, anticipation and of utter helplessness. A year which distanced me from a lot of good people and at the same time brought some close. Of times spent with my solitude and of living in the silence within. A beginning with hope of achieving a goal and then watching it disappear along with the promises on which they stood. Of finding hope once again and learning to hang on to it no matter what. Of pain that knew no limits and of love that knows no bounds. A year of lost faith and of rediscovering it in the most unexpected of places. As the new year starts I hope once again that it will be good to all of us and I pray that each one of you start it with a hope and a strength that will carry you through the inevitable highs and lows of life. I thank all of you for being a part of my life and for always teaching me something new about it. Have a happy and p...

“And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” _J. K. Rowling Our lives today are lived at a pace unprecedented in the history of mankind. We try to extract something out of every single moment, meaningful or not. Each one of us is in a race and honestly, most of us do not know where the finishing line is. Losing My Religion is the story of Rishi, one amongst the many of us, who believes in winning and is part of the same race which most of us are participating in, willingly or unwillingly. The story really starts once Rishi hits rock bottom in life. Having struggled to keep it all together, he believes he has reached the nadir till the chance encounter with Alex takes him on a path which he could never have imagined himself. The journey of a man who lives his life with a plan along with a man who has no plans whatsoever, creates moments which are exciting, refreshing and downright crazy at times. Just when life seems to start making sens...

She's twenty years young, bruised and battered, on her fourth piston and yet, she rolls :) I got this beauty a month before my Class 10th Board Exams! Don't ask me how I convinced my parents. She has been with me through the best and the worst experiences in life, and it is a pity that she has to stay far away from me due to dumb legislation.

I used to be a regular train traveller till third year of architecture school. At that time I used to make frequent trips between Delhi & Calcutta (not Kolkata yet). Of course, frequent for me and frequent for my apartment mates in NICMAR mean completely different things. Those journeys would be in the Howrah Rajdhani. Most of the other train journeys have been with family with food for the road and other miscellaneous things that happen during family train trips. After that, flying has always been the preferred mode of transport – get in, get out mode. Who had the time to sit through a long train journey, endure (or ignore) co-passengers and eat what was served in the name of food? Student concessions on Indian Airlines (not Air India yet) were a nice bonus that had to be used too. Once I moved to Bangalore (not Bengaluru yet) there was no way I could take a train to and fro Calcutta. It was a journey of over 36 hours! During those years, I rarely took a train. I can only recall ...