Tid Bit from My Diary

“ Either war is obsolete or man is. To not evolve beyond war is to choose oblivion over utopia. ” My heart bleeds every time the news of the death of civilian or soldiers come in. Useful lives of our country are being wasted and families are getting devastated by mindless killings. The idea above is of R Buckminster Fuller, a great American Architect and it was discovered on his desk after he had passed away. In my opinion he was a true dreamer in his own rights, otherwise  who in his right frame of mind would have dared to dream of a world without war. After all it's the arms industry that keeps the economic engines of so called great nations lubricated. They have made wars their birth right and seldom hesitate to bestow one upon others! . ….. and of course we cannot undermine how much craving so called great people with ego have for absolute crude power and wealth. Or else we all would have lived happily ever after!

Most of the time Zero is considered more negative than any negative integer and we seldom hesitate to say “he or she is a big zero”. While the size of a zero definitely doesn’t matter, there are some excellent lessons one could take home from Zero. We learnt that one can add colossal value in life by positioning oneself in the RIGHT place. When 0 (zero) collaborates with 1 (One) in the right position they make 10 (Ten). Zero (0) degree, where the water starts to freeze, could give us immense warmth once arrived from a minus 10. We learnt that in spite of being the smallest, Zero does not carry any negativity. Though careful usage Zero could be encouraging, as a manager once appraised someone. “He has improved tremendously” the manager wrote. “His English has now become zero from totally non-existent”.

I believe in parallel universe: Multiple versions of us are living in alternate worlds that interact with each other. Nah! I am not going to bore you with quantum theories to explain "multiverse". Rather, it’s quite simple for us to perceive. One world exist in our home, offices, parks or movie theaters while other one could be viewed in its full glory on our roads. Once behind the wheels of those moving metals, each actor has a different character ever ready to clank at the slightest opportunity. I once encountered a driver, who started his argument by accepting he was an idiot while questioning if I did enough to prove my genius. He must have been a lawyer of the Road world and the realization dawned on me that in this parallel world all professions exists. The Professor : When they happen to observe someone break the law, they make every effort to let the errant know that it was wrong. Given an opportunity they give a lecture on it. Makeup Artists :...

Aruba's trademark: the Divi Divi or watapana tree This is my sketchy sketch version of the famous Divi Divi  tree I chanced once upon a time in the internet. It is found in exclusively in the tiny Island of Aruba, which is 180 square kilometers in size and part of the kingdom of Nederland in the Caribbean Sea.   The Divi Divi tree is Aruba’s natural compass, always pointing in a southwesterly direction.  The local adage is that “if you are lost in the wilderness, follow the bend of the divi-divi trees and they’ll lead you to town”. It is believed that attempts to plant this tree in other parts of the world have proved futile. The cooling wind that gust steadily from the northeast have carved the native divi-divi trees into natural sculptures, shapes that would rival the most artistic bonsai.

Architecture  isn’t just methodology and science, nor can be practiced as a formula. It’s an opportunity to  infuse emotions to art forms and  create a new reality. Architects'  pencil is a wand that could construct a magical realism, where fantasy seamlessly blends with reality and everyday spaces around us appear different while remaining familiar all the time. The arches winks as it entices you to take the step while the handles of doors reaches out for your touch as you turn it on. W elcome to the magical place where the future has already happened and the past is yet to arrive.

These days while doing grocery, we have started to look for seedless fruits. The seeds are a nuisance inside the mouth and particularly so as one can no longer consider spitting those out in our urban spaces. I am carrying a guilt because of this disturbing trend of laziness. Deep inside I know that seedless variety of fruits being against the rule of nature cannot be healthy. I knew that these are hybrid fruits but not genetically modified and recently carried out a bit of research to understand this better.  I learnt that new varieties are created when compatible plants are crossbred. Sometimes this happens in nature due to cross pollination and sometimes it is made to happen on plantation. Grapefruits for example is a hybrid of a pomelo and a sweet orange which were crossbred on plantations in the 18th century. Oranana along with the above image however, is purely my imagination. In addition to natural and hybrid food, we also have Genetically modified or transgenic...

Dreams are illusion and could also be described as magical realism for good reasons. Although science would love to explain dreams through “alpha beta and gamma” stages of our sleep. I look forward to blog on that aspect at another time but now it’s time for surreal dreams. Like magical realism, in this dream we find distant past present in every moment while the future had already happened. Here the protagonist is part of a dream which might be scary but without a doubt magical. While inside the airport facility in a foreign country, he unintentionally loitered on to the tarmac. He had been following someone who was getting into an aircraft, a smaller one. The realization suddenly struck that this he is in a place that is normally out of bounds and must be illegal. He started to rush back towards the terminal building but could not find the place he exited. From the outside it is so very difficult to distinguish between doorways and glazing, most certainly done on purpose. He ...