Auroville has its own magic and I am definitely spell bound by it. I learnt a lot and saw even more. Here is a stupid poem I wrote about the fun I had being there.


Stay at auroville was surely
a different experience,
it was a bliss majorly
in all the tense.

Of our love and hate relationships
and the crazy adventures.
Of noongu's juicy sips,
rosella n kambuj were the quenchers.

Gaping at the silly crocodiles
and cycling to the miles
to look at fairy tale-ish houses
with flamboyant building styles.

Warped were their spaces
and french were the windows.
Amazed were our faces
to see strange fellows.

Beautiful music concerts
were a fodder for our senses.
And elaborate makeup n skirts
of kathakali with all its pretences.

Lovely were the crafts
that women patiently did
be it paper,seeds,flowers or tufts,

Laughing so uncontrollably
while the fish pedicures.

Haggling in all the medley
and falling for all the lures.

Kick the archaic moped
kick it!! till it starts.

Beware!!the arrows of the cupid,
lets see how long it lasts.

Fresh flowers set in a bowl
were a visual treat for sure.

Rejuvenating our heart and soul
while eating veggies organic n pure!!

And those colorful chases,
eating mangoes tangy and sour
Catching the sun at the beaches
yet ye dil maange more!!

Thanks to Prerna and Prachi for the photoshoot and also to Rinyo, Shivangi, Consu, Tahir, Pierre, Natasha and Suman. 

New baby

Second stage

After a lot of explorations and wanderings, I decided on this form. Truly speaking, I chanced upon it while fiddling with paper. I love working with paper and this one is made by simple folding it on two curved lines. The initial model looked quite different. After series of refinement and putting ergonomics in it, it looked like this. This form will work well in ferrocement, as it uses a shell sort of a structure and is based on arches. 

While translating it from paper to ferrocement, we had to make some changes but the essential remained the same. 

Lets move on

A lot has been realised after the first prototype. People are more confident about ferrocement furniture (though not fully, but yes a bit more). Now I am ready to try something more adventurous and challenging. Something which works with the material and asks it what it wants to do.

For the next prototype, I have chosen fluidity as my inspiration. After making the first proto with fairly straight lines, now I want to explore curves, twists and turns in the material. (or maybe after restricted movement for many weeks, now I want to dance around literally and in work as well). Lets see how ferrocement reacts to this dance. So here are some of the inspiration pictures that I googled that match my idea of fluidity, organic, movement etc.

Catching up

The blog has been dead for quite some time now. A lot has happened. Expected and unexpected. Expected that happened and that didn’t happen. And unexpected that happened.

I had met with a minor accident while on my way to solar kitchen. I crashed into a bike from the opposite direction (rather we both crashed into each other). And the stupid thing about it is that it was gentle crash, nothing really violent like the ones in comics where the bikers are thrown at some distance with a crashing, screeching sound and all the drama. Yet, it managed to give me an injury that made me depend on others for the next few weeks. That part (depending on others) is worse than the injury itself. Now I can truly understand the pain of the elderly who have to depend on others for fairly simple tasks. Also, I had a first hand experience of being manoeuvred in a wheel chair at the airport and realise the efficiency of the airports at being wheel chair friendly.

I made these two illustrations illustrating first my frustration and then my amusement at peoples reactions and advices. 

 After the plaster, it felt so rigid and bound, like the pharaohs drawn in Egyptian art. 

The reaction of people who came to enquire was really amusing. Each one had a generous piece of advice to give, and an urge to know the exact details of how, when , where it happened. 

Ok enough of gaining of self pity and trying to hog on sympathy.

On the work front. Yes, I promised more to come for the prototyping process for the bench but nothing much has really happened to it. It still awaits finishing. I missed witnessing a major part of demoulding the piece and overturning it. I hope it will be finished soon.

A lot has been realised after the first prototype. People are more confident about ferrocement furniture (though not fully, but yes a bit more). Now I am ready to try something more adventurous and challenging. Something which works with the material and asks it what it wants to do.