Four Learnings from Gautam Bhan

Gautam Bhan is one of the foremost academics advocating how environments on the Global South need their own theory. Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity of dabbling into a lot of discussion on knowledge production within the Global south, as well as the urge to decolonise education in this region. In my effort to give meaning to what "decolonise" means in academia, and how does one think of performing it, I indulged myself in Bhan's talks, from one of which, I got some very tangible ideas for academic practice. Here they are:

The ability to translate

Academics are not able to translate their language in different scenarios/situations and therefore they feel silenced. Academics speak in largely academic situations/settings because they are almost sure that it is (going to be) the space from where the validation of their language comes from, and thus are trapped in the "seduction of the academica"

Automatic Modernity

Bhan points out how the project of modernism gives an automatic direction to aspiration - and to aspire has to come to mean to be modern. This conceptual relationship between modernity (read modernity coming from the West) and the desire for progress and the engine of aspiration needs to be challenged. That is the culture work academics have to collectively undertake, Bhan suggests.

On Insularity of Academic Voice

Bhan says that no one stops academics from writing, intervening and performing in domains outside of academia. Therefore, academics cannot afford to stay within the bubble of knowledge production of academia and lament that the world outside is not listening to them. The must actively find audiences and write in their language to make their knowledge and findings about the world more accessible.

On Theory from the North

Bhan says that we need to "particularise" Northern theory - meaning, theory coming from the north is not universal theory, and that it must be assigned a status that it is a theory of that place - and therefore, it cannot be "the" way of doing/thinking things everywhere, rather, "a" way in which things happen somewhere, and therefore all ways of doing things hold value and knowledge because they are inherently embedded in certain values of a place.

On Existentialism

 एक गोष्ट

"मी जन्माला आलो नसतो तर किती बरं झालं असतं," ब्राह्मण म्हणाला.

"का रे, बाबा?" मी विचारले.

"कारण," तो म्हणाला, "गेली चाळीस वर्ष मी अध्ययन करतो आहे आणि मला वाटतं, हा सर्व काळ फुकट गेला. मी जड द्रव्यातून बनलो हे खरं; पण विचार कोठून निर्माण होतात याविषयी मी अद्यापही अज्ञानी आहे. मला हेही समजत नाही की, माझं आकलन माझ्या चालण्यासारखी वा माझ्या पचनक्रियेसारखी सहज प्रेरणा आहे, का मी हातानं एखादी वस्तू धरतो तसा डोक्यानं विचार पकडतो... मी खूप बोलतो, पण ते संपल्यावर मी जे बोललो त्याची मलाच लाज वाटते."

त्याच दिवशी त्या ब्राह्मणाजवळच राहणाऱ्या एका वृद्ध बाईशी माझं बोलणं झाले. मी तिला विचारलं, "तुझा आत्मा म्हणजे काय आहे? आणि ते तुला माहीत नसेल तर त्याचं तुला दुःख होत नाही?" तिला मी काय म्हणतोय हेच मुळी कळलं नाही. तिने आयुष्यात क्षणभरसुद्धा भल्या ब्राह्मणाला छळणाऱ्या गोष्टींचा विचार केला नव्हता. तिची विष्णूच्या अवतारांवर श्रद्धा होती आणि गंगाजलात एकदा स्नान करायला मिळालं, तर जन्माचं सार्थक झालं यावर तिचा विश्वास होता. तिच्या सुखी, समाधानी वृत्तीनं प्रभावित होऊन मी तत्त्वज्ञानी ब्राह्मणाला म्हटलं, “तुझ्याजवळच एक वृद्ध बाई कसलाही गहन विचार करीत नाही आणि सुखासमाधानानं जगते आहे, याची तुला लाज नाही वाटत?"

"तू बरोबर आहेस," ब्राह्मण म्हणाला, "हजार वेळा मी स्वतःला सांगितलं की माझ्या शेजाऱ्याप्रमाणे मी अज्ञानात राहिलो तर सुखानं जगेन; तरी पण तशा सुखाची मला इच्छा होत नाही."

ब्राह्मणाच्या उत्तरानं कशापेक्षाही मी अधिक प्रभावित झालो.

- व्हॉल्टेअर

Translation / English

An Anecdote

"How better would it have been had I not been born," Brahmin said.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because," he said, "for the past forty years I have been studying and all this while has been wasted. The fact that I am made out of a solid material, but I am still unaware about where thoughts are created. I do not even understand if my analysis is as involuntary as my walking or the process of digestion, or whether I hold ideas knowingly like I hold something consciously in my hands ... I speak a lot, but I myself feel embarrassed of what I have said eventually."

On the same day, I got a chance to speak to an old woman who used to live near that Brahmin. I asked her, "What is your soul? And if you do not know what it is, does it not trouble you?" She did not seem to understand what I was even saying. She had not thought even for a fraction of her life about things that may be bothering a Brahmin. She had faith in the incarnations of Vishnu and believed that if she could bathe in the waters of the Ganges once, her life would be worthwhile. Impressed by her happy, contented attitude, I said to the philosophical Brahmin, "Aren't you ashamed that there is an old woman next to you who doesn't think deeply and lives happily?"

"You are right," said the Brahmin, "a thousand times I have told myself that if I remained in ignorance like my neighbor, I would live happily; yet I do not desire such happiness."

I was more impressed by the Brahmin's answer than anything else.

- Voltaire

on Loneliness

Read on Monophobia

On Self discovery, Kavi Grace

आत्मशोधाच्या आंधळ्या वाटेवर चाचपडत जाणाऱ्या प्रत्येक वाटसरूला कुठे न कुठे भेटणारा सहयात्री सिद्धार्थ. बुद्धाच्या सिद्धी पेक्षाही मला त्याचे सिद्धार्थपण जास्त मोलाचे वाटते. तसे त्याने फारसे दुःखही पाहिले भोगले नव्हतेच, पण एवढ्याशा दुःखाच्या दर्शनाने ही त्याचे राजीवंशी अस्तित्व उध्वस्त झाले. हा उध्वस्तपणा झेलतानाच्या सर्व व्यथा ओंजळीत घेऊन तो तडक निघाला. व्यथेला ईश्वरी करुणेची परिमाणे देण्यासाठी पुरी फुटून निघाला. अनुभवाचे पंख कापून दुःखाला मानवतावादाची शिस्त लावण्याची त्याने घाई केली नाही. ज्याने आयुष्यभर कुठल्याही प्रस्थापित मूल्यांचे दडपण मानले नाही आणि निर्माण अस्तित्वाची जडणघडण होत असताना या प्रक्रियेला कुठल्याही तडजोडीच्या वेठीस धरले नाही तो सिद्धार्थ. त्याचे व्यासपीठ होऊ शकत नाही,करू नये. व्यासपीठे म्हणजे अस्तित्व शोधाचे पंख कापून मुद्दाम दुबळ्या केलेल्या सामर्थ्याची चेष्टा करणारे कत्तल खाने असतात. बौदेलैर या फ्रेंच कवीने अल्बाट्रॉस नावाच्या महापक्ष्यावर एक कविता लिहिली आहे. या पक्षाचे पंख अजस्त्र असतात, डौलदार असतात. आकाशात भरारी मारणे हेच त्याचे सामर्थ्य आणि सौंदर्य. पण या पंखांचे वजन जमिनीवरून चालताना पेलत नसल्याने हा पक्षी फार केविलवाणा दिसतो. जहाजावरच्या एका कॅप्टनने अशा एका समुद्र पक्षाला बेताबेताने गोळी घालून अर्धवट जायबंदी केले आणि मग डेकवर मजेत चिरूट ओढत तो त्या अगडबंब पक्षाच्या देहाची केविल वाणी बेढबचाल बघत राहिला. घायाळ सामर्थ्याची चेष्टा करण्याची उर्मी आणखीनचनावर झाली तेव्हा कॅप्टनने या महापक्षाच्या पंखाला जळत्या चिरूटाचे टोक लावले. अनवट वेणीच्या चिरेबंद नक्षीत छिद्र पाडल्यावर कॅप्टनला कृतकृत्य झाल्यासारखे वाटले. चार सवंगडी बोलावून मग तो महासामर्थ्याच्या चेष्टेत स्वतःचे आत्मप्रतारक सामर्थ्य शोधण्याचा प्रयत्न करीत राहिला. सिद्धार्थाच्या आयुष्यातील प्राण तत्त्वाची पिंजण नाकारून त्याच्या सिद्धीला मानवतेचे तत्त्वज्ञान मानणारी व्यासपीठे बघितली की मला अपरिहार्यपणे समुद्रावरच्या महापक्षाची टिंगल टवाळी करणारी शहाण्यांची सभा आठवते. व्यासपीठे अशीच बेमालूमपणे माणसांची विटंबना करीत राहतात. अनुभवांच्या तोडमोडीला घेऊन तडजोडीचा मार्ग स्वीकारण्यासाठी पठडीचा आश्रय. मग प्रेषिताच्या व्यथा सूत्रांची काय? शरणमंत्रांनी आणि मुल्ला मौलवींच्या पहाट गजरांनी आवाजाची दुनिया घटकाभर स्तब्ध होत असेल पण ती हादरून जात नाही. मंत्रामागचे प्रेषितांचे अनुभव हेच खरे मार्गदर्शक असतात. पठडेबाज गुरूंच्या आश्रयाने मार्ग तर सापडत नाहीतच उलट दिशाभूल होत राहते . अशी दिशाभूल नाकारणे व स्वीकारणे हा ज्याचा त्याचा वैयक्तिक प्रश्न. पण नाकारल्याशिवाय अस्तित्वाला हादरे बसत नाहीत आणि हादरे बसल्याशिवाय काही नवनिर्माण होऊच शकत नाही ही दुःखवैभवाची संपन्नता. यासाठी पठडी सोडून सृजन प्रलयाला सामोरे जाणे हीच सिद्धार्थ पणाची तपस्या.

Translation / English

On the blind path of self discovery, every passerby somewhere or the other intersects one fellow traveller - Siddharth. More than Buddha’s achievements, I find his Siddharth-ness more valuable. To be sure, he hadn’t seen or experienced much adversity, but the encounter of mere sorrow brought his princely existence at stake. Devastated at once, he set out carrying all the pain promptly in his arms. He wholeheartedly devoted himself in order to measure suffering into the dimensions of divine compassion. He did not deny his own experience of sorrow in order to quickly discipline adversity within the imposition of humanity. The one who did not subscribe to any established values of society in his life and did not interfere in the make up of existence while in the process of one’s own self evolution - is Siddharth. Nor can this process be staged, and neither should it be attempted. Theories are essentially slaughterhouses of the wings taken during the flights of self discovery, mocking at the sheer will that one puts into it.  The French poet Baudelaire has written a poem about a giant bird called albatross. The bird's wings are featherless and graceful. To fly through the sky itself is its boldness and beauty. But the weight of its wings makes this bird appear very clumsy while walking on the ground. A ship's captain accidentally shot one of these seabirds and partially captured it, and then, while having fun dragging its claws across the deck, he watched the whirring of the bird's body. When his urge to play at brute force reached its climax, the captain attached the wing of the giant bird to the tip of a burning torch. Upon drilling a hole in its untwisted braid, the captain felt a sense of accomplishment. Calling four companions, he then kept on trying to find his own self-propulsive power. In overlooking the trapping of Siddhartha’s soul into the cage of life/existence and looking at his findings as the foundation of human philosophy,  I am inevitably reminded of the meeting of the wise men who were tinkling with the mermaid's ring on the sea. Theories continue to make a mockery of people in this way. They are the refuge that people take to succumb to an accepted normal rather than acknowledging the difference of experience. Then what about the Prophet's sufferings? The world may be temporarily silenced by the sermons of ministers and the dawn alarms of the mullahs, but it does not shake the world.  The experience of the apostles that lie behind the mantra is the real guide. Taking refuge in deceitful gurus, one not only fails to find the path, but instead continues to be misled. Whether to accept or reject such misguidance is a personal choice. But existence cannot be shaken without rejection, and without shaking, no renewal can take place. This is the glory of suffering and grief. To leave the plateau for immersing oneself in this flood-plain of creation is the penance of self discovery.

Translation / Hindi

आत्म-खोज के अंधे पथ पर, हर राहगीर कहीं न कहीं एक सहयात्री - सिद्धार्थ - से मिलता है। बुद्ध की उपलब्धियों से ज़्यादा, मुझे उनका सिद्धार्थत्व ज़्यादा मूल्यवान लगता है। बेशक, उन्होंने ज़्यादा विपत्तियाँ न देखी थीं, न ही झेली थीं, लेकिन बस एक दुःख के अनुभव ने उनके राजसी अस्तित्व को दांव पर लगा दिया था। एकाएक टूटकर, वे सारे दर्द को समेटकर चल पड़े। उन्होंने दुख को ईश्वरीय करुणा के आयामों में ढालने के लिए खुद को पूरी तरह समर्पित कर दिया। उन्होंने मानवता के थोपे हुए दायरे में विपत्ति को शीघ्रता से अनुशासित करने के लिए अपने दुःख के अनुभव को नकारा नहीं। जिसने अपने जीवन में समाज के किसी भी स्थापित मूल्य को नहीं माना और अपने आत्म-विकास की प्रक्रिया में अस्तित्व की संरचना में हस्तक्षेप नहीं किया - वही सिद्धार्थ है। न तो इस प्रक्रिया को मंचित किया जा सकता है, और न ही इसका प्रयास किया जाना चाहिए। सिद्धांत मूलतः आत्म-खोज की उड़ान के दौरान निकले पंखों के वधशाला हैं, जो उस विशुद्ध इच्छाशक्ति का उपहास करते हैं जो व्यक्ति उसमें लगाता है। फ्रांसीसी कवि बौडेलेयर ने अल्बाट्रॉस नामक एक विशाल पक्षी के बारे में एक कविता लिखी है। इस पक्षी के पर पंखहीन और सुडौल होते हैं। आकाश में उड़ना ही इसका साहस और सौंदर्य है। लेकिन अपने पंखों के भार के कारण यह पक्षी ज़मीन पर चलते समय बहुत अनाड़ी लगता है। एक जहाज के कप्तान ने गलती से इनमें से एक समुद्री पक्षी को गोली मार दी और उसे आंशिक रूप से पकड़ लिया, और फिर, डेक पर उसके पंजों को घसीटते हुए आनंद लेते हुए, उसने पक्षी के शरीर की फुफकार देखी। जब बलपूर्वक खेलने की उसकी इच्छा चरम पर पहुंच गई, तो कप्तान ने विशालकाय पक्षी के पंख को जलती हुई मशाल की नोक से जोड़ दिया। उसकी उलझी हुई चोटी में छेद करने पर, कप्तान को उपलब्धि का अहसास हुआ। चार साथियों को बुलाकर, वह अपनी आत्म-प्रेरक शक्ति खोजने में लगा रहा। सिद्धार्थ की आत्मा के जीवन/अस्तित्व के पिंजरे में फँसने की अनदेखी करते हुए और उसके निष्कर्षों को मानव दर्शन की नींव के रूप में देखते हुए, मुझे उन ज्ञानियों की बैठक की याद आती है जो समुद्र में मत्स्यांगना की अंगूठी से झनकार रहे थे। सिद्धांत इसी तरह लोगों का मज़ाक उड़ाते रहते हैं। ये वे शरणस्थल हैं जहाँ लोग अनुभव के अंतर को स्वीकार करने के बजाय एक स्वीकृत सामान्यता के आगे झुक जाते हैं। तो फिर पैगंबर के कष्टों का क्या? विश्वमंत्रियों के उपदेशों और मुल्लाओं के भोर के अलार्म से अस्थायी रूप से खामोश हो सकती है, लेकिन यह दुनिया को हिला नहीं पाती। मंत्र के पीछे छिपे हुए रसूलों का अनुभव ही वास्तविक मार्गदर्शक है। धोखेबाज गुरुओं की शरण में जाने से व्यक्ति न केवल मार्ग खोजने में असफल होता है, बल्कि लगातार भटकता रहता है। इस तरह के पथभ्रष्ट मार्गदर्शन को स्वीकार करना या अस्वीकार करना एक व्यक्तिगत निर्णय है। लेकिन अस्वीकार किए बिना अस्तित्व को हिलाया नहीं जा सकता, और बिना चुनौती, कोई नवप्रवर्तन नहीं हो सकता। यही दुख और शोक की महिमा है। इस पठार को छोड़कर सृष्टि के इस जल-तल में डूब जाना ही आत्म-खोज का तप है।

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Manik Sitaram Godghate alias Kavi Grace (10 May 1937 – 26 March 2012) was a Marathi poet.

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Architectural Practice In India: A Millennial Archaeology

monsoon 2025-26

At the threshold of the first quarter of the millennium, which also marks a generation since India’s economic liberalization, architectural practice in India is ripe for a critical re-evaluation. In this period, the country has gradually, yet starkly shifted from a socialist framework to a neoliberal state, where developmental politics has ramified architectural production into new directions and logics. Existing scholarship on the built environment in India has often focused narrowly on the aesthetics of form, the evolving identity of the architect, or the reception of modernism as inherited from the West. Architectural discourse has largely taken one of two paths: either documenting work deemed academically significant, or framing emerging practices in terms of identity—often measured against binaries such as modern versus indigenous/vernacular. Such approaches tend to posit the architect as a servant of academic canons or fixed ideals.

Architectural practice on the ground, as it appears now, is far more complex - one that exhibits reorientation of spatial ideals and values to reflect a rapidly evolving society increasingly shaped by media, consumerism, and aspirations of globalisation. Once trained architects step into the field, the idealism of modernism is quickly refracted through geopolitical urgencies and the pragmatic demands of practice. What is often overlooked is the inherent political exigency that compels practice to adapt—making the operations and expressions of architecture more malleable and responsive to emerging needs of the market - in its widest extensions. In such contexts, architects evolve new formats, languages, agencies, and strategies to negotiate their professional knowledge to remain relevant within the real-world demands of building reinterpreting spatial briefs through the vocabularies of capital, conservation, environment, real estate, and more.

‘Architectural Practice in India: A Millennial Archaeology’ seeks to examine how architectural practice in India has developed over the last three decades within the framework of the millennial shift in its political economy. What forces—of power, ambition, and institutional pressure—have shaped architectural production during this period and how does it reorganise the delivery of the built environment? What aspects of practice gain currency in the emerging market and how does the professional architect find reconciliations and directions in addressing these. In excavating these variegated forms of practice that shape the unevenness of our built landscape today, these discussions aim to explore tendencies such as the rise of managerial approach, the renewed focus on environmental and heritage concerns, the emergence of artisanal and communitarian agendas, the urgency of urbanistic thinking, response to media and the integration of computational and digital thinking that come to constitute distinct, yet composite strands of spatial practice today.

The new cycle of SEA City Conversations is conceived as a year-long series of panel discussions featuring architects and spatial commentators, whose own practices have decisively responded to the millennial shifts in the region, by means of slipping, fitting or pushing the envelopes of conventional formats of practice. Methodologically, the series will draw upon the professional biographies of practitioners from across the city whose trajectories have remained representatively pivotal in bringing and operating in such changing dynamics of practice. Through reflexive interrogation and collective debate over the upcoming year, the programme imagines to present itself as an open course for the city, and invite the public to participate in a collective architecture history-writing exercise that seeks to critically engage with the evolving realities of contemporary architecture in India.

Notes on Vedanta

Doom Scroll

It just occurred to me Some people like me doom scroll Instagram because it gives me/Them an analytical charge, to constantly keep parsing information that is coming your way. Here, the lust for information is maintained much like the earlier form of media - be it books reading material. However, the nature of information is much multi mediated - to include not just text, but also Sound, video, Thus, rather than consuming a single kind of thing, me is bombarded with a lot more, which to an analytical mind could be very exciting and testosterone inducing. It gives a thrill to sit and crunch more data, it makes the right kind of next level challenge then to consume this multimedia data, reeling at a much faster pace.

Notes on Music

 

Equality vs Equity

Colour and Clay