Fin(e)

Good travel advice: Do not ever ask “Is this the way to …?” Rather, ask, “what is the way to…?” Whenever you try to lead up the questions, you will get wrong answers, and that is quite painful in cases of getting lost.

In the last week, we had an interesting trip to Palampur region and met with the well-off Indian contact, Ashish, whose family owns a marriage hall, ice cream factory and tea estates, along with political power. He was rather humble and very helpful, taking us to a local college, where we received quite a bit of odd gazes. Then we surveyed St Paul’s Secondary School Science Building. Built quite a while ago, this school survived the massive 1905 earthquake and had great design features: lightweight, well-built, efficient and airy. After all these weeks, we found something that really worked well, but then again, the British came and did it. A whole tangent on British impact on India can be inserted here – but I don’t think I am qualified for it.

Looking back into surveying: It feels very overwhelming at first, we have to focus hard for 2 hours or more just to make sense of the plan and the configuration, yet once the logic is understood, it actually becomes (oddly) rewarding.

A bit on Politics: Free Tibet. Although I am somewhat ignorant on international relations, living in proximity to the largest Tibetan refuge community in India, I had to educate myself on Tibet-India-China relations. China is destroying Tibet in all aspects: environment, culture, religion, economy. Outrageous acts of torture and oppression in the last 50 years – just unbelievable. And not much to be found in Tibet anyway: barren desolate land, peaceful people, “roof of the world, closest to the Gods” as a monk put it around here. It seems that mountaineering tourism and overall land greediness forces this tranquil country with peaceful people join the global economy, unwillingly. And you cannot fight oppression with peace. Dalai Lama and his followers of compassion had to immigrate. So they are here in Dharamsala, but “not for vacation.” They have demonstrations, conferences and seminars on this issue, and a great Tibetan museum. But China is becoming the superpower, and India, EU or US don’t seem to be risking China relations for a (relatively) small community of Tibetans.

And secularism… I was indoctrinated with the value of this notion growing up in Turkey, an extreme secularist country, but now I am realizing that this approach is simply not mature. Granted, it provides a liberal playground for all citizens, but also deprives them from practicing religion even in their private lives. Secularism takes away spiritualism – and the balance is very difficult to regain. India, on the other hand, seems to be juggling religion and politics simultaneously, and quite aptly. 300 million Hindu gods, a notable population of Muslims and Sikhs and many other spiritual bifurcations exist, yet the country is still a functioning spiritual and secular country. So much to think and write on this, and again, I don’t feel qualified.

In more abstract terms though, what secularism seems to separate is ambition from meditation. We are all ambitious, driven, goal-oriented and pragmatic in our daily lives, and that can be summed up under the term of politics. On the other hand, religion should not (?) be any of the above – it is meant to be a meditative, non-thinking state of silence, listening, reflection and (perhaps) transcendence. The book Taoism by Osho…

On spirituality. Taoism by Osho contains soo many interesting insights, hard to recount. For those familiar to meditation, these thoughts would not have much novelty, but for me grown up as a fully secular, Western-oriented person, they are riveting. The value of doing nothing and being useless, turning the arrow inwards, absorbing rather than reacting, not talking, not “not talking,” just listening to meditate. Stripping away from pragmatic view – trying to stop for a while. Losing ambition in life, transcending usefulness and uselessness. Then Dalai Lama suggests developing empathy for others, being kind and compassionate, thinking about others’ suffering in general to understand suffering. Mind is quite a powerful thing, much more powerful than the rigid boundaries of logic. Paradoxes, parables and contradictory statements are also part of thinking. Theories are self-enclosed, self-absorbed, but parables point at the opposites and transcend them. Opposites should not be suppressed. This is all common sense yet hard to bring to life and live it.

Back to India: it is full of superstition– which is neither ambitious nor meditative. All these rituals feel like ‘lost in translation’ as they are acts that lost their meaning. People here fast once a week, do not eat salt on Mondays, no meat on Tuesdays, and no haircut Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Menstruating women are not allowed in temples. These surely relate to some sort of logic (fasting cleanses the metabolism, menstruating is not hygienic and temples are musty places with insufficient light and ventilation, etc), but sometimes it feels like trying to apply quran literally to today’s world.

There are other interesting issues related to globalization. Abhishek sums it up well: “We want all the girls to look beautiful, but also our girlfriends to dress properly.”

We had meat the other day. It was a feast after weeks of vegetarian food, i.e. ‘sabzi, dal, rice and chapati.’ So we went to a “lamb shop” which is essentially a slaughterhouse with lambs being cut in the backyard and cut further in a tiny box with fly nets all around. No refrigeration, the whole act happens quick enough to keep the meat fresh and hygienic. Not too different from drinking cow’s milk from the source or picking up apples from the tree – we got the meat and cooked it in the next hour. And for some reason, it was not disgusting at all, very delicious actually. It felt good to be connected to the sources and seeing the process – much less hypocritical than packaged meat with artificial red coloring and deep-freezed for a day.

I have talked too much on non-design issues. So, back to the reason I came here:

Definitions matter. So, what is vernacular architecture? How is it different from indigenous architecture? Does it have to be built by local people? Could a fort be an example of vernacular, as it is “designed” to some extent? Gutierrez defines as an unselfconscious process, without any theoretical pretense, full involvement of the owner and flexibility to expand further in the future. But the question retains its validity.

Another insight is how vernacular varies around the world, despite similar climatic/material constraints. For instance, the tropical environment of South America and Southeast Asia, along with predominant bamboo/mud construction does not wholly determine the architectural typology. In Gutierrez’ terms, there are social and physical determinants. In fact, the social determinants such as safety, religion and economics explain why Southeast Asia and Latin America with similar materials, site and climate produced different vernacular architecture. This is a very interesting topic (with a good excuse from travlling).

About definition of design. Again, Gutierrez takes a good shot at it: Design is form plus context. We take one slight section of the world and decide to reshape it, whereas the context determines our logic of reshape. Form is the part of the world we have control over. Fitness is a relation of mutual acceptability between form and context. Form fluctuates between intention and materiality. Intention is defined through economy, firmness, function and delight (tetrahydral structure)

Reading another article by this engineer/scientist Langenbach, I felt sorry for my hometown Istanbul, which is notorious of having lost its precious vernacular architecture examples over one generation. Apparently, it was a “wooden city” very well designed to withstand earthquake of any force. Perhaps this will influence what I do sometime in the future – it’s just a shame what modernity brings about.

Enough abstraction for now. J We had another adventure in the riverside. Beautiful trek into the unknown for 2 hours, following a local old man as our informal guide, crossing two rivers (very exhilarating but also incredibly dangerous because of monsoon season, apparently. We survived, but a widespread leech attack we had to encounter. Quite a crisis, nasty small worms going in the legs and sucking blood and coming out. Tetanus shots in the hospital late at night, washing the clothes 4 times and general anxiety – but I still think the hike was worth it.

Now about earthquakes: Energy dissipation is best design mechanism. Stiff and brittle structures cannot withstand the massive forces, and massive earthquake forces are bound to come, and they acquire significant damage. Timber and masonry buildings, on the other hand, perform very well if maintained, and only shed off plaster as a sign of absorbed energy or “working” in traditional terms. They do not have strength, but they have capacity. But if the structure is too ductile, that’s not great either. Earthquake design is finding the delicate balance between stiff and flexible, resistance and sway, strength and capacity. The dhajji dewari structure with timber skeleton and mud infill is a great example of this design approach. Especially if the mortar is rich in lime and poor in cement, the building has a large chance of surviving the earthquake.

There is also a social issue. All research suggests that there is less mortality with timber construction. Concrete gives the illusion of being strong, which might be lethal as its reinforcement details might be absolutely insufficient. It does not hint at its weaknesses, stands upright with ego, yet is weak inside in its connections.

Other things in short:

We had long days of wrapping up the documentation. Truly hard work. Finally, we completed all 10 buildings, amounting up to 220 pages of documentation! It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start casting the net too many issues pertaining to historical buildings in Kangra District.

Then we spent a few more days preparing the powerpoint presentation. We like it, so let’s hope SEEDS Delhi likes it as well. J

After all this work, we decided to give ourselves a break for a few days. So, an ayurvedic full-body massage was our ‘event’. One thing is for sure: East knows how to heal the body & mind better than the west because east knows that they are not separate entities. West ignores this fact, crazy…

Then we took an amazing trek to 3250 meters, an ascent of 1.5 km. 28 km of walking in two days. Perpetual rain, great sunset, sleeping in a tent with local tea shop owners and a German couple. Great. Feeling clean.

Meanwhile, we also met Jackie’s professor David from Oxford Brookes, who came to Dharamsala for vacation for a week or so. Very interesting person, originally an architect, but turned into development in health and education. An interesting insight: “Only 1% of buildings in the world are designed by architects!” So he turned into the human side, and lived in many countries in the last 10 years. Oxford Brookes looks very interesting in general… Very humanistic, development-oriented architecture program.

And finally, on August 19^th, we had to farewell the town of Shamnagar to go to Pathankot and board the train to Delhi. We said by to Auntie and other neighbors and took off in the tiny Suzuki-Maruti car and the luggages stacked on top of it. Of course, with the India factor, our tire popped, and many other adventures involving cows, broken bridges and monsoon rains, but finally we got to Pathankot and boarded the train. Amazing train ride, very comfortable, and after smooth 12 hours, we got to Delhi.

Then we presented on August 21^st in SEEDS office. So much to write about on this event on its own. But before that, I need a bit more vacation. J

And a good quote to wrap this experience up, by the venerable T.S. Eliot:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

Stream

It has been about two weeks since the last time I wrote. Hectic with work…

Field Trip to Palampur: A painful 3 hour drive in challenging terrain to visit hidden villages among lush green rice plantations. We are detectives of old houses. Having set ourselves the mission of finding buildings that survived the 1905 earthquake, we will be enquiring about the oldest house in every village. Somewhat comical, considering that the local people had no idea who on earth would be interested in seeing crumbling mud houses that no one cares about anymore. Finally, thanks to the suggestion of our old architect friend, Didi, we ended up in the village of Dattal and met Charanjit Singh. An ex-army officer/teacher, he was extremely welcoming and helpful. Fluent in English, intelligent and genuine, he made all the hardships of the field work far more satisfying. We started off the visit with some Masala Tea (a nice mix of local tea, homemade milk, many spices and so much sugar) and mangoes. Then we went to the 150 year old mud house that Charanjit’s family owned and it turned out to be a memorable experience. Beautiful spaces with thick walls and soft light, hints of vernacular culture scattered around, dusty images of Shiva, Krishna and all the other Hindu gods and stubborn mud walls, bamboo beams and slate roofing that all mysteriously withstand the test of time. In local terms, in was a “kucha” house, meaning unbaked. Made out of natural materials and local labor and having survived countless environmental strains, it is the true depiction of sustainable dwelling at small scale. Also very intimate with its L-shaped layout, a courtyard with rice crushers and village kids running around, it was certainly a unique site. The visit continued with a meandering walk through a jungle-dense bamboo and other-less-exciting-trees forest and ended up in the house of a 102 year old lady. Unusually fit, she greeted us at the door and sat down with us for a good 40 minutes, talking about her days grazing cattles around the jungle, storms that hit the region, laziness of women in contemporary times, her nursing days, and more. She also lost four of her brothers in the 1905 Kangra earthquake, and was a baby in womb when the whole thing happened. When we asked her whether she is afraid of earthquakes, she merely mocked us. Ok then.

Continuing our site visit, Charanjit invited us back to his cement “pukka” (baked) house and offered us some spectacular lunch. When we asked him why the family moved from the old mud house, his initial reaction was quite interesting: “When you get some money, you want to make something physical, build something. So we did.” He considers the concrete house more reputable by the neighbors and a good sign of status (And status does matter tremendously in Indian society). Also, he mentioned that for the mud house, one has to maintain it regularly by applying cow dung on the walls – a rather unpleasant thought for the foreigner, perfectly natural yet also tiresome for the local. As we continued our lunch, he admitted that he loved growing up in the mud house though: “It is just too hot or too cold in the new concrete buildings – we never had this problem back then.” As we wrapped up the visit, we tried to emphasize how valuable this old mud house was and reminded him that everything was devastated in 1905 earthquake, and those that withstood, withstood because they were well-designed. We also dropped the names of the Delhi NGO and UNESCO, hoping that it would help to re-appreciate their hidden gem: tradition.

I am struggling with the concept of novelty after all the visits to historic structures. A few years ago, I started off thinking about architecture from the “fountainhead” perspective, where innovation comes from ground zero. The idea of shaping space purely using imaginative powers sounded quite captivating and pulled me into this discipline in the first place. I also thought how boring it would be to design in historic styles or do renovation work – it just did not feel very creative. But, gradually, I am realizing that innovation cannot happen if one were to discount the precedences. We are surrounded by man-made spaces on a day-to-day basis, and even the basics of geometry have subtle implications on our perception. Trying to do bold ‘contemporary design’ moves without understanding their implications is simply an amateur mindset. Architecture is becoming fashionable with Gehry landmarks and soaring glass skyscrapers, but it is a serious thing – a badly designed building touches to the life of many people, as well as the environment and the economy – for at least a few decades. This is all common sense, but now I get it a little bit better.

And there is so much to learn from history. Traditional architecture is precise and deliberate; it is well crafted in its form, refined in its function. It deals with the site, air and water so much better – because it had time to evolve and fit. Built environment is subject to natural evolution as much as natural environment, and adaptation of buildings to different social and environmental conditions is critical. Wrapping up this digression, I realized that to be a good architect, one needs evolution not revolution.

Our second site visit in the field trip was another mud house in Ashapuri Devi village. Getting there was one of the most intimidating journeys I have been through. A road under construction, as wide as a petite car, steep ridges with loose soil, massive rocks with dripping water and no sign of civilization other than a few goats and cows herded by little kids. Finally, we got to Ashapuri, famous with its Hindu temple with views in four directions at 1300 meters. The temple was interesting, yet our minds were in old mud houses (we devoted this last week to this typology), and after a few dead-end conversations, we finally found the oldest house in the village – this one was even inhabited by a nice Indian family, Sri Mast Ram. So we met them, sat around awkwardly for a while and then surveyed the house. Again, it had a very cozy and warm ambience – I would not have thought that even the softness of the floor makes a difference in the way one perceives the space. We also played around with the little kids after a while – but they’d rather just roll around the house and the courtyard. It was amazing to see that the girls, at most 15-16, were already married, and how the whole domestic culture was quite similar to Turkey’s countryside. It is still a bit ironic that I have seen more of India’s in-the-middle-of-nowhere than Turkey – and definitely have to compensate for it.

Over the weekend, we spent a lot of time documenting our findings from the site visits. Beyond the old mud houses, we had Didi’s newly built, yet truly “novel” mud house on our table – and it was a lot of work. In any case, we managed to wrap up most of the documentation, and decided to have a day off on Monday. So, we woke up at 7am, hiked up ~5km uphill and had a yoga class for two hours. This was followed by a wonderful Tibetan breakfast with fresh bread and ginger tea (we are in India, but this is also the most Tibetan refugee town - and Tibetans eat healthy, Indians don’t.). The ‘vacation’ day continued with a two hour drive to Tatwani hot springs. We read about it in the tourist guide, yet no one including our usually omniscient driver “Happy” did not know it. So we got to the little town and asked about the springs. Someone pointed out to the river and told us to cross it, we went, but did not find any sane way of crossing this stream: it was flowing out of control because it is the monsoon season. We also deemed it too brown and dirty looking to swim in. Disillusioned, we took the car and started driving back, but after a few minutes, the tire popped. It was humid and hot in the valley, we were exhausted from early wake-up, hike, yoga and the unsuccessful river crossing – and our lovely driver had a spare tire worse than the one that popped. After some deep desperate silence, we pulled ourselves together, walked a few kilometers and got back to the riverside next to a stone mine. Intimidated by local boys swimming in the river at first, the heat, dehydration and despair led us to a weird state of carelessness and we jumped into the chilly river waters. And we did swim around with local motorcycle boys and miners. It turned out to be unusually fun, too. Lesson: don’t complain. Then the car got fixed and we went to dinner in a Tibetan vegetarian restaurant and wrapped the day with a beautiful Sitar concert in flickering candlelight and monsoon in the background. Then we slept for 12 hours straight.

My birthday was this Thursday. I had a spark of birthday fun early on Wednesday night with a pineapple cake that oddly looked like a wedding cake, but then Abhishek pulled an Abhishek and smeared half of the cake on my face – of course with good intentions (but then again, he also left a permanent mark on my finger with his ‘magic’ trick with the matches – well..). The daytime was another at-home documentation day, hence not too exciting, nevertheless capped by a night outing in Mcleod Ganj and eating-drinking festivities in a Tibetan restaurant with beer and cheap whiskey. Also very nice gifts from Jackie and Veronica – a book on Tibetan suffering and a meditation bowl. In dinner, we were also accompanied by our new friend, Andrea: an American girl originally from Uruguay, living in a typical suburban town in Florida and visiting India for one more time to see her Indian soon-to-be fiancée. Very nice and mellow person, as many others in this region. We also met some cool Portuguese guys during dinner, realizing that Portuguese sounds like an odd mix of Russian and Spanish. These guys were planning to go to Annapurna, Nepal for an intense hiking trip and I was jealous and thought how great it would be to do it with my close friends – now scattered around the world. In any case, we capped the dinner with no casualties other than the whole group being tipsy, but then also were approached by a shady Tibetan druggie and saved ourselves from a street assault at the last second. Good day…

The following Friday, we again spent most of our time drawing and writing about mud houses – the whole thing takes a very long time, but it’s also because the whole team is sadly perfectionist. We just took too much on our shoulders for the time we have, and now are struggling to wrap everything up in a coherent way.

Yesterday, Saturday, was another good day, though. Started off with yoga, followed by breakfast and some shopping, it culminated in an evening Celebration Party with ‘Babaji,’ a Hindu guru that I have mentioned before: quite a memorable experience of purely Indian celebration in a small Hindu temple up the hill from our house, amazing local food served on banana leafs, smoking, chanting of songs in Urdu and Sanskrit, and the oddest crowd interactions with taxi drivers, construction workers, farmers and “enlightened” wanna-be philosophers. Overall very memorable.

Then Sunday came – and we decided to work hard today. It almost felt like Monday. Still, as electricity and water decided to not visit our house for the morning, we had to relocate and work in a café in Mcleod. It’s amazing how such basics can affect the group productivity. We wrapped up the day with some homemade food by the old lady that lives across the street from us: We met her a few weeks ago, and she kindly cooks for us whenever we ask – for an absurd amount of compensation. A full dinner with soup, rice, dal, curd and rotis cost me one dollar tonight. It’s good, because with her, I can save quite a bit for the last short bit of the India trip – the actual vacation. I am hesitating whether to see a desert in Rajastan, a rainforest in Kerala, old forts and temples in Jaipur, Tibetan camps in Leh or hippie beaches in Goa. India is just overwhelming.
More things:

- Playing soccer with Indians against the Tibetan youth team, surrounded by mountains on four sides.

- Happy’s father asking for a Turkish bride and calling me “Stone” because I was tired and gave no feedback to most of the happenings; apparently, I am bad at pretending to keep up a conversation in Hindi, too.

- How sore one can get from yoga. And how I am so not flexible. And the fact that I don’t get the whole meditation part.

- Either water or electricity. It’s has been only a few times that I’ve seen them both together.

It is getting late, and tomorrow is another long documentation day, so that’s it for now…

Closer

It’s Monday morning. Another monsoon day with damp clouds around the house. A little exhausted, yet also excited by the prospects of next month.

Since last Tuesday, we managed with illnesses in the house, complete long days of documentation around the historic St John’s Church and Kangra Fort, hangout with Israeli friends, a beautiful 20km long-1km rise trek to Triund and both permanent and impermanent visitors in the house.

Regarding illnesses, all the interns have managed to get odd sorts of symptoms over the last three weeks, yet we are all fine now. As my diarrhea ended, Veronica got an infection and suffered quite a bit from it, with some late night crappy emergency service in a rural hospital, incompetent laborants in a private clinic and finally relatively good service in a closely private hospital, with some bed-rest and dispatch the same day. Then Jackie got a fever and had some vomiting action, and we still don’t really know why that happened. In any case, we’re all fine now, with bodies that are hopefully more immune than when we got here.

Work is going well, although we are shooting for a moving target. We have completed documents on four old structures, amounting up to 72 pages and lots of pictures and drawings! Good content, yet not much of a synopsis yet. The data is still a little raw. We have two more structures that we have visited, and once they are complete, we will venture into more recent construction materials and designs. It has been interesting to learn reading buildings such as the temples, forts and the church, yet I am ready to look at villages and houses – it would feel more relevant and ‘humane,’ necessitating more interactions with locals.

We are also getting better in coordinating the documentation of the building. Veronica takes up the rigorous engineer task and is like a detective that is trying to solve the question of: Who killed the building? J So she is always looking at tectonic details and cracks… Mihir, our temporary Indian project manager, interacts with local masons, priests, visitors, etc. and tries to get some first-hand information from them. And I think he does, yet sometimes it feels like he’s too lazy to translate it all for us or there is not much to know, maybe.. Jackie does some beautiful quick sketches and takes notes in her book.. I spend about 20 mins just understanding the site, then a considerable amount of time trying to draw a relatively accurate plan and an elevation sketch that always takes longer than I anticipate. I also try to remain connected to the engineering side and discuss some issues with Veronica and Mihir, then we go home and talk and look at the pictures and type for the whole day and feel horrible about being in the Himalayas yet staring at the laptop screen more than anyone else in 200km radius, etc, etc. The story goes on, but in any case– we get it done.

Both Kangra Fort and the Church were great structures. The fort was the largest and most impressive fort I have seen, sitting like a beacon around the steep Himalayan valleys, and had a huge inverted pyramid in it – we never figured out the reason for it. It also had some views that definitely resembled Machu Pichhu (misspelled?). The church was built on an amazing site, very steep in the hills, amidst the Deodar forest. Built by English army in mid-19^th century, it was a nice structure with beautiful roof support elements and buttressing.

Than there is the staff change. Mihir has to leave because his family is moving their house and needs help. A photographer from Delhi, Abishek, came Friday morning and he will replace him for the next month. A younger guy, he seems nice and willing to help – although no background in architecture or engineering. In any case, it was interesting to see someone that was obsessed with pictures so much- I like pictures too but I realized that I could not have been a photographer – he is much more diligent.

Also, he is very comfortable around us from the first second, which has upsides and downsides. Walking around with a bathrobe the first day, asking for the newspaper to read in the toilet, grabbing food or water without asking – altogether another culture shock at minor scale. All is fine now, we got used to it in just a few days.

Saturday was our day off – the first official one! Jackie and Veronica stayed in and went shopping in Mcleodganj (Little Tibet). Mihir, Abishek and I decided to do the famous tourist trek to Triund. A rather long one for people that do not do it weekly. A relatively steep rise, but just very long. 7 hours of high-tempo walking in fog and rain was challenging – but it was worth it. We met a Dutch anthropologist on in Triund and chatted with him for quite a long time, took some nice pictures and had some soup and omelette. Triund is nothing more than a rest house and a small shack that has food, water and sleeping gear. So, first time in Himalayas, I felt like a trekker. Then we got back down to McLeodganj, had some dinner, and chilled with some Israeli friends that we met the other day. Good day.

Visitors from Delhi came Sunday morning – Anshu and his wife, both very easy going and intelligent. Anshu is one of the founders of SEEDS, the NGO we are working with. He has founded SEEDS about ~13 years ago, as an environmental assessment NGO. Yet with all the disasters in India and Southeast Asia, they switched their focus to disaster relief shelter housing. They have helped in many of the earthquakes in India subcontinent, Andaman Islands, etc. They also collaborate a lot with Japanese architects/engineers, which is an interesting connection for me – perhaps I can find myself in that region sometime over the next two years.

We had a nice day with them, as we discussed the strategy for the “Pan-Himalayan” project in small-scale and also over the next five years. We also visited a local German-American architect, Delia, a ~80 year old woman, who impressed all of us very much. Knowledgeable, sincere, friendly, willing to share, and very talented in design. She has built 17 houses in the middle of nowhere out of mud and bamboo, and they might as well be out of Architectural Digest. Background in painting, parents leftist artist intellectuals and also part of the founding team for the Bauhaus tradition. Just amazing. Some ideas that came up in our conversations:

- Nature is not a place to visit, it is our home. Yet if they do not connect to their natural environment, how could people do?

- Development destroys subsistence. Technology makes one more vulnerable, you lose the sense of resistance and survival against hardships.

- Land ownership is travesty. One cannot own nature.

- We need metrics with soul to solve the climate crisis.

- For a good decision, you have to think how it would affect the weakest. (Originally M. Gandhi)

- In cities, you turn your effort to money and the money to things. In the village, you turn your effort to things.

- It is easier to avoid failure than to innovate success.

- Many young people are reluctant to stand on others shoulders. Innovation, though, does not come right away.

- Who says housing should be permanent. We are not permanent, why should the house be. It has to be repairable and easy to maintain instead. Concrete is considered permanent, it is just heavy, hard to repair and has a huge footprint. Bamboo and mud are locally available, natural, beautiful and require just some regular maintenance and a sense of ownership. We should diverge from linear thinking and think cyclically about problems.

- And the best one: “Solutions always lie within the local environment.” This one sounds simple, yet it has a lot of implications regarding sustainability. Attempts to simplify problems and solve them altogether does not work, small effective local action coupled with good global connectivity is much more powerful.

Anyway, the point is, this lady was a great person to find out about, and we will definitely spend long hours with her in the next month, just listening…

resilience, big time

It has been a while since my last blog entry, and I am, once again, overwhelmed about how to capture everything in a few paragraphs. But I think this time, the unifying topic of my experiences will be resilience.
I am certainly becoming more acclimatized to this wholly inimitable environment, and ultimately, becoming more resilient in every sense. I started enjoying the arctic temperature of the fountain water, which we use to wash dishes, the house and ourselves. Well, about that – water has been cut for four days straight from the village we stay in, and even the fountain ran out of water, so we had to commute to fill water in twentysomething water bottles we had. Yet, this first-time experience with water scarcity made me appreciate the value of a good infrastructure much more than any paper that I could read about urban sustainability.
My stomach has also gained some resilience after the diarrhea; I have straining my taste buds in the last week with Tibetan "momos," pineapple-flavored yoghurt drinks, heavy Moghul dishes in clay pots and weird Indian tastes with gravy in every imaginable color – basically copious amounts of mystery food wherever we go. Again, from an initially unpleasant encounter, the ritual of eating is gradually becoming an exhilarating spectacle.
Patience… That’s another notion to dwell on in India. Time exists, yet it does not seem to matter too much. Beyond the idiosyncratic laziness of the countryside, people here just seem to take any hardship with incredible patience – monsoon comes, life stops, and that’s absolutely fine. We run out of gas, and nobody shows even a hint of anxiety about the plans for the rest of the day.
Monsoon has not hit us as much as we were afraid of so far. Miraculously, we never found ourselves under the "tears of God," as the book that I borrowed from a local monk describes it. I think it would be fun at least to experience the rain for once. Perhaps as we take one of the challenging treks such as the one to Triund (~2800m), a monsoon can hit us once and all. One upside of it is the views as the clouds move away – nothing looks as crisp around here as the 10 minutes after the rain.
One short digression about India as a country: Although we are quite remote in the mountains, one can get a very good sense about the state of the nation just by observing the locals, interacting with the English-speaking minority and reading the local newspaper. Poverty is heart-wrenching, yet everyone is optimistic about "making it big one day." People are not altruistic in any sense, so the only way for a country with 45% under the global poverty line will be to expand the pie rather than trying to re-distribute it. Everyone seems committed to gain status – as the most recent book I am reading, "Being Indian", describes it, power and status set the meaning of typical Indian’s lives. It is not money as much as respect that everyone tries to gain. The historical caste system is still relevant, and business cards and diplomas accompany one’s identity wherever they go. When I meet a new person, the first encounter is about my country, my school, my future profession, and even the status of my family in Turkey. And whom I know that can be a good contact if we carry on the conversation. I understand that in the globalized world, these titles do matter, yet Indian interest in trappings of power are certainly a little odd. It is also interesting, and very much similar to Turkey, that an a priori superiority is assumed when Indians meet a foreigner – even more towards guys as it is a very patriarchal community.
About work… It has been picking up; we have completed the survey of three buildings so far. Baijnath Temple, Masrur Rock Cut Temple and Kotla Fort. It is quite an experience to be out on the field through the day, and spend hours looking at the design of these old constructions. It is amazing to think that a tourist may think that an hour is more than enough, whereas with the lens of the architect/engineer, they become overwhelming open air laboratories.
In such ancient structures, function seems to be determined in boldly different ways: these old edifices integrated religious iconography with socio-cultural significance, the local microclimate with architectural precedence. Unique earthquake resistant features are to be found, like through-stones, buttresses, bracings and overall symmetric massing, yet they all were damaged ‘big-time’ in the 7.8 magnitude 1905 Kangra Earthquake (quite comparable in damage and human losses to 1999 Earthquake in Izmit, Turkey).
We are in a good pace despite everything: two comprehensive reports have been completed on the first two structures, amounting to fourty pages! I am actually satisfied with our methodology – we were able to come up with a unique documentation structure that is a bit more than "Rapid Visual Screening," yet also more informative. We broke it down to architecture and structure, and they further ‘bifurcate’ (Mihir’s favorite word) to site, massing, climate, structural system, details, repairs and a short synopsis at the end.
Moreover, considering that this is a preliminary proof-of-concept study for a future Pan-Himalayan Survey on all the significant buildings, we should err on the side of systematic comprehensiveness rather than conciseness and efficiency.
Yet, sometimes I also think that we should start focusing on the vernacular housing and public structures rather soon. Although very interesting as a warm-up stage, these ancient structures seem to be limited in their construction material and technique. Hopefully, we will diversify our portfolio with timber, adobe and reinforced concrete buildings in the coming weeks, which would provide good insights on tradeoffs of different construction materials, along with other sustainability factors such as local availability, life-cycle assessment and cost.
The team is working in synch as well – we complement each other. Veronica is the hardcore engineer & "crack detector," very astute in her observations on anything technical. She claims to have no command on anything artsy/architect-y, yet this sounds more like self-conditioning. Jackie, on the other hand, is the mellow-subtle true architect- loves to sketch in her moleskine, and is very good at it. Mihir, the SEEDS coordinator on site with us, is also very helpful with his site experience on earthquake engineering – and also links us to the local knowledge as he is the only Hindi speaker on site. Me, on the other hand, work as the link between the disciplines, which I enjoy. I work on all the visuals for the documents, edit the pictures, do some diagrams in Photoshop and all the other meticulous stuff about the layout.
Well, then there is our new driver, "Happy" - that is his name. So we joke with him using all the English expressions that contain ‘happy,’ it turns out there are a lot of them. He is a very cheerful local guy, a good driver, and accompanies us kindly wherever we go. He might even invite us to a local wedding, which Lauren described as ‘not-to-be-missed’ at Stanford before we left…
I wish there was a little less ambiguity about the coming weeks, though. Mihir keeps talking about planning the schedule, but things just get postponed quite leisurely – both in a good and bad way. Having no stress at work makes me a little stressed, for some sad reason. Hopefully, today, we’ll get a Gantt Chart together, with the anticipation of finishing on August 23 and travelling for ~10 days afterwards.
Finally, some other moments to remember:
Hiking up to the Monk’s Temple up in the hill for the second time, sipping chai, seeing all the devoted visitors go through odd rituals that involve eating white crispy chips, sipping water from a copper cup, putting ash on the forehead and kissing the ground three times (I feel bad for not memorizing the Hindi name for these items). Then listening to Indian journalist/singer jam with a local guy and the monk in melodies unheard of.
Again, hiking up in McLeodGanj for the sunset with Mihir and Happy, sipping apple cider overlooking Kangra valley.
Meeting a typical Tibetan refugee, Dawa, who silently sat on our table as we were working in a café and remained silent unless we asked him some questions. And then going to Hotel Tibet to east some Tibetan food and kind of being scammed by the waiter who suggested us the worst selections on the menu and then teased us with some great food, and after a few bites we had, he realized that it was the wrong table, so then took the food away and brought it to the other table – quite a spectacle.
Being in wilderness in Kotla Fort, a truly off-the-beaten-path site – no internet information could be found on its history. Ancient rocks, monkeys, huge insects, moist waterbeds, all to be capped by a collective sunstroke for the team. Then we healed.
Mihir’s comment: "People around here in Mcleodganj seem lost. They have no expression on their face."
Veronica: "I was just trying to give some construction criticism."
Local Musician talking to me I at the monk’s temple courtyard:
-Are you here big time?
- ?
- Do you like music big time?
- ?!
- Big time.
- I see.

India is like a pill with many side effects.. As my experience here forces me to reconsider a lot of Western ways of thinking, it also puts significant physical and mental strain on me. And I can only handle so much.
Also, a lot has happened in the last week that it twists my sense of temporality.
Delhi has been sheer craziness, by far the most chaotic urban landscape I have ever encountered. After leaving the SEEDS office Friday night, I was not actually ready to embrace all the disarming events to come. I checked in the wrong hotel and thus picked the “deluxe double” instead of the “luxury suit” (wanted to save SEEDS some money); the deluxe turns out to imply a windowless room with a broken TV, unwashed bed covers, cold water and an about-to-fall-apart AC. I took it all in, more so because of the anticipation to see Delhi in the evening. Along with Veronica, Jackie and Veda (the two other interns and a local SEEDS employee from Northeast India- She looked more Chinese than Indian to me), I went to Delhi Gate and toured around a bit, ending up in a fancy bar called Lizard Lounge. Nice place, good food – yet it got awkward around 9.30 when the place decided to become a nightclub – with not more than 15 people in it, mostly dining. And some local Indian boys flexing at the bar.. This broke our conversation, and soon after, we left the place. I was exhausted anyway.. Then, India started testing my stamina. I got onto a rickshaw to go back to the hotel, and the tire popped up. Then the driver got mad at me, because I was spacey and did not help him as much as he wanted to (!), the whole tipping-the-rickshaw-changing-the-tire-repairing-the-engine-running-out-of-gas-pushing-the-rickshaw-filling-gas-and-more operation lasted ~45 minutes, and finally I was able to make it to my room.
Over the weekend, I got to see some nice touristy places with Veronica. Red Fort, which was recently nominated as a World Heritage Site, was beautiful, calm and relaxing. Built by Moghuls, it was designed to be paradise on Earth. If not so, it was certainly a paradise in Delhi, because soon after, we found ourselves in the craze of Meera Bazaar, with sellers attacking us, local Muslims giving us dirty looks, and beggars pulling us down from our pants, literally. Or naked small babies mying in dirt, flies hovering over them, no exaggeration. I have pictures that I will upload towards the end of the trip, they will cover the visual part of the story. Whatever entails culture shock, that was it… Eye-opening does have some side-effects, it seems. Also, I have been wondering recently about what it means to be a tourist. After all, tourists want to get to know the local culture, but the boundary is not always easy to draw. Touristy places do have a buffer zone which makes them more safe and predictable, and locals’ places offer a genuine experience at the cost of.. who knows. I felt when we were in a rickshaw crossing the shanty-town in Delhi, us being one of the very few tourists, that anything could have happened. We were lucky that we got nothing other than stark gazes and a few warnings about Veronica’s dress…
Sunday night, we took the bus from Delhi to Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh. A 520 km, 12 hour ride, it seemed just like a badly designed rollercoaster. Horns are commonplace in India to use; it is like: dogs bark, cars use horns. At every occasion. Yet the bus driver exaggerated this feat and used horns at every excessive maneuver he made, and there were a lot of them. So every horn could be the last sound one could hear. I feel lucky to be alive. Couldn’t get a bit of sleep, yet it was nice to sip some Chai six in the morning at the skirts of Himalayas.
There is so much to say about the Himalayas.. Well, they are partly the reason Hinduism decided to invent millions of Gods, along with local animistic iconography. They do consider them as the “home of Gods” and it is an assertion to consider when one sees them. But I imagined them as barren, rough and unapproachable mountains. Instead, what we have here in Dharamsala is lush green scenery with stepped rice plantations, so many trees, so many valleys. It is a place that I have not even seen in the movies, which is exciting, to say the least.
Our arrival to Dharamsala has been a little troublesome (because even the simplest task in India takes a long time, a lot of coordination, and patience – basically taking it all in). It started pouring and we were waiting for Rishi –the local SEEDS officer and our habitually late driver- under a small tin roof. Then we got to our hotel; as if I didn’t take my lesson in Delhi, they asked again whether I would mind staying in the cheap one of the rooms. I wanted to be easy-going, and I really could not conceive how bad it could be, but as we entered the room, I realized that I had made a mistake, once again. The girls spoke up before me, and we were transferred to the “deluxe rooms,” which were definitely acceptable by all standards. One more thing, rooms in hotels in India have weird spatial proportions, they are generally too large without much furniture in them, just barred spaces with bathroom-like tiles, which feels very odd.
Rishi is the accounts person in SEEDS, a local of Dharamsala, a very friendly, solemn and genuine person. He recently became a devoted Muslim as his wife claimed dawri (which means that he bought the wife from the parents) and he didn’t think it was fair, but the court has made him suffer for the last three years and he decided to find the solace in God. He fasts Monday and Fridays, but also drinks beer occasionally, which does not help his mood or driving at all.
Religion in India is perhaps the most complicated subject matter, since nothing seems to have a secular face around here, and there are so many nuances, and a conflict among most of the groups. The whole social structure is even more complicated by the caste system, which are mainly divided into four, but in its bifurcations, millions of caste exist in India and they matter a lot.
Going back to our daily schedule, one interesting visit we made since we came is to go to Little Tibet, Mcleodganj, which is 9 km far from our home, but also 500 m up! It is a quaint little tourist town, which was so nice to see, because one does miss being a tourist among tourists sometime.. This is where yoga, medidation, and Buddhist philosophy is practiced as the fundamentals of daily life, and Dalai Lama has been living here for the last 48 years as well!! Intertwined Buddhist and Hindu temples, maroon-wrapped Tibetan on-exile monks, Americans in full-fledged Hippi dresses, rather meditative shopkeepers and safer food are all welcome.. We enjoyed it the first time on Monday evening, and will definitely frequent the place as often as possible. Further down the road, there is even a spectacular waterfall carving through the mountains, along with nodes of Tibetan prayer sites (basically a colorful flag on a stone, placed after the occurrence of a significant event at that spot)
One huge hassle was moving in to our new house. In a rather rural neighborhood, we are definitely dependent on a car. So we brought all our stuff in our microscopic Suzuki Maruti, and realized soon how dirty the house was. It took four people five hours to clean a small house, so you imagine the details. The we went to buy stuff for the house, and I would describe our current interior design as “ascetic” to begin with. But soon we will get a table and some other necessities, hopefully.
I don’t want to sound all bitter about what I have seen so far, but there has just been an immense change in my living spaces that it takes some time to digest it all. I have tried to be as easy-going and flexible as I can, and it is interesting to see how humans have adapted themselves to such diverse environments (kids bathe in green river water, people walk barefoot on damp rice fields, old man pet monkeys, etc). I am sure that after a month, things that strike me here minute by minute will go unnoticed, but until then, bear with me..
Talking about digestion, Indian food did come with side effects as well: Severe Traveller’s Diarrhea with Fever and all. Fortunately, I got over it after a few not-too-great days, with a visit to a seedy hospital yet a surprisingly helpful doctor. According to Mihir, “one of the biggest problems of India is that they always treat the foreigners much better than locals and consider them more superior.” Seems accurate so far, yet not too different from Turkish mentality either.
Finally, regarding work – things run slowly here. I feel very unproductive especially after Stanford pace. Even the smallest task takes forever – no one is on time, there is a lot of overhead, and people just go with the flow. We also do not have a very strict gameplan yet, which chips away from motivation. In any case, we were able to visit a government official, Kangra Fort and a Shiva Temple so far. In the temple, four of us spent long hours studying the structure and the site, sketching and taking pictures, which was very interesting. We do have to come up with a consistent methodology as the time passes though – and also to set all our deliverables straight. And to get fast Internet access… We’ll see; I think there is a lot of potential, but we as interns definitely have to push the process because the local SEEDS people don’t seem to “pull” us in the next few weeks…

Arrival!

The journey starts...

A hiker bag inflated with probably inadequate clothing, excessive medication and a mosquito net (the prime element of my luggage) is all, as I fly to India. Missing some supposedly critical items such as a flashlight and a good water flask (indispensable items according to family :), but there is only so many kilograms to put on my poor shoulders..
Farewells to family, I'm sad by the prospect of not seeing my sister for a while. .. It's only 2.5 months for the rest of the family though, not the end of the world..

There is something unique this time, I am truly nervous about what I am about to experience, in a good way. Ambiguity makes the whole thing more exhilarating. And it is ambiguous for sure: the itinerary, our daily tasks, logistics, language, culture, social life, everything... Things just don't run at the same pace and precision in India as they did in America.. I think I am ready to embrace whatever comes; I must be. Trite as it may sound, for a true journey, I can never be too prepared, otherwise it won't be a journey anyway.

The plane is disproportionately Indian dominated in demographics, and unusually warm - perhaps a setup by the airlines on what to expect from India. And some loud babies, louder than ever...
Then I met an Indian girl in the plane. She's a journalist from the second largest newspaper in India: Indian Express. A very eloquent speaker, she does literary reviews for the newspaper, and she was studying in Israel for a while- and reading Orhan Pamuk, a renowned Turkish author! She got very interested in our earthquake safety project, which is encouraging. She even suggested to make a story on us, but I guess she was being more kind than sincere.. In any case, we did not exchange contacts, so there goes it... I am good at setting the first conversation straight, but I have to make an effort to set a stage for potential follow-ups as well - you never know where the journey will take you ..

Then I read a bit of "Temptations of the West" by Pankaj Mishra on the plane, per my mom's suggestion. A very interesting read, combines exceptionally literary tone, an engaging travel diary and sharp political commentary all at the same time. I learned a lot about politics in Kashmir, movie industry in Bollywood and racial/religious strife all across India. I am looking forward to linking my personal experience with what I read in the book, thus perhaps having a quasi-personal account on the current state of affairs in India. This might be an engineering/architecture project, yet it does not mean that I should not pay attention to and reflect on the political and cultural complexities of the region.. :)

After reading and sleeping in the plane, I finally got to Delhi around 3 am. Doing all the routines like getting through customs, collecting bags, finding a cab and spotting the hotel was much less troublesome than what I expected. The hotel was surprisingly clean, the room spatious, the shower comfortable and the water bottled. The toughness of the beds (a platform of wooden planks) is something to get used to, but otherwise, I may say I am adapting... The constant sauna weather is another challenge, yet everybody seems to be ok with it, and I trust my body's adaptation capability.

Everyone in the SEEDS (sustainable environment and ecological development society?) office is very friendly and welcoming. A rather large organization with multiple projects, an extensive library and even a good cook! It's a shame that I'll spend one afternoon here and head up to the Himalayas over the weekend.

I should make a point of getting some nice photos in this trip. Hopefully, I won't disappoint myself.

Gotta wrap it up for now, but all in all, the journey has started, finally...

First Post.

Indeed. Marking the time of transition, grauduating in a day, packing hectically, moving forward, visiting Turkey, farewells and short encounters. good memories, and much more to come in India, hopefully.