It’s Been Long

 As good as it looked when we started out, working from home just is not the same. We had a whole batch of interns come and go and it feels like I don’t know any of them! Of course that could also be because I was sporadic in my attendance of the zoom meetings but when I asked Sai and Ananya about it, they felt the same. 

So this term, we put extreme caution aside, trusted the interns to be responsible and decided that we’ve had enough of work from home and constant checking of our phones! It’s been a week and the studio is buzzing again, there is a palpable energy and there is laughter and jokes and big huge smiles! 

We had a long discussion in the morning today on art and architecture and life and all the connections between them - all of us standing in the kitchen and pondering over it all and that’s when I realised how much I had missed this camaraderie and easiness and these discussions. 

In a week I feel like I know them and can connect with them. On zoom calls, it took almost till the end of term for everyone to get comfortable and then again, I still don’t think we got to know anyone as they really are. Biggest surprises are Vibha and Prithvi who decided to continue the internship with us this term as well but this time working from the studio. 

We met Vibha at Mysore a few days before she was to join and I couldn’t believe the amount she talked! I had developed this impression that she was quiet and serious. And Prithvi who probably even trumped me in missing zoom meetings has been regular to office for a week now! What’s more, he seems to be opening up a little! Saptangshu is a whirlwind of never ending stories - most of which land him in Ananya’s ‘what-not-to-assign’ list, but the stories are super entertaining nonetheless! 

Even Mathew is more cheerful and talkative! When he had interned with and then joined as an architect, he was quiet and focussed only on what he is supposed to do. Now it feels like he has decided to let himself a little loose as well! 

I started writing this in the morning and took a break for lunch. That break just reiterated for me everything I was enthused about after the morning discussion. Lunch was almost 2 hours long or more because Saptangshu had stories and stories and the rest of us couldn’t stop laughing! 

More interns are supposed to join next month and if this mood is anything to go by, I think we are going to have an awesome, productive new year filled with new ideas and thoughts! 

Cheers to that! 

Locked-down Woes?

This has been tough on everyone who loves working. Being locked down is starting to get to everyone but not always in a negative way. I know friends who are bored out of their minds and want something to do and there are others who are doing so many things it’s amazing! There are ones who are enjoying this downtime and ones who are more busy now than they were otherwise!

We at Sandarbh have been at work since no one wanted to do nothing. We have been at work on ourselves, skill building, raising our levels of understanding and exalting in our sketching abilities. We have been working on improving in many aspects right from our lettering and it’s been a fun exercise (especially as a critic!).
We started out with trepidation on Zoom not sure how useful it would be to stay connected and how productive the whole exercise would be. Only thing we were sure of was that we all wanted to work!
It’s been a fascinating few weeks now! From random conversations where we were more keeping in touch and getting used to this idea to actually trying to do work over it. As all of us discovered the first week, it’s not easy to stay focussed and work in the kind of situation we are in and everyone started complaining about the loss and lack of focus and thus not being able to close assignments.

In steps our ‘big boss’ and he takes overs and how! The last few days have been all about hardwork and building rigour. The assignments are short and time bound and everyone is on their toes! If I don’t check my phone for half an hour, I am inundated with at least a 100 messages! Almost feels like we are in the studio and are getting work done. Lack of focus is definetly not an issue anymore!!

It’s interesting how we have changed gears and even more interesting how everyone is reacting to this shift. From being bored and not having enough to do to almost knowing a project inside out and on different levels! We are all tired but the end of the work day and in a good way.

Hopefully the rest of the week will be easier with this newfound enthusiasm. Right now Amal summed it up well when he sair that the body and brain seem to be functioning at different levels! We are all in that boat with him!
Let’s hope they we get them back to the right levels before we have to do this in person! 😀

Zooming into Sandarbh

I havnt seen a quiet time at Sandarbh in the last few years so I wasn’t sure what this lockdown would do to the studio and the energy that was so carefully built up. I of course didn’t have to wait too long to find out though!

We have been more or less on a lockdown mode from the last week. More than the corona pandemic, it was chicken pox (we are weird that way) which prompted social distancing for us. In a way, I think that oriented all of us to actually start missing work earlier than we thought we would.
So here we are on the 2nd day of the lockdown and having a meeting at sharp 9am via Zoom. Everyone was that’s perfectly on time. Way better than we do in office! The only late comer was our principal man!

Even Akshita who has never come to work earlier than 9:15 was there on time and armed with her notebook all happy to be seeing us all the way from Delhi!
Amal could probably have slept away a week more at least but he was as enthusiastic as he could be as well! Showing off his growing locks and beard!
Our most excitable HR cum client relations cum manager cum blogger cum designer and peace keeper, Ananya, was so totally herself! She set up the meeting, and was online with Ginger and herself very well positioned (light wise) and eager to start!
Mathew still needed to find his most flattering angle but he made up for the wide angle look by listening ardently and laughing at all the right places!
Sai was his usual self, let everyone squeeze a word in in the beginning and then laughed into his monologue for the next 45 minutes!
I was armed with my book with all the work to hand out (which didn’t happen), missed finding a good place to set myself up, had to share screen space with Sai (sigh) and managed to roll my eyes even during Sais monologue! Nothing could get more like office!
The best bit though was Shreya! Our brand new employee who flew in perfectly before they stopped that kind of reckless behaviour in these times. This was her virtually first day at work (pun intended). Her first office meeting couldnt have gone better though! We were all perfectly ourselves and super happy to be seeing each other after a whole week. Started off with her playing hide and seek on Zoom and then having her audio switched off but very intently nodding to what we were saying and she was not hearing! Nervousness does things to people! Thankfully she managed to figure it all out by the time we got down to business.

So Shreya, welcome to Sandarbh. We are exactly what you saw today and more. I’m guessing that oil will fit right into this creative madhouse! You tick all the boxes for it!
1. A little crazy ☑️
2. Creative ☑️
3. Just a little off ☑️
4. Organised in a chaotic way ☑️
5. Normal? What’s that? ☑️

Mathew's First Task at Work!

 

Excited and looking forward to my new internship and assigned my first job into the internship, I walked into an office where the principal architects were missing - apparently they had gone traveling

The first task assigned to me sounded pretty straightforward - I had to supervise and get the tiling done for a small washbasin area in a residence. The tiles were already decided and was on site, all I had to do was figure out a pattern and get the tile layers to do it.

So I started doing the job - making patterns and sharing it with Sai on WhatsApp, who would ask me to make small corrections, it was a to and fro process, going very well for my first day at work.

And then he says, you need to execute this on site, Mathew, be ready to do that tomorrow.

I was nervous, but excited - ready to take on this first task I was given.

But that's when the constraints set in - I needed 12 tiles, but I only had 10 on site. Also, the client, didn't like any of the initial patterns I had shared with him and needed a crisscross pattern using the tiles, which included a lot of cutting of the tiles - sort of increased the difficulty of the exercise one level higher.

But I got through it, the pattern was decided, planned for using exactly the same amount of tiles which was available at site, not one more, not one less. We also planned to cut the usage of tiles by not using tiles where the mirror would come.

That was when another door just slammed in my face. Vastu wouldn't permit me to place a mirror on that wall but 2 tiles had already been cut. I started to panic. The tiles wouldn't last, Sai was about to board the plane back to India, he wouldn't be able to see or be updated with the work, I was freaking out like crazy, sending Sai message after message telling him each and every problem. The reply.. one message. " Mathew, just stop ". I heaved a sigh of relief. I told the masons to focus on some other work. Maybe Sai won't ask me to work on these tiles anymore.

Next day, Sai has finally reached back at the office and I finally meet my principal architects. First thing Sai says to me is that I will work on the pattern myself. He could see the anxiety creeping back up on my face. He reassured me that this is a task which I can do. He sat with me and started to tell me how to work with it. The approach to handle the task, the mindset I should have and how to deal with problems. The morning talk gave me the confidence to rework the tile pattern such that the wasted tiles don't

matter.
The next day I was back at site. The most confident I'd felt for the longest time. Small problems still kept popping up. The material was running low. The masons had doubts on how to apply the cement or treat the wall. But no matter what the problem was I had the confidence to think about it and deal with it, rather than just freak out and frantically spam Sai with messages. A few hours later and it was finally done.

- Done by Mathew

    How it looked when it started

How the final product looks like