The First Chapter II

And then there are those day, days without written progress of thought. My room has the ability change meaning with my own occupation in it. On days when I come home late, tired and exhausted from the hectic schedule of the day, it’s nothing more than a dark room paid little attention to till the morning sun rises and shines bright in my eyes, waking me up to spend just a few minutes of awake time before I head out again.

I take the only staircase in my building downwards and into the open clearing in front of my apartment. There, is no natural landscape. There is no natural. There is no landscape. Since the past few weeks, I had been intending to work on a thesis proposal without actually being able to actively do something about it. There was a ‘plan’ I had in mind. The plan constituted of a transformation of my room, bringing in material for model making and converting all the walls into space where I could scribble with markers and pens. I was trying to set up the room to create an environment ‘healthy’ enough for thought to flourish. It didn’t happen that way.

What did happen was a book. More specifically it was a book on a bus on my way to work and back. It’s not exactly what was in the book and I say that because sometimes I didn’t have to read the book at all. Sometimes all it took was to take it out of my bag, open the bookmarked page and the rest came with staring out of the window. Ideas would flash before me. Recollection of thoughts would take me to places of their origin while I would miss the bus stops I was physically passing by. ‘Defence Mor’ , ‘R.A. Bazaar’ and ‘Liberty Gol Chakkar’ it seemed were not on my route. I was somewhere else. To be specific, I was in my third year design studio, discussing ideas with my teachers. Then I passed by the corner of me lying on my lounge sofa inside my house in Karachi watching a documentary on TV. Afterwards there seemed to have been a prolonged stopover at the road that led through the valley of Neelum in Kashmir.

That last destination could actually be the equivalent of having lost my orientation and needed the timely intervention of a passenger getting up from the seat beside me to bring me back to physical space and make me realize the bus is actually about to reach the Gulberg ’Main Market’ stop. I wonder then, have I changed assigned meaning of the space around me? Or has the space adapted to me?

Later in the day I reach home early to pen down my thoughts. As I stare into the darkness for a while, I set off to typing down the disjointed ideas running in my head. Soon the ideas make some relevant sense and are the beginnings of conceiving an initial abstract. Have I changed the character of my room without any physical intervention?

The argument lies as much in physical form as it does in our mental ability to both perceive and project. Here when I talk about perceiving, I mean not the input of information that our sensory receptors receive, but how they react to it. An over sensitive ear will hear things more sharply and will think of sound as more defined compared to someone with weak hearing. Over time we are all then molded into defining what is normal for us. Such conditioning would overlap itself constantly, so all new information is received in relative terms. And then there is the projection. The relative reality we are all bound to experience. 

The First Chapter

As the engine of a motorcycle is kicked into ignition, I hear it gasp loudly and repeatedly in loud “put put’s” trying to breathe in the sparks in order to get its motor into a mechanical rhythm. You can hear the rider negotiating with his machine to oblige by gently but increasingly testing its throttle. From behind me, I suddenly hear footsteps clamouring their way up the staircase of my apartment building. The short yet striking clap of each footstep indicates the climber is jumping his way up the flight of stairs, possibly skipping a stair as he rushes up.

From my bedroom window on the third floor, I can see the roofs of other buildings in the neighborhood. Behind their silhouette, an orange hue rises up from the horizon into the deep dark night sky. Then, occasionally as if only to break the stillness, a distant car passing by throws in light stenciled through my balcony railing into my room as rectilinear shapes which continuously morph as they quickly run across the walls and ceiling. I’ve kept the lights turned off in my room as I usually do whenever I sit or lie down to write on my laptop.  Basically then there’s just the light emitting out from my laptop screen with me staring right back at it. It’s blinding in this darkness, and when I look away from the screen it’s blindingly dark. However if I give my eyes a few moments to adjust, I can make out the brighter darks of the white walls from the darker darks of the doors, closets and chairs.

Cozily lying down on my bed, I notice how my hands and arms, which happen to be out of the blanket which covers the rest of my body, feel warmer than my toes buried deep into the fold of the warm cotton filled fabric, and colder still when I rub them together. And then there’s something odd about the silence. It rings into my ears. It rings the same way it has been ringing for over a decade now. I find it amusing because I only hear it when there’s nothing to hear. I once went to a doctor for it when it had becoming too annoying. After some tests he concluded it was psychological, nevertheless prescribed me medicines usually used for the treatment of vertigo. Many years on, I’ve come to passively ignore it now, but every now and then when its dark and silent and I’m wide awake, it gives me a bell, and more so in my left ear.

Then there are my thoughts. I can’t always think well enough to write well enough. I’ve tried randomly quite a number of times only to have regretted the attempt. It’s not so much about writers block as much as it is about a writers push. Many a times you need witnessed inspiration to act as a seed from which a derived idea will sprout out to see the light of day. Other times you need that dark empty nothingness to stare into, to be teased into trying something dramatic, and only to be further enticed by the bright white of an empty Word Document with constant back and forth glances into the darkness for imaginative visual references.

It’s amazing to notice the number of details you normally do away with yet, in my current state of writing, have helped me in realizing an appropriate way to start my text. It after all, is my sense of space, which is exactly what I want to carry forward.

Though I could only hear the actions of the motorcyclist, I could still deduce the mechanical detail of the struggle. Since I could notice the growth in the texture and amplitude of sound nearing my singular top floor apartment, I could very easily anticipate my main door being unlocked and opened by my housemate before the event actually took place.  Despite there being a blackout in my immediate vicinity, the hue across the skyline indicated that the outage isn’t widespread, and that most of the city enjoys what presently we Pakistani’s see as the rare luxury of electrification. More so the crystal glow of the shapes of light racing across my room points a finger towards a person who abuses his choice for luxury by installing HID head lights for his vehicle which to all encompassing commuters is an abomination during the night; Similar to how irritatingly impossible navigating my room without injury through complete darkness might have been if a contrast wasn’t created due to the reflection of a dim source of light off my white bedroom walls and not off wooden surfaces.

Alternatively, the fact that with a constant body temperature, my sense of warmth and coldness act inversely in corresponding environments could describe how apparent ideas could prove to be untrue, and how the apparent ringing I hear is actually bogus, proves that in the end, what we might sense isn’t always reality, so what should stop us from projecting our own hallucinations into the darkness, for us to visualize our dreams, even while we are awake.

No. I am not only looking for how the space around us affects our senses, but more so, I’d like to explore how our senses affect the reality of space we inhabit.

Alif

Line after line. After line. They are all lines after all.


In the first year of my college education, we were made to take two classes on calligraphy as part of our initial drafting course. The drafting studio was one of my favourite rooms. Going through a slim vaulted corridor you made your way up steps with risers much above the comfort level. You reached the floor above, gradually being welcomed by the light breaking in on your left through arched windows large and close together, restricted only maybe by a dusty mesh covering their full surface. On the other side was an old door, the type which still has a wooden beam running along the ground to complete its frame. You entered the great hall of a studio to yet again see those arched windows, smaller and scattered now, looking out into the ever busy Mall road with a skyscape of  turrets and domes from Punjab University and Government college. Down below you could see Kims Gun sitting silently and lazily. You look up above and stand in awe under something you could have as easily missed out on no matter how many times you came into this room. The high ceiling is a dark varnished wooden structure with beems running across its shorter span, crowned at their ends elegantly. Centrally placed between the beams are subtly wooden ornamentations in floral patterns which in many lights might not even show. The plaster on the walls is uneven and even tearing down from certain places, and the fireplaces on the wall running both ways from the entrance door seem long since used. Yet thats the things with old places, something special, you would imagine that if you could listen so carefully, you might just hear it breathing.


Now in my third year I sit in a more avant garde of a building. Here the Architecture studios windows are long and rectangular. The ceiling is a matrix waffle slabs. However even with its plain flushed walls and standardized staircase, I'd express no complaints agsainst it despite though I might have many. So many times I've admired it from the adjacent courtyard, how firmly half of the 6 story structure receeds its terraces so firmly beside the solid face of mass of the other vertical half which make up the lecture theaters on the inside, only to be rendered weak and floating simultaneous by the terrace at its footing breaking its hold to the ground. Its in there, or atleast here where I have to eventually present my work. My work which is now based on numerous lines. Lines drawn out of shear will power to create and nothing else. Leaving behind my usual way of processing through extractions from the site, through an understanding of the surroundings or through the romantisicm of one philosophy or another. Just once I wanted to be selfish and create by instinctive imagination. So I started to scribble lines.


Gohar Kalam is a reknowned Calligraphy artist and a cheerful guy of sorts. Every now and then if you couldn't get how to pen down an alphbet or just to get a critique on your work, you'd make your way to the head of the class and sit down on the ground around him. Waiting for you're turn you would hear the many joyful stories he had to share as he multi-tasked at demonstrating. One such tale he told about 'Alif'. Alif is the first alphabet in the Urdu language, and the arabic script in general. During his own student years he had been taught by the great master Sadeqain. He narrated how many a times the entire excersize used to consist on endlessly and tirelessly practicing the very linear and vertical charachter of Alif with the sole instruction of, "Line mein jaan lao" (Give life to your line). Gohar Kalam would roar with laughter at this point, expressing the madness that would entail in trying to even minutely understand what the instruction meant. Behind Sadeqains' back the students would joke about the insanity of the instruction. Then Kalams gaze would stricken, as if into a flashback of realization and he would tell you how true his teacher had been in his insanity of bringing Alif to life. From the crowned top, bringing the reed pen down swiftly, moving off center in perfect flow to meekly curving the bottom to return it to its axis while ever so delicately lifting the pen away to bring about that perfect tip... mastery of such could bring about such a beautiful thing as the birth of symbol madepermenant as the ink dried into the paper. Just to hear the story and look at the old mans gaze was mesmerizing, but the intensity of the emotions attached must be so much more than I could possibly describe or even imagine for myself.


Endlessly I make lines. Initially, enough lines to try and bring myself into a trance, then more to bring out form from it. When I think about it sometimes I try hard to go insane. Insane into the making of the perfect line, to form that perfect structure, to bring, God willing, my architecture to life someday.

Narrative

These stools are quite high. They cling too much because they're entirely made of metal so you have to be careful not to move them around much. I still do. There is chatter all around. People walking in and out conveniently. Tea being sipped and last bits of breakfast if any, being swallowed in no particular hurry. At the window of the farthest cubicle a small gathering take long drags from their cigarettes and exhale in between mundane conversations while others lie down on the series of tall drafting tables, still catching up on every bit of shut eye they can. Somewhere near the entrance there is a big fortifying wooden table with a softer green panel top surrounded by a few wooden framed chairs with cane knitted seats and backrests. Slowly, these chairs start filling up by those who will soon grasp the attention of everyone else scattered about.  


This is what my studio is like right before our instructor raises his heavy voice and says "Okay guys! Gather around". This the second floor of the Architecture Department building. This is the Third Year Architectural Design class.


Its Cold. Its very cold and I like it. A while back I was sitting on one of the center seats talking away or listening to music, quite what i've done throughout most of the journey. We've just passed through Balakot and I've decided to stick my head out of the window. As the cold starts biting my face, my nausea for the most part escapes my mind and and as the coach climbs uphill the valley begins to stretch out below. The sun has already hidden itself behind...well one of these mountains. The ridges tower themselves up as if waiting for the forthcoming stars to greet them into the night sky, just so that they can fade away into the dark and let them take over the show. However till then there is a fantastical display going on. As the road winds itself around and runs across the steep slopes, natures stage show curtains have just risen. First when you're still down below, or when you've just crossed a low lying bridge you hear the the stream fightings its way over rocks and turns and notice it running long untill it vanishes into a corner. Even though its all just water, there is no simplicity or serenity here, the form, intensity and drama it upholds is captivating to say the least. At certain places it establishes its authority and cuts right through, in others it struggles against large rocks and boulders smack in the center of its path, holding on strong against its viscious wrath.  Then, as you raise your gaze, your eyes jump from dot to dot, covering the rooftops of the many houses scattered about the hillside opposite to you. You follow the lines made by the folds turning in and around. You feel the might of mega tons of rock imposing their presence. Your very own motion and movement is so much defined and dictated by these mountains that free movement is alien here. You feel a slave to the constant twist and turns. Here where distances are not measured in kilometers or miles as much as it is in minutes and hours. Here where at night its hard to notice where the light bulb spotted mountainside ends and the starry sky starts.


This is what journey on the route north of Balakot is like. This is the Valley of Naran.

Courtesy: Fawad Nadir Osman

The jeep ride up has already provided enough adrenaline.  Yet you're still not quite there. On the way the twisting road showed you glimpses of what your destination, but never enough. The jeeps wont go any further so you jump off and feel the uneven ground under your feet again, and you don't hesitate to finish whats left of the climb. You emerge above the apparent tree line and you make it to the top of the mound you were climbing to behold a sight to leave your already panting self - breathless. Fields of contoured grass stretch out before you so surprisingly  at 10,000 feet above sea level. You start breathing again, but you make sure you aren't too loud. Even though there is no person as such to disturb here, its the sublime silence that you feel is sacred enough to respect. 
Many kilometeres away into Kashmir, there was a wise man wandering the mountains in search for similar solace. He climbed up to a similar mountain top, with green fields and wild horses. With such large forms of mountains around you, man himself feels insignificant. Far down below you see the many tiny rooftops of small towns along the river. That man finds peace and embraces it.
He then came to a conscious decision to make this his place of meditation, so he sat there. Now as I walk a bit further ahead I see a small boulder firmly dug in on top of the mound. I make a conscious decision and I jump onto the rock. For the next few moments, I make this my spot to... to be simply left dumbfounded.
I am at Pai, a little higher than Siri and a jeep ride up from Shogran. The man was a Pir, a religious man, after whom now the mountain top is named after, Toli Pir, situated near the town of Rawalakot. I believe we both gave meaning to a space, our approach we took in doing so becomes its narratives and in all, with the least possible interference, we both created a work architecture.


From what I understand it does not take much to create architecture, in at least its most simplest form. It merely comes down to making the conscious decision of how you want to place yourself in the grand order of nature.