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.