All Are Architects

Honeybees and Hive

 ALL ARE ARCHITECTS: Honeybees are architects; Spiders are architects; Weaver-birds are architects; Beavers are architects; Ants are architects... 

All are architects, because at primary level architecture is Shelter; that matters! The Title 'Architect' is protected by law in some countries, and following them in the First World India. This is so because of ignorance about real life and real issues of people.

However, thankfully, the term “architecture” is not legal.

In India now there may be about 50,000, perhaps more, qualified architects. How many of them have taken legal title is doubtful. Imagine, 1200 million people have 50K architects! They will have no time to cope up the amount of work they should have had. 

Weaver Bird's two nests are never same

Spider's Site Selection

Yet there is monopoly of a few architects in the profession. Forty years ago, one architect, a foreigner of credibility, (I don't mention the name) exclaimed in Ahmadabad, "these mafia architects!"    

While “shelter”, howsoever may have stood the test of time, is considered “low” in esteem by civil society; “Architecture” is “high art” surrounded by mystery. In the present scenario, “architect” belongs to a “service class” – in Indic term, “Neo-Shudra” – in the created by Industrial Civilization, on the outskirts of Global village.   

Anthills

 Well, that was a case earlier too. Emperor Shah Jahan cut off the hand of the architect who created Taj Mahal! 

Heinrich Robert Zimmer, in his book on Indian art (Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization), quotes a story of the gods’ architect, Vishwakarma, who had built a palace of Indra, the king of gods. Indra brought him virtually to tears. So he approached Vishnu, and he took Vishvakarma to Shiva for recourse. Shiva, in a guise of an ascetic, gives Indra a vision to understand that his glory is short-lived like a millions Indra that have passed away before him. The mythical story imbibes aesthetics and ethics. 


MY HOUSE IN KONKAN REGION, WEST COAST, INDIA 

My mother was the owner - architect of this house. It was built by Community Participation, where carpenters, masons, adobe wall builders came from village and surrounding area. I was in teens then. I took by first lessons 'mud house building' here.My mother exercised her autonomy about planning, size, materials to be used, in consultation with all workers: it is in regional style. This house was built by self-help.

It is a mud house - mud floor, mud walls and mud plaster; local latarite stone facia for plinth, and pillars; timber for pillars, bamboo for roof scantling, wooden doors and windows; and country clay roofing tiles. 

I worked almost in all operations as a helper, from collecting stones, and from foundations to roofing, and later regularly attended to maintenance of mud floors, mud walls and roofing. This is a case study: All over India millions of people exercise self-help, autonomy, community participation, planning, maintenance and economy. 

In rural India children learn 'life-supporting-skills' at early formative age. May the elite scorn it as "child-labour", while pampering their urban rich brats by putting them in the best school in the city or a best in the country... What contribution the parents do other than spending money! Modern India has failed to create better model of education than  that has been existing in the past ten thousand years, in past six decades.

NOTE: 1. Images are by Remigius de Souza. 

2. More on TRIBAL SKILLS: Clay country roofing tiles 

3. Traditional Mud Floors Technology 

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Bee-Hive-Honey - Icon of Environment-Ecology-Energy

Apiary in Natural Habitat

Bee-Hive-Honey is an icon of Environment-Ecology-Energy, the Holy Trinity - EEE - in our times. Bees are where plants are where water is.
 

Bees gather honey and help pollination, to grow more food - grain-fruits. In search of flowers they scout hundreds of miles. Great Energy!

Bees build hive, beautiful work of architecture, of natural wax, to live in community, propagate and store honey, and help pollination in plants. Ecology Conservation!

Indeed you can collect honey without killing the Bees of the Hive! Honey goes to Dining table / sick bed! Brokers make money. Economy!

 21st century doesn’t even reach near 'Bee Hive Honey' icon of EEE, a truly relevant model of progress and sustainability that perceptible NATURE displays and offers to so-called intelligent-beings - Humans!.

 Note: The apiary, developed by social workers of an NGO, is in the forest near Lonavala, Maharshtra.
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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Remi’s Vernacular Tongue

Remi’s Vernacular Tongue

Remi’s one more blog: language is Marathi, or English, but different in Remi’s vernacular tongue.

In a family there may be 10, 5, 3 or 2 persons. Their accents and manners of talk may be, or seem to be, similar, but each one’s vernacular is independent. It’s like finger prints. It’s like out of countless leaves on a tree, each leaf has unique impression of veins on it.

That doesn’t happen with countless cars on a large parking lot though effort is made to bring variety by different colours and designs. It’s the same story with apartment blocks in cities.

But all the mud houses built in a village/s in vernacular style do not fail to enchant us by each one’s uniqueness and their variety.

That’s the fun in the natural variety.

How could the sixty years of wanderings fail to make impression on Remi’s vernacular tongue – words, meanings and sound?

A person who wanders whole his life moves on margin. But his wandering is not like a blinkered buggy horse. Or it’s not like a railway that runs on tracks. Or it’s not like aeroplanes that fly on a drawn line from one point to another. Or he has no obligation caste-religion-class.

His wandering is like honeybee’s dancing journey; her hive too moves with her. His wanderings are like an aborigine moving happily at will in the wilderness.

His wandering that started at the foothill of Western Ghats is yet to fulfil, if alive, in reaching homeland – Gondwana.
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Remigius de Souza
21.06.2008
LINK (Remichi Marathi Boli)


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.