A lot about me..............

This page is going to be a collage of my life so far; with some bit of my aspirations, regrets and most of all the things that I value the most in my life.
I’m a 26 years old, a practicing architect working in Delhi from my own firm which completed its first year of existence couple of months back.
I was born and grew up in Delhi, although moved to Faridabad some years back (to which I still can't relate very much)
I'll say I’m pretty lucky to have a very decent upbringing with the right amount of freedom put into it. I think it would be fair to add that I was never a very brilliant student or anything like that. I would say I was average with a mind of my own but I was never held responsible for not being something that I was not. I had a very comfortable school, comfortable not just because it so close to the house, but there very friendly teachers (most of them) and supportive too, so overall it was a joyful experience rather then a painful one. I always enjoyed art; maybe because I inherited it from my grandfather who himself was an art teacher and somehow it skipped a generation and came to me. So selecting architecture after school was sort of a natural choice especially after a disastrous escapade through chemistry which actually made me steer away from opting engineering which also was something I would have loved to get into if it wasn’t for the damn chemistry (or my teacher).

Architecture was an alien subject for me; I had never read about or knew any architects in my life before I joined it, so it was almost like an adventure, especially when out of the entire science batch only two including me opted for it.
Even my parents had no clue what I was doing with my life, actually from that point onwards I was on my own, and soon I had a founding for my new occupation.

My college and my work were everything to me, fortunately without compromising on freedom, in fact I can bet if any other studies would give you that much freedom of thought, expression and medium. There were no rules to follow but to break.
It was a completely different environment, especially after a very normal household and a pretty normal school but somehow it all seemed interesting and challenging and I gave it all.
They were the most enjoyable 5 years of education. I did a lot of traveling during that time partly because our course required it and other then that I was fortunate enough to go for an exchange program to Greece with 3 of my most wonderful friends.
Though we were small close knit campus so everybody knew everybody by name, so there was hardly any short fall of friends but as always you do end up having an immediate circle of friends you are more close to.
As a matter of fact my performance in college was far better or as good as it gets if I compare it to my past, probably because I was in love with the subjects (again most of them).
Well all good times comes to end so did college but it was beginning of a new life, the real life may I call it, all the dream architecture part was over and it was time for stepping into the real world.

Exactly couple of days after my last day of college I got a job as a trainee architect, which required me to go to some villages in Bhuj. And of course I took it with couple of more of my classmates and I was off to Bhuj.
My time in Bhuj left a huge mark in the kind of experience and professional upbringing which ultimately sets your “rules of the game”. It was so unique and different from anything one can dream off may not be a fancy dream but real then any other thing. Imagine right after college, used to all the comforts, privileges and other frugal things that you take for granted, and suddenly you have to get accustomed to bare basics in life. I was there for a little more than six months working in the villages, staying there- sleeping under the sky at night watching the lovely stars in the sky that you don’t get to see in Delhi. No concept of bathroom leave alone running water, washing the damn clothes which sometimes one used to forgets for days leaving them dipped in the washing, only to find all the clothes turned into one monochrome color, it was so much fun managing those things because suddenly there was so much time on hand- no television, telephone, family; the entire routine was transformed.
Again it was an experience of the life time, everything there meant so much, and everything seemed so valuable. The kind of respect and acceptance that I got, attachment with village people can be so overwhelming. Also the kind of responsibility we had to take care of.
Coming back to Delhi was both a relief and distress, getting back to comforts but at the same time the physical distance also added to the distancing from old friends, “out of sight out of mind” do happens and I moved away from couple of my very close friends. During that same time I needed a break so badly that I quitted my job from an office which was and still is like a family to me, probably I got too comfortable there which scared me a bit; that I may not be able to work in a more pragmatic office scenario so I tried my stint at an product design office for a while but that didn’t ring any bells so I half heartedly joined a famous ( at least in architecture fraternity) architect’s office in Delhi, time passed and I just simply kept myself busy with work and literally closing myself off completely, but then got more involved in office work proactively got to handle more responsibilities and gradually found myself busy again with full steam.
During the same time I with my other college friends started doing some freelance work simultaneously with the offices that we were both working with laying the starting ground for our future office. That was the “BCUBE” time; our virtual office.
So eventually after working for 2-3 years with couple of offices over a wide variety of projects I along with 2 of my other college friends decided to start our own office in 2005. That was the beginning of “IE Design”. And the Life countinues..............................................................

My kind of music