The Walk

Today I had gone to Core House, which is Professor Sunil Handa's office. it is a seven storey building in gray with dark glasses. we had gone there for our last session of LEM over there. While returning back I thought why not take a walk back to college. I had walked back half the distance two-three times before so thought I would do this as well. Ofcourse i had no idea how much time it would take but I was in no hurry to get back to campus! I guessed it would take half an hour or so.

On leaving the compund, I turned to left and walked down the road. A nice small clean road. At its perpendicular road I turned to right. There I observed one strucure which was constructed very differently. I guess it must be a Vimal Patel structure, as it was in concrete with the curves. It was done very beautifully. Cars were parked infornt of the structure. I could not find out what it was used for, just by observing! Another lane another building. This too had very different structure and was colourful as well. this was when i started comparing buldings in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. In Ahmedabad the buildings are very colorful and also the shapes of the structures are very different, which is not the case in Mumbai. Then I realised that even in Surat, the buildings were very colourful and and of different shapes. So what is that which makes the architecture of a region fundamentally different from that in another state? Is it due to the culture of the people? Is Mumbai more business-minded than Ahmedabad or Surat? Do people in Surat enjoy having pleasure with business? I will have to study the cultures more closely to be able to comment on it. Perhaps it is the state culture.

On the way there were earthern ware vendors with beautiful diyas and pots. Had they come only for Diwali or are they here always? I think I have seen them before as well, so they are here permanantly. So many buyers were flocking there to check out the diyas and buy them. Then there were so many common place shops, like kirana stores with notices like 'Goods once sold will not be taken back'. The store owner looked unfazed whether his store would survive or not, while we at our B-school spend hours discussing and preparing reports on modern retail gobbling up kirana stores. Do we really understand the ground reality? Are we relying too much on theories rather than checking the reality?

Well I started writing this post a long ago, but finished it in bits and pieces. I dont remember much of the rest of the walk, however it was few of the pleasantest moments I had. I was alone to reflect on things and observe things. I could enjoy the common life which people live outside our hallowed campus walls. Well such is the human nature, one loves and wants what one does not have and once we have it, we want some other thing. And life goes on!