My experimentation with painting was a result of a conversation I had with one of my professors from college. I’m teaching Interior Design (among other subjects) in my own college after completing my B.Arch. and he along with two of my batchmates are co-faculty for this studio.

I don’t recollect the entire conversation but Kaushik was talking about how we(Bombayites/maybe generalizable to Indians) stand much closer to each other(as opposed to say Europeans where ‘SPACE’ is just space)

Our idea of personal space is that much lesser probably since we never have the luxury of leaving a good foot distance between us and some stranger(who might even be incredibly sweaty) whether it is on the roads or in some mode of public transport. It probably never even crossed our minds to imagine ourselves inscribed within a circle of ‘x’ radius designating ‘our space’. Why think about something that we can’t implement?

It is a simple matter of mind boggling density really.

Per ha population or some such jargon to phrase our living conditions clinically so that we don’t end up cringing all the time.

I actually began observing body language a little more closely post this conversation.

I was working in the design cell of college on the ‘Dharavi redevelopment project’ and we usually had foreign students who had an interest in Dharavi or had their thesis located there strolling in and out.

And I would always remember Kaushik while interacting with them. They would stand about 60, almost 75 cms, away from me and I would be straining to hear and interpret what they were saying since most of them were quite soft spoken.But I couldn’t move closer since I felt this strange pressure to not violate their space, something I don’t feel with people from my city(also with the latter I rarely have the choice).

In contrast, I noted the groups of students sprawled all over college and saw that they were almost in a huddle even if there was a considerable amount of space!

My mind has been on this for some time and I recently made a series of 3 painting of my house with these thoughts floating in my brain. (I have been trying to create a series of works on my house and after my article the ‘Changing house’ this was the second idea I worked on.)

The terrible yellow blotches are the pieces of furniture in my house.

When we talk of the city of Mumbai we talk about space/lack of space, maddening densities and how the government is not doing anything about this. About how there are so many people migrating into the city to try to change their fortunes here that they make do with living crammed up into tiny ant hole spaces( where there are often fourteen people sharing one room).

I was thinking about this and I wondered what would happen to my house(a converted 1 BHK house) if it was to be given to the city to aid in solving a micro-minuscule portion of the rent problems.

It wouldn’t an iota of difference but space is ‘SPACE’ here and it made sense to me to paint the whole section in a wash of red since it was more likely that my house would be flooded with people.

People as liquid matter maybe. Blending into one viscous entity that would take over my whole house and maybe exist even in the crevices in the masonry.

I think the perfect way to start without actually starting, since my head is not really working today, would be to simply post something I had written for my college annual magazine-Reflections (2008-2009)

Changing house

Even before I grappled with the term ‘house’ and its various connotations and interpretations I saw my own firstly as a 400 sq.ft (only) area space and then as a stub-flat. The all important carpet area factor pops up in all conversations involving houses/flats after all and my parents are no exception. What I understood, from the discussions/lamentations my parents usually had about our house, was how it had been part of a much larger flat (610 sq.ft) as initially proposed by the builder.

Version 0.0- What my house should have been- ‘BUILDER’S PROPOSITION’

Due to financial constrains, we purchased only part of this flat and what was to be the living room was given off to someone else to run a typing institute. Which meant that my house was a stub. A part of it had been chopped off and given to someone else for an altogether different purpose.

I find it quite interesting that my parents could purchase only a part of a house. This allows me to imagine my house as a system of parts rather than a given complete-shell designed by someone else, which I may inhabit, but can only ‘decorate’.

Much like a machine, my house can then be re-organized within the limitations of the components and with time my house could change by using operations of addition, subtraction, etc. Also, this stub-machine-house could be upgraded with a version 0.something or other so that it would never be obsolete and would keep up with the myriad needs of its inhabitants.

My house has gone through several changes since the initial buying stage, some minor, some not so minor and here I view all these with this machine like imagination of my habitat.

Version 0.1- What ended up as our house- MAKING OF THE STUB

The cauterization at the moment of purchase left us with a house that had only a bedroom, a kitchen and a large passage. The need for another space which would serve as our living room meant we had to rework the allotted functional spaces to make room for one more room. The kitchen had no choice but to give in to our demands.

Version 0.2- What we made of our house

This lead to version 0.2 of my house. We now had a living room where our bedroom used to be, a bedroom where our kitchen was and a kitchen that shared space with the passage.

The house can be altered by means of reworking its internal organization, where spaces are simply renamed and hence reinvented.

The floods that devastated Mumbai in July 2005 became another reason for wanting to re-imagine my house. My mother who was already afraid of water had her paranoia taken to new heights with water entering our ground floor flat and destroying most of our things. Suddenly the perceived advantage of being on the ground floor floundered in the 3 feet of drain water and had my mom wishing for proximity to the skies.

What if my house could lift itself off the ground? What if the addition of parts meant something exterior? Where earlier the alterations/additions/ reshufflings were of the insides of the machine, what if the other type of change possible was external, something that would alter the entire relation of my house with the outside? And would at the same time manage to keep it dry.

The parts which could be added to the house need not be pre-existing parts and could be something that the design had made allowances for while keeping in mind possible future adaptations.

Version 0.?-New imaginations of my house- Stilted house for my mother

The fact remains that beyond a point I can’t change much in my house other than moving around furniture once in a while. Therefore, unlike the house of my imagination, the real one will be outdated soon and will have my family looking for a new place elsewhere. One which may or may not fulfill our ever growing desires.

But it probably won’t be a stub house and to my mind not as interesting either.