As much as we have not-so-great days and nights upon entering the discipline, Architecture does surely have its own share of pleasant times, however small, that echo down the memory lane. And of course, there are these “Architect things” that many of us personally relate to and cherish, be they from school or from the profession. Well, we cannot call our field to be a perfectly happy one, certainly not a vie en rose, but we take immense pleasure in doing our stuff that is just fun and rather humorous to us. Here is one such rare, happy day that fortunately befell us in the midst of a rather hectic week!
It is a cool, winter morning in the streets of Bangalore; the skies are a bit overcast, yet the rain hasn’t begun as yet. You get out of your Uber, taking your huge A1 size portfolio bag and the bunch of models that are due that day, crossing the road to the main entrance as the other engineering kids eye at all your baggage and the cardboard houses you spent your entire night making.
“…..and this is how you represent a recessed ceiling light…..” The Professor had already started class, but being the tolerant man he is, he allows you to get in although you are late by a few minutes. On goes the lecture about illumination for another hour, until the short break before the design studio.
We go into the studio, unpack all our sheets and models, and begin to leave for the 15 minutes of snacking and chit-chat about the hectic week that is.
Except, the moment the last few of us are about to leave, enters a huge, full-grown rhesus monkey from the window. Alas, a monkey! The group starts screaming and begins to run out of the studio, laughing, for it is certainly not something you happen upon every day!
A few start muttering about the previous day’s newsflash about capturing stray monkeys in our part of the city, but one of them decides to invade a design studio of all places? Fair enough! We start to peek in through the doorway, as the monkey makes its way through our tables, cautiously looking at the models that are lying around. We panic and begin calling our classmates and faculty, and one by one they return in a matter of a few minutes, the monkey all the while hopping from one desk to another.
And then a strange thing happens.
One certainly cannot talk about the aesthetic sense of beings other than humans, but this one goes on to pick parts of a few really good looking models and holds them by its elbow! Then begins the shrieking from our class; it is certainly not just shock, but of a bizarre excitement, mixed with laughter. The lecturers try calling the janitors and security for help, but before they could come, the monkey almost picks up four models and goes back to the window from where it came.
Dropping two on its way out, it proceeds to climb up the conduits on the wall to the roof, thanks to the studio on the topmost floor. A couple of guys then heroically run to the terrace to retrieve the models, but one cannot say if they are not damaged as much.
After the break gets over, the design professors enter the studio and begin to wonder about the sense of excitement on a submission day! We then narrate the whole story to them, a few of us exaggerating about the monkey damaging the models, so that we don’t have to make the submissions, but then, fortunately, it works!
After getting three more days to work on the submissions, thanks to the monkey-incident, we leave the studio a bit light-hearted than usual, that we laughed so much as a class after quite a long time.
The day comes to an end, and you stand with a friend to catch an Uber back home, now that you both live close. Not getting a cab home you decide to take an auto, as they are pretty frequent.
An auto guy stops by to pick you up. You and your friend both load all your bags, models and sheets onto the seat, almost filling all the space up, having second thoughts, as there is hardly room for one to sit. But before you could say a word, the auto guy, thinking you seated yourselves, starts the vehicle and down the road he goes! There flies all the work you put in day and night for a month, in the backseat of an auto that you don’t know.
And that’s too much to happen for one day!
Well, lucky us, we find another auto behind us, whose driver notices all this and offers to help us right away! This is not a bad day after all! We chase the first auto, laughing all the way at this unexpected turn of unusual, humorous events that filled the day. The first auto guy then realizes that there wasn’t anybody in the seat, and stops after driving a whole kilometer!
We find the guy, who apologizes for all this, saying that he didn’t feel quite well that day. We get back our stuff and head home. As much as we are on the verge of losing all our work at once, we equally have a good, fun-filled day, a rather infrequent occurrence.
It is true that days like these are what keep Student Architects sane and going. If not for the humor and the fun that comes with our field, we would not have an easy time surviving all that we usually endure! It is for us to cherish these and look back at them when older, that you remind yourself that you did more than just draft sheets and work day and night…
Not a classic day at school, but for sure one worth being an Undergrad Student Architect!
