My Journey
I have been thinking to start my blog for a while. A blog of W W Sawer, a Mathematics teacher who is no more, inspired me. I come from a small town. I got excited with cartooning and tried to learn cartooning through a postal course, way back in sixties along with a friend. We both learnt a little bit of cartooning. Soon we were able to publish cartoons in telugu magazines with pen names. This and our further adventures in Painting, Sculpture and writing Stories led me to join NID(National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad)’s first batch of product designers after my Degree in mechanical engineering. It was an unusual post graduate diploma of three and half years I joined IDC(Industrial Design Centre). Since 1970 I have been teaching Design at IDC, IIT Bombay.
Prof.Kumar Vyas at NID and prof.Sudhakar Nadkarni at IDC had their role in my long exciting career.
My brief but significant interactions with Charles Eames at NID,Sugiura Kohai at IDC and J.Krisnamurthy in Bombay as well as a course done under Donald Schön and Jeanne Bamburger at MIT in 1980 sharpened my independent thinking. My involvement in rural development through FREA( Front for Rapid Advancement), an NGO formed by IITians, brought new insights. My engagement with Bamboo craft for more than a decade and travel to the remote parts of India including North East gave me a new identity. Bambu Studio at IDC took shape. Name ‘Bambu’ comes out of original Indian name ‘Mumbu’. for ‘Bamboo’.
A new base at Kerala through friends at Uravu, the Bamboo organization is shaping up! I started seeing the inherent links of Craft, Creativity and Post Modernism.This has taken an elective form popular among Mdes and Phd students from other departments. Work at Craft Development Institute at Srinagar, Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and Exposure to creative friends in and around Shantiniketan brought new understanding of Design and Life. My explorations in Creativity with children and teachers got strengthened through Pomagranate workshop, Art First, Orchid International School at Nasik and ‘School without walls’ at Kudal. Few phd-guiding attempts not only brought academic precision to Experiential learning but started giving new connections to ‘Design centered school education’. Fundamental questions like, ‘what is learning?’ and new frame work for learning like ‘Teaching Learning Platforms’ have become new exciting engagements for me. The enormous access to information through internet is mind blowing! Often I end up thinking. ‘Oh, God! You need another life!’ I want to share this excitement of Past, Present and possible Future through my Blog! But it also brings up the inevitable spiritual dimension the ‘silence of thought’. It is like ‘Infinity getting into denominator, unable to contain itself and becoming Zero! That is when you appreciate the ‘Beauty of Death the ultimate Silence!’