First time i maarowed night!

At the very outset i would like to clear what maarowed night means. It is a phrase construed by generations of architects, showing a rich blend of the english and hindi language, like the blend of night and day in an architect's life. Maarna in hindi means to kill and thus the phrase pin points to the very existence of an architect's life: working through the night.

It might be a new thing for many of you out there. Maybe you feel that we architects or rather to be precise students of architecture (now refered to as "stew f arch") dont do things on time and therefore sit through the night to complete the work. But the reality is in as much darkness as is needed for a perfect G.T., which i never did. Yes, isnt it a shocker? I never marowed gt! G.T. means the glass technique which is followed religiously by all the architecture as well as engineering students. It is when you religiously copy someone else's sheet to the exact detail and still have the confidence to present your work next day, swearing on its originality. Not that i was one of the sincere lot, I never maarowed gt for entirely different reasons. I thought to much of myself.

Our batch of college is one of the unique batches to have had hand drafting as well as computer drafting in our curriculum. The system bought a lot of changes in a five years time. Even our thought process changed as plans of drafting the whole thesis panels getting inspired from the likes of annie and other movies which stumble upon the interesting life of an architect; to plans of using photoshop and coreldraw, revit and max and what not! The people who used to loathe computer drafting, saying that it killed creativity finally had to bow down to the coming technology as it almost swept over our thoughts. Finally it was only the war of softwares and how good it looks, then how it really feels and functions. Who the heck bothered about such details anyway?! Well, I did!

It was important to give you the background of the general situation which you might have to corelate in many of my coming topics. Anyway now a brief spot light on my life. I was staying with my granny now. Away from family and bhusawal which was my new home after dad got posted there from secunderabad(which is where i did my 12th). My classmates i relate to as butterflies, fluttering from one piece of peculiar information to another were always interested in knowing where i belonged now. Their parents didnt move that much. They were in the same place for most of their lives. The few who did tell me proudly of how much they had seen around had happily touched the corners of maharastra and considered it as the end of india. After that was the wild country, full of demons spatting paan, giving wicked or sly smiles and being over smart. (Though i didnt eat paan, i was also considered one of them!) They were all commonly christened northerners and kept to that. Such kinds were to be ignored and kinds like me who had mysteriously landed in a dream like mumbai were to be ridiculed or laughed at for our accent(which was quite normal by the way, somehow normal meant something else to them!) In my case, i was a maharastrian, who lived all over india except maharastra and didnt know his accent of marathi right as most of them knew around. The other thing which really bit into them was the uncanny habit of me calling everyone around "bhaiya" which was a bigger insult then any curse given to anyone closely related to their mother or sisters. For most proud maharastrians, marathi is their mother and sister and the whole family. They hold on to their roots tight, many a times denying even the existence of some other culture of tradition to exist, if it threatens their own in anyway. This somewhere is a very endearing quality but i feel not so good when india is open to the 21st global city environment. My granny always says "zaat nahi zaat" which means that "no matter how much you change the caste never leaves its impact on you" I had protested against this a long time back but then soon learnt the truth in it. Anyway that is the discussion on some other day story. we have already sub lined our topic! Man our mind flows like the wind!

So coming back to the first time i did maarow night. We were given assignments which had to be completed in a certain period of time. A design problem would go on for months with one studio every week in which the teacher scrutinized our design or rather the work of ours or days together in a few minutes time. If you were later on the role call you seldom got a chance to explain your design as the teacher would be either to pissed off with everyone else work or after seeing so many designs of your friends being had, you would lose the very will to show or tell anything in your design. The month long ordeal would end with a pre final and a final submission. The prefinal would have the teachers grimacing over our designs, seldom changing them completely so that the person would feel completely lost and depressed and scared of how one would complete their design. In my case i took it as a chalange. The strange part was that the teachers never commented on your predesign. When you showed your progress every week in planning, structuring and progressing they would just nod and let it pass. You might even get an 8 sometimes so that you could puff up and throw your weight around for sometime. It was the prefinal when the lightening struck.

So this was the situation, I had a whole design to complete, and only one night to do so. the whole week after the prefinal had gone into making the changes in the design and as in most of the times, redesigning the whole thing. It all came down to a few hours of struggle. Every minute would make a difference tonight.

I had planned out that i would make 4 sheets full of everything i could put into. Our teachers were smart enough not to accept crap and would make a very big deal if we put anything that would show the level to which our thought process might fall. Everyone tried their best to impress the teachers with good words. The problem was as most of them were struggling with english, i was struggling with marathi!

It was 6 when i started working. I planned that i would keep everything ready by 10 and have a good nights sleep after that. So much for planning! The thing about planning is that sometimes you plan things out and they go vaguely according to it. Then when you later look back you realize that it would never work out anyway! It was impossible! But for me that word didnt exist then. I thought everything was possible. I am the same now and still believe in that, the only difference being that i make plans which are possible now.

I needed music desperately to stay awake. I am a very sleepy fellow that way. At the least sign of work or efforts i would rather go to bed and sleep and let god look into it. In architecture i realized that

himmate mard, toh madat de khuda!

music was my soul. It was set according to my mood. That night it was the radio that was to set the mood. The FM had newly started then and was quite a hep thing. Everyone who was anyone listened to it and specially for people like me it was a dream come true! Usually their used to be English songs at night. I owe the radio for making me listen to many of my favorites which i cherish till today. Their was a competition that night for all the love birds around. You had to give a message to someone you loved through radio, the only thing was that it should be someone you havent told that you love them already! Do those people never think of the consequences? What if that person was seeing someone? What if they said no on your face? What if they hated you? though the first and second possibilty would happen seldom the third one is the one which is most interested and am waiting till day to hear! Perhaps people get very sweet on the radio and never tell what they actually feel!

Picture this, Mr X loves Ms. Y very much from the past 3 years. He hasnt made the guts to go and talk to her and tell her about his feelings. They work in the same firm, and seldom speak to each other. But Mr. X has been looking out for a chance to say the 3 magic words which he cant say on her face or he might get the four letter word so well versed with the present generation. Then one desperate night Mr. X hears this rj on radio and plans, why not propose on radio? Wont that be romantic? So he goes to his wits end and proposes to her by calling her in the middle of the night when she is probably sound asleep in her sweethearts arms. Night 1 o'clock is just not the right time to propose to a girl you dont know anything about. Its not the right time, not the right place and definitely not the right girl! Imagine a gal saying yes to a guy after been woken up at the middle of the night? Its the most horrible scene one can ever imagine. Its like you are on your bed fast asleep, in your sweethearts embrace and suddenly someone put on the lights and you find yourself on stage in front of thousand audience thick crowd! how would that feel?!
Still to my wonder some girls said yes!

You probably noticed that it was 1 by now! which left me with only 5 hours more. The time had just flown by. Lost in the silly things people do in mumbai and the different variety of songs i had forgotton that i was supposed to be deep asleep by now! All the remarks of my parents came back to me. Early to bed and early to rise, started jabbing me and calling me to bed. Suddenly bed seemed like a beautiful piece of feather on which this little tom thumb had to sleep. I gazed dreamily at it for a while as it hypnotized me.

Then suddenly the thoughts of everybody else came back! How much had everyone else finished? Were they fast asleep already? Next one hour passed in calling up friends, and fueling the cooker with more pressure. After one hour of "Itna ho gaya?" the cooker was completely fueled and ready to burst on the paper. The drafting board was shifted to the living room, [M] tv was put on and work began to speed up again. finally it got over by 0530 as i lay back on my chair satisfied with the layout of the sheet and other minute details which had taken the final hour.

Their is a time when you are maarowfying night when your body starts aching and your mind is too heavy. Yours hands tremble and your body just wants to hit the bed and get rest. this is the time you need to work really hard. This is the test of your will, of your drive which is going to pull you through the night. Finally when you gape at the ceiling for a few minutes after a tiresome night having the last fading thought: "is this worth it?" You ponder on it for a few seconds, take a deep breath and get up. Take a cold water bath on your aching body and roll up your sheet and you sleeve saying

"hell yes!"