Riya's Riyaaz

To appreciate the good, you must witness the bad - Riya Parekh You might search on the internet 'must watch coming of age movies' and your feed will be flooded with suitable searches. I will not get into describing the narratives of each of the movies mentioned below. Unlike many websites, blogs, pages, etc, I will not give a detailed review of these movies. For, I believe, one must watch a movie, to really enjoy it.  In obvious ways this is my archive, that I can add to overtime and re-visit in future to freshen my memory. I have been a movie nerd for a long time now. This passion began with attending the film club at SEA every Friday. Unlike most of my friends, I have not grown up watching Bollywood movies and I take pride in saying that I have been successful in filtering the good ones out of the lot. By no means am I cynical towards the Hindi cinema, since I know they have produced some gems, that for many reasons have been behind the clouds. Anyway, that is a topic

In these trying times, I wish we have the strength to be only human.  -Riya Parekh

Last year, in April, we began discussing research ideas and alternatives for our thesis dissertation with Prasad. Individually we listed our interests and as a class through discussions and arguments the ideas were sharpened. The process to be followed over the next 6 months was categorical and simple. Needless to say executing it was a complex and exhaustive task. Over the summer we would work on the What, Why, Where and How of our research topic. Notes of the various ideas discussed in class Architecture of Watching - The inquiry towards my research stemmed from a personal experience. We know that watching is a common act. We probably do not pay heed to this subject. Although it did intrigue me, to find whether architectural built form is connected to the subject. How does watching affect human behavior and architecture promote such watching conditions? Following is an excerpt from my research book - "When a person steps out of their house, their movement is seen b

Dad was keen on not laying around the house in the Diwali vacation last year. He spent months (some midnight's too), planning the trip to Tamil Nadu, 2018. We had 5 destinations on our list; starting from the bottom i.e. Kanyakumari and traversing along the coast, we would halt at Madurai, Tiruchirappalli, Pondicherry up to Chennai. We chose train journey over an air ticket to witness the stories of the beautiful greenery of South India. We were not disappointed. Every now and then I would leave my seat to stand near the train door to breathe the fresh air and try to absorb the myriad of colors nature had to offer. The train was an hour late which made us get down at every station to check if we reached (since small town railways stations lack name plates). We were unprepared for the destination, surprisingly it did not have a physical platform at all! It had a small cabin with its name; Nagercoil Town', facing the road ahead rather than the station. Kanyakumari was half hour