RURALS ROCKED!!!

“We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.” -John Hope Franklin

Well, this is a blog dedicated to one of the best trips I've ever been on.... Rural study-B.Arch (I.D) IV sem, MEASI Academy of Architecture (feb 22nd-Mar 3rd, 2007).

There's just so much to see and so much to describe, I decided to make a new blog instead of mixing it up with the other stuff on my old blog.

So anyway, we had this rural study as the major design assignment for our fourth semester where we had to go and study a village and later propose a suitable building solution to fit the community's wants and needs. We chose a village near Tuticorin, called Sevathaiyapuram/Sebuthaiyapuram...home to one of our classmates, F***** (name not disclosed due to political issues worth Rs.15000 :P)...anyway when we landed there to discover the village a wee bit too big for us to handle (something we anticipated). Thus we set out exploring the surrounding areas for a good case study and stumbled upon two-Nattathi and Naduvaikuruchi.

...And thus our adventure in rural Tamil Nadu began, a very eventful one with expected turns and surprises alike, both within the village and outside. Inspite a lot of skepticism, Rural India had a lot to offer us after all and it was left to be seen what we could give in return - idealistic young architects(?)!


Once we landed there, we were met with the curious eyes and cheshire faces of the villagers to whom our appearances seemed very alien. Inspite of our efforts to look indigenous, we seemed to look like firangis (foreigners) of sorts... "neengu endhu naatu ley irundhu vandhirrukingu?" which translates "which country have you come from?". Yes not something we expected at the least especially since the rest of the country considers us Chennaiites to be extremely traditional! I'm still not sure what it was, the multiple piercings, the Westside kurtas, floppy hats, "Tamlish" dialect, digi cams, sketckbooks, measuring tapes or simply the boisterous, 'mental', 'spastic', wild behavior that made us look so extremely peculiar to the villager's eye! Where do we come from??? Well, MEASI!!! :D :D :D



Touchdown!-The Class-2005 B.Arch (I.D.) in the building!