The AOA/ Hogwarts Story.

The year was 2004, when social networking was unheard of, and email was in, and I was a little too old to be hopefully waiting outside my house, waiting for my Hogwarts acceptance letter. A good five years older; that too. in the middle of the night. Every day. like a recurring nightmare, or a beautiful dream. The letter never came, and only phone bills did. As I grew older, so did my obsession with all things Harry Potter. I saw less of this literal word, and more of the literary one. Probably why I came up with a list, of why AOA is exactly like Hogwarts, and still not the same.
1.Because AOA does actually have 7 floors, one corresponding to each floor at Hogwarts.

 2.Because even though we didn’t have an escaped murderer running about school in third year, our work was out to murder us, in our beds, and on our sheets. We don’t need no divination to see our Grims, yo. 

3.Because we can feel the dementors hovering about during third year, all of us.

 4.We don’t have just one Durmstrang, we have many. Full of knuckleheads and losers.

 5.Because they are unplottable, we are unreachable.

 6.We have a Yule Ball every year, it’s a different matter that it’s a tiny affair, and doesn’t involve ice sculptures, but still.

 7.Because both libraries have stern librarians.

 8.Because we have an out-of-bounds third floor corridor too. Not because of a three headed dog, but because of Virus.

 9.The food there is made underground, ours should be buried underground. :|

 10.Because six years in, I still don’t know all the secrets the college has to offer, with its secret passage way on the first floor, and the recently opened room right next to the lift.

 11.Maybe a set of brass scales are not the same as a set of triangular scales, but we get our own materials and equipment list in first year too!

 12.Our first years might not be sorted, but they are assorted. ;) Their Argus Filch is always in the background. Ours IS the background.

 13.Likewise, they can’t dissaparate outside of Hogwarts grounds. We don’t dare disperse.

 14.Be it History of Architecture, or History of Magic, The students just don’t listen.

 15.Because we all know a Cho Chang.

 16. Because we ALL had a Gilderoy Lockhart in second year. *wink wink*

 17.There’s no house Cup, there’s just a thousand tea cups.

 18. We didn’t have a Chamber of Secrets back in second year, we just drafted chamber pots, and urinals. 1
9. They might be protected by muggle-repelling charms, and complex defensive magic, we have the Siddhivinayak security.

 20.Because we all know a Hermione Granger, hysterical and hyperactive. Mine’s one of my best friends too.

 21. Because I had a minor fall out with my Ron Weasley in 4th year too. :O

 22. Because we never really had Dumbledore.

 23. Because most of us do take the train to station, and end up crossing the great lake, a.k.a Dadar Station during the rains!

 24. They fight Voldemort, we do NASA.

 25. They have a special Prefect’s bathroom; we have a special Staff bathroom, WITH a painting on the wall. :O

 26. Because I am sure somewhere, some LIK team actually has a detailed drafted map of the entire school with its many secrets, a la Marauder’s map.

 27. They have Owl post, we have AOAmail.

 28. The staffroom actually has a boggart in the cupboard.

 29. Because progress for the sake of progress, is an act of regress.

 30. They have Hogwarts: A history, we have our glossy green book. :P

 31. Because they have Transfiguration, we have TOS. Subjects dreaded by one, and many. Both subjects taught by women you don’t mess with, women who haven’t let their hair down. ;)

 32. Fourth year was the year we won our Triwizard Tournament, only here, there weren’t 3 participating schools, there were 80. And yeah, no one died while competing, at least not physically. ;)

 33. They have Hogsmeade, we have Home Deli, a tradition you enter after reaching the senior years.

 34. Whomping Willow. Banyan tree. Potato. Potaeto.

 35. Because, fifth year, we saw a different Dolores Umbridge, a diminutive woman, who would smile sweetly, as she plunged her sweet claws into our backs, riiight? Hem Hem.

 36. Because technically, The Slug Club started in my sixth year in school. * Winks at all the slug club members!*

 37. Because I just might not be present for my seventh year in too.

 I think that’s it. I’ve got potions to go brew, and spells to practice. Sigh; and a real world to get back to. P.S: For all you non Harry potter fans, all I can say is: Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.

A Class, apart.

Great stories are made of great beginnings. They usually begin a long time ago, in a place far far away. This one was no different. It began a little less than five years ago, in one of the many city hamlets, the only one without a train station to its name.
Well maybe, it was slightly different.
Somewhere in the sunshine months of 2006, sixty aspiring architects met in a freshly whitewashed classroom, with low ceiling fans, and even lower standards, with great expectations and greater dreams. Dreams; to build bridges and museums, inserts and installations, and curvilinear walls.
We were young, and stupid, resolved to ultimately just make unresolved matchbox buildings.
But we tried our luck nevertheless.
Fifteen days, and a workshop later, we were ready to face the college, if not the world. Sadly, that didn’t last long, and we were broken down brick by brick, bats and closers, of queens and kings.
The five years hence might have been a rollercoaster ride, with a millions ups and downs, but I am sure none of us could ever have thought of better company, to smuggle glasses of bhang in the Varanasi Ghats, or to break into a cemetery in Hampi, to travel in tam tams, and eat tadgolas in Palghar, or dance in the rains in Matheran, to stand guard in the seedier by lanes of Delhi, to wolf whistle with the Chandigarh boys, or to dream collectively about a missed trip to Rajasthan.
We did everything, make up pretentious cubes that defined us, interpreted songs that probably didn’t have any meaning in the first place, and designed inserts in the zoo, when all that the animals needed was to be set free.
We designed lean to roofs and pitched roofs in the span of one night, and pitched advertisements for hybrid products in pairs to lean on. We cut soap, wood and our hands, and made thermacol versions of windows that would never be used. We measure drew temples, and homes, and a million other things, in times when all what we needed was to measure draw our own lives. We made pairs, and broke them, gossiped and bitched behind closed doors and closed ears. We self taught ourselves the staircase, and drafted each truss at least twice. We glass traced in bulk without getting caught and created auditoriums out of thin air, or our email inboxes. ;)
We created services portfolios overnight, and made concept models in the car.we wrote in CAPS on tracings, with an aim to fill them up, and sometimes we scrawled on a single page in TOS class, while the notebook was forgotten back home.
We forged and gorged, signed and dined as a class, and paid the price, for both. we compared results and designs, We designed for villages that were happy with the way they were, and got a free TV show out of a site visit, we danced and sang our way through fourth year, and ended those memorable nine months from June to January with a maternity hospital. We spent an entire day in the hot sun as punishment, drinking coffee and tea, secretly happy that classes were cancelled for the day, and spent hours in lectures, staring blankly at the blackboard, trying to figure out what the BM diagram actually meant. we photocopied entire notebooks a week before exams, doodles and all, and memorized answers to problems, we sincerely secret Santa-ed every December, and religiously dressed in red, whites and greens.
We trudged through the fifth, battling every riiiight with a wrong, and every fight with a song. And then it was done, the theses were shut, and the folios were folded.
A class that was a class apart, we say civilizations come and go, both, in our history lessons and otherwise. We made them cry, we made them moan. And more than once, we even made them leave. But newer ones came, and “history” repeated itself.
The last five years may seem like a blur, an amalgamation of submissions and juries, but over these years, we have grown, and we have evolved. We came, we saw and finally, after half a decade of torture, we conquered. The academy might not have taught me what architecture is, and I am not even sure whether ill ever know, but it taught me what friendship is, and for that, I thank you. We are the best, from the rest.

For the last five years well spent, class of ’11, this one’s for you.

Arghitect!

There was a boy in Bombay,
An aspiring architect was he,
To all you architects I say,
He was just like you and me.

Plans he had to build theatres,
Museums, walkways and malls,
With solitude points and extrusions,
And lovely intersecting walls.

He said to himself one day,
“This is all very easy!”
T’was about cool concepts after all,
Though some of it seemed quite cheesy.

But all was not well in our hero’s life,
Cause all good things come to an end,
What Architect boy didn’t know was,
T’were pesky Profs at every bend.

“”My subject’s more important”,
Spat each one higher and higher,
And our poor architect boy,
was caught in the crossfire.

There was design, and construction,
And drawings in perspective,
And history of architecture,
Of 1000 years before you lived.

The drawings came next,
And that was no child’s play,
He groaned, he moaned,
He hunched over his board all day!

He juggled his work like a circus freak,
But the work just bundled up more,
Wasn’t this supposed to be easy?
Thought he, as simple as 2+2=4.

Poof went all his plans next,
Of structures and forms,
Crushed, he finally decided to,
Build according to typical norms.

This story might seem familiar
I’ll be surprised if it wont be,
Cause this is the story of every architect
Us, you, them and me.