Friday 4 September 2009

My lesson on slate (Poem)

(Key words: Minimalist Architecture)

Learning on a slate may not be comprehensible today for the urbanite in a mass education system.


I learnt to write and read “letters and numbers” on a slate with chalk-pencil at primary school at my native village, in Marathi vernacular.

And, I must add, I also learnt “to make things” at home and at paddy and vegetable farms and indulged in many errands in life-sustaining skills, like any other village kids.

The only problem has been, then during British rule and now in the democratic India, the people’s skills and knowledge remain without official recognition.

How does the Taj Mahal relate to the slate made out of ordinary stone?


I learnt a most wonderful lesson early in my life.
It is that from time to time, each time, I wrote my lesson and my homework I wipe my slate clean to rewrite.

No attachment to – no identification with – no memorial out of ego with whatever work done. Each time wipe the ego. Each time internalise the lesson and learning. And make it a stepping stone, in success as well as in failures.

Taj Mahal, or pyramids, or Great Wall of China, or Berlin Wall… all shall perish sooner or later.
Even this blog – this writing – shall perish.
Yahoo already has scraped Yahoo-Briefcase service.
Google is about to remove Google-Pages.
More shall follow.

I don’t know what the western or westernized scholars and pundits have to say about “Minimalist Architecture”, either about building designing or web-designing. But who does talks the thought and walks the talk?

The twenty-first century continues to capitalize on the feudal monuments of the past. It glamorizes them – the wonders of the world – to keep centralized power in the hands of the few, which reaches the global level.
Democracy is but only a new bottle for the old wine of centralized feudal power.

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

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