Painted trucks, Ganeshas on dashboards and disco rickshaws only skim the surface of the Indian public’s collective imagination.
We’ve all fetishised, through our more ‘educated’ and Westernised lenses, about the ‘kitschiness’ of these gestures and objects — but if we look closer, the themes unify a large part of the country’s unspoken rules around object creation and design. Decoration becomes the only means for the maker to express himself, a trademark that sets him apart within a design and object culture that has largely been functioning anonymously — for who knows who designed the lota or the tiffin box or the jhadoo?
Design in the West continues to propagate the ideologies of the German Bauhaus school that called for an integrated approach where form follows function and eliminates unnecessary features within the object. Decoration is therefore a problematic area, as it seemingly serves no functional purpose.
As a design studio, you can’t help but embrace form following function — which is of course what we did when starting out and launching our brand Tiipoi. But working in India, in the middle of all the ‘apparent’ chaos, informal setups and a pretty laid-back attitude to safety and life in general, opened our eyes to other ways whereby an object could take shape. And the closer we looked, the more we saw it — decoration is everywhere.
But what is its purpose in a country of a billion-something people — where daily life continues, unfazed by a lack of resources, infrastructure and basic amenities. This is the context of India, and the landscape within which design has had to function; the brief is based on a totally different set of requirements — spirituality, home-cooked food or beauty in the smallest of things, to name a few. Intangible and invisible, but nonetheless omnipresent, the emotional quotient is high, and lends itself as the inertia that people rely on consistently to both survive and live well.
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Denne historien er fra May 2017-utgaven av Verve.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Making Amends
This generation’s penchant for thoughtless consumption gets Madhu Jain roiled up, and she wonders if nature is getting its own back for our missteps…
Diamonds With Provenance
In keeping with the company’s commitment to environmental and social responsibility, Anisa Kamadoli Costa, chief sustainability officer at Tiffany & Co. and chairman and president at The Tiffany & Co. Foundation, enlightens Shirin Mehta on the efforts that make the jewellery giant an industry leader in transparency
SARTORIAL ECONOMICS
Sisters Tashi and Tara Mitra demonstrate to Akanksha Pandey how deviating from the mainstream can bend the way we think, live and dress
NOTES TO SELF
An anthropomorphized tiger’s perspective, a viscerally worded futuristic interpretation of loss, a critique of performative activism, a meta reflection on the earth’s crises. Told through different lenses, Janaki Lenin, Indrapramit Das, Keshava Guha and Roshan Ali’s stories — written exclusively for Verve — attempt to make sense of the fraught reality that we exist in today
The Eternal Optimist
As Generation X and xennials grapple with fully transitioning to conscious living, young millennials and Generation Z are leading the charge to reverse human-caused environmental damage. Sahar Mansoor, founder and CEO of the Bengaluru-based zero-waste social enterprise Bare Necessities, has a simple overarching philosophy: consume less and stay positive. Verve gets deeper into the mindset of the action-oriented earth advocate
Redemption SONGS
Indian music festivals have been demonstrating a refreshing sense of responsibility in terms of their ecological impact. Interacting with stakeholders who strive to make these large-scale events greener, Akhil Sood investigates the reasons behind the improved attitudes of audiences and the increase in corporate support.
earth hour
Crafted using nature’s elements, these dials draw inspiration from the many heterogeneous materials and hues around us.Verve turns its lens onto a mesmerising few
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Children are holding adults accountable for both the grim future they are facing and the toll this is taking on their mental health. Madhumita Bhattacharyya initiates conversations with families of young climate activists and observes the extent to which parenting has changed in the face of catastrophe
NATURAL JUSTICE
Most of us are only just waking up to the urgency of climatic action. When the stakes are so high, what can individual action solve? Mridula Mary Paul, an environmental policy expert, is proof of the tenacity needed to effect systemic change. It’s not glamorous, and the rewards are few and far between, but that doesn’t stop her from aiming big, finds Anandita Bhalerao
Along For The Ride
Navigating Indian streets as a woman is hard enough. But what is it like while riding a bicycle? Bengaluru-based Shreya Dasgupta, a regular cyclist, speaks to five urban women about the pros and cons of this increasingly popular means of transport.
