It is difficult enough to say goodbye to people. How does one keep a straight, solemn face and hug strangers? Promise to keep in touch through eternity, across distances too large for even technology to traverse? How does one fake heartbreaking friendship against years of mere nonchalant acquaintance? It is difficult as it is to say goodbye to people.
At least there is verbal communication – a distraction taking the focus away from the authenticity of the content.
But how do you say goodbye to a building? That too to a building that you have grown to genuinely love?
In the absence of expression, only sheer pain remains in a hollow heart.
I walk in on an early Sunday morning, lugging my instrument of choice – a Nikon. I reach as the sunken-eyed student drag themselves home after a long night in studio. I walk in before the squirrels have been perturbed, before the fallen plumeria petals have been crushed under listless sandals. The first rays of the sun have only just hit the immodest green, dewy lawns and I am determined to capture every angle of the building at every instant.
It is a losing battle.As my shutter becomes frantic, echoing my palpitating heartbeats at the futility of my attempt, I realize CEPT is mischievous that way. Behind the apparent simplicity, regularity and tailored frames, it defies the very essence of stillness, and thereby photography.
Every point behaves like a node. Every point in itself is in motion. A passageway to your left with an inviting red wall, a peek-a-boo Corbusierian door to your right, an array of steps ahead, series of raw concrete columns and beams defining passages everywhere, lines of the brick masonry converging at infinity... CEPT doesn’t let you stand, rest or stagnate even for the briefest second. If the architecture itself doesn’t intrigue you enough, the artwork left by generations of students on every perceivable surface does. Adverts that inspire you, art that mirrors you, graffiti that questions you and Dud Faces that stare at you with toadish eyes, making you self-conscious of your idle existence.
I stand in despair at the very centre of the ground, the sun beating down mercilessly on my face. “How do you say goodbye to buildings?” I ask again. CEPT surrounds me, engulfs me and smiles down at my naiveté. As the breeze picks up, I hear whispers in the wind, “You don’t”, they say, “You take us with you.”
I brave the blinding white sky and stay on. The air is still and stifling around the forbidden dome and only the audacious seven sisters break the silence in occasional bouts of enthused chattering. The brick paving beneath my feet get scorched beyond endurance. They start climbing up the walls of CEPT and settle in the rare, shady nooks, content on being bricks on the wall -- as long as the walls are that of CEPT.
My school changes color from dusty red to grey to black. The concrete frames, still warm from the relentless summer day shape the clearstory windows, ablaze now with light – eleven friendly beacons to sleepless architecture students all over. The sinuous curves of the North lawn greens give up on their perpetuity of contrast against the boxy reds of the buildings and decide on peaceful co-existence till dawn breaks. The campus heaves a sigh of relief.
It has been a long and exhausting day. While CEPT stays unwavering in its promise to produce brilliance till eternity, I bow out. I am an architecture student no more. As I walk home, ready to surrender to sleep, all I carry home of CEPT is the heady stain of crushed grass on my clothes and dust on my feet.
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