[Reader-list] Jhoola Post No.5 - Design as Dreaming

[Avinash Kumar]

SARAI POST 5 : Design as Dreaming

One of the significant parts of the whole project
is the involvement of diverse participants, and
in line with that, this is the very interesting
and engaging contribution by Harpreet Padam. He
is head of the Design Team at Carbon in
Bangalore, and as you will discover while reading
further, and eye for fantasy and its close
relation to good design. I see his view of the
Jhoola as a vision for a system design, and it
starts to enter what we have outlined in our work
as the outermost periphery of design work – when
design intervention becomes design strategy. It
is also this aspect of the design process in such
developmental situations that ‘paralyse’
designers the most, since the stakes become much
higher…it is no longer a ‘more-fun’ ride for the
kid; its now “How is Design going to help these
people earn a livelihood?” That discussion can go
on, like it has been in our group without too
many clear solutions…and maybe that’s the way it
should be... Read on…

A LETTER FROM A FELLOW DESIGNER...
Dear Avinash, 
My idea and perception of a jhoola are solely
dependant on this instantaneous thought which I
hope shall run through me in the next half an
hour or so whilst I try and think about it. I
have just, for a little while, maybe not more
than a minute or maybe the time i printed it on
the printer, looked at the other document that
accompanied your email. I infer that since this
has to do with a jhoola that is one thing I must
keep in mind during all thought regarding an idea
or a perception, which kind of makes it the very
reason we're having this email conversation.

The jhoolewalas come next, since they are
bviously the caretakers, if not the translators
and introducers of this gravity defying, or maybe
gravity proving inanimate object. And then there
is what may come out of newer visions for these
objects and their companions.

Maybe the jhoolewalas are these playground guides
for the jhoolas, who actually happen to be
celestial godsent visitors from the NGOs of God,
sent to teach little children that you can swing
this way or that, but you cant get away from
earth, and that the jhoolas are speechless 
travellers who need to be shown all the amazing
little kids and their playgrounds (or maybe the
playground is created where the two of them meet)
. As in a business-like situation, the guide, the
jhoolewala gets his money and takes the celestial
traveller to another child. The jhoola then
learns from these numerous visits to numerous
children, maybe in the form it takes (scratches,
peeling paint, carved names, bottom polished
seats), or the sounds it makes over a period of
time, through the course of its travels, till one
day, after all the sightseeing childseeing), it
fractures itself, maybe is admitted into a
ironmongery, or maybe sent to an old age home, a
scrapyard where it goes back to its celestial
origins (whoever saw where the last bits of
jhoolas disappear).

So if the children are the cities, and the
jhoolas are the visitors, the tourism. which
would then be the playground,  is the very
interaction of the two and can take better form,
or evolve faster, or earn more revenue(enjoyment)
for the children, if the jhoolas become better
tourists. So what is a better tourist? Or which
tourists generate larger revenue?  Which city is
such that a tourist shall visit again?  Why do
tourists like certain places more than others, or
maybe certain tourists like certain places at
certain times more than others ?

So it all gets very interesting. Cities like
cleaner visitors, cities like interactive,
contributing visitors, cities like culture
carriers or culture infectors, culture viruses,
visitors who spread good word of the place to 
more like minded visitors ( OMP The Beach???) So
the jhoolas, just like tourists, would 'stand
out' from the locals (the small park swing/slide
or the tyre tube hung from a tree). And thats how
the city and its locals would identify them. So
then these locals and the visitors interact, and
learn (the jhoolas give info to the local
jhoolas, toys, slides etc...maybe of other
children theyve seen in other playgrounds, other
localities, and the locals become smarter and
then have global outlooks to life, a greater
sense of the world). I dont know how this would
happen, or rather, in what form.

And then the tourists like to sometimes break off
from the normal 'way' of sightseeing, and find
that broken trail that seems to lead to an
afternoon of discovery. So maybe the jhoolas
enter other facets of the child's life, his or
her home, his or her school, schoolbus, whatever
may be the child's realm otherwise not that of
the jhoola. Breakable jhoolas that give off
little parts to all children which they make take
elsewhere (this is probably like dignitaries
planting trees when they come visiting).

So why does a visitor come back to a city. As i
think, maybe sometimes because the visitor is
with someone 'new', and wants to brag and boast
of what he or she did 'last' time. So maybe,
since the jhoola came with Manohar, the
jhoolewala last time, this time he comes with
Vikas, another jhoolewala. And maybe that means
we could have a 
jhoola/jhoolewala 'exchange'. SO these jhoolas
are, maybe 20 in number, and then there are 20
jhoolewalas, and they all meet every morning, and
get jhoolas by chance, and 
not by choice. SO newer jhoolas go to newer
children with newer jhoolewalas, and maybe they
expand their areas more.

But what of the jhoolewala as the guide? Guides
are crooks, or so they seem, but they know the
city, so these Jhoolewalas maybe learn so much
about children over a period of time, that they
now can share (bragging knowledge 
of this monument and that) this information with
someone else. Could they be part time assistants
in kindergarten?


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