Deepika Sharma wandered into architecture by chance.
Her father, a doctor, saw that she loved sketching and decided that architecture would be the
right career for her, not mathematics, which is what she thought she would graduate in.
With her husband Yogi, Deepika runs D plus Y, a mid-sized architecture firm doing several
interesting projects, big and small.
She has found the career of her choice and revels in it.
This is episode number 10 of My First Job, the podcast.
My name is Venu Gopal Nair.
I am the host of this podcast and CEO of Ideascape Communications, an advertising agency into
branding, creative and design.
So settle in, sit back and enjoy the conversation.
Deepika starts right away with telling us how she enjoys her work.
It's been wonderful.
It's been very fortunate to always have some more projects and we've been very fortunate.
It's been interesting.
Okay.
You never looked at it as a risk or is it that you both decided that you were qualified
and experienced enough to take the plunge?
Absolutely.
All the decisions, all the big decisions we've ever taken in our lives, starting from marriage
to having kids, we never gave too much thought.
I don't think that's how the world works.
We've always been like this, you know, just went like it and just did it.
You just have to believe in yourself.
It's a cliche, but it really works.
Yeah.
You just have to do it.
And unless you actually do it, it'll never happen.
So did you start off with a few projects and then decide to form the company or was it
the other way around?
Actually, Yogi was always a partner with another friend.
They were already operating like two different offices in the same form and he already had
some partners, right?
He already had clients.
When I quit my job, I had no intention of starting off with Yogi.
I thought I'd just do some practice independently or maybe work from home or take on one project
at a time.
I was just fed up of working in an office and I wanted to do something from now on.
And I told Yogi about this.
He was like, what's the point of running two offices from the same house?
Let's just get together and do this together.
So he left his partnership and he started off together.
He already had a few clients.
He just grew from there.
So now let's go back to, you know, into rewind mode.
And I think that you had decided to pursue a BSc in maths when your father stepped in
and then said, why don't you do something more professional as he saw it?
And because he thought you sketched well, he thought that architecture was a good fit.
My entire family from a more side is they have some 300 doctors, the biggest doctors
family in India.
They've been article about them.
And my dad's side also they're quite a few doctors, my parents were doctors.
All my childhood, my entire childhood, I thought I wanted to be a doctor.
That's all I knew.
I've never seen other people doing anything else.
Everyone I knew was a doctor.
All our neighbours were doctors.
Everybody was a doctor, all aunts, uncles, everyone was a doctor.
I thought I'll do it.
You do reach higher classes and you realise it's a lot of hard work.
I said, no, I'm not doing this.
I can't memorize names and I can't memorize stuff like this.
I'm really bad at mugging.
I can't do this.
But I'm doing it.
I'm doing it.
I'm really bad at mugging, I can't do this.
But I did take bio in 11th and 12th.
I started liking maths a lot.
I started doing well in maths.
I thought I'll first do maths.
Dad was like, really I'll tell you about the whole thing.
He thought I had to do something very professional and I had to get into a professional course.
CA, lawyer, doctor, engineer, architects.
I used to sketch a lot.
Okay, she likes sketching.
Maybe she can do something creative.
I saw this ad in the paper and it's like, what do you do as an architect?
That sounds interesting.
I went and wrote an aptitude test, got selected and always wanted to be an architect.
It was just an accident.
It was happening.
Thankfully, I liked it.
I enjoy it.
What are the things you sketched?
I was not a great artist or anything.
It's not like this.
I was really bad at it.
It's not like I was really talented.
I just like to sketch.
I never took any classes.
I was not doing anything great, but I was always sketching.
My dad was like, she likes sketching.
You joined the money.
So what is it like in those early years?
We were a small department in engineering college.
Only now they have a separate department.
Every batch was about 20 kids.
We had only 100 kids totally.
Everyone knew everyone.
everyone. It was great fun, really a lot of fun. It's a very interesting course, really good fun.
And you have a lot of friends going back to those days as well, right?
Everyone's in touch with all our classmates to get together often and we're still in touch.
The best friends are from those days. So do you remember any of the things
that you particularly liked about the course? See, the initial semesters, it's just the basic
design, right? So you do a lot of fun stuff like we used to throw, you know, you get this punching
machine and you get little dots of paper, throw them on a paper and do compositions and make things
with matchsticks and it was really creative and it was so much fun. It didn't feel like you were
studying. It was just being from school. You know how schools are, you could really slog in the last
four years and after that this was like a holiday. It's such a break. I don't know how it is now but
for us, especially the first semester was like a lot of fun. It was really good and slowly you get
start doing small projects and that creativity, you know, that comes in and it's really fun.
It's, I just loved it. That's what I said. I was fortunate that, you know, I just got into it and
I really liked it. Like my dad had thrown me into banking or investment. That would be miserable.
I'm so fortunate that I joined the course and the profession which I like. So you're saying the first
semester they didn't get into any of the principles or architecture. They essentially explored your
creativity. Theory of architecture, some maths, some English, very simple stuff. Okay, okay.
And the strategy for materials and construction that comes in a little later. But first semester was just very basic stuff.
I think it's a trick to get you interested. Yeah, it sort of prepared me. Then it was like I like
doing this so I'm willing to put up with all the other stuff that goes along with it. Yeah, we have
friends from engineering who joined civil or mech or whatever and they saw their friends doing this
stuff and they went and met the HOD and said we want to be architects. And they actually wrote that.
They came and joined our class. They did architecture. Okay. And then when do you actually get down to
doing projects? One of the biggest differences was that we never had computers to work on.
Everything was hand drawn, hand drafted. I feel that the sense of scale and proportion that gives you
it's missing when you do stuff on the computer because you know a line is a line and it could
be one meter, it could be 100 meters, right on a screen. So that sense of proportion and scale that
comes in when you do everything by hand because you have to convert on a scale and then you have
to scale it and draw every small line. That's missing now. It's so easy to do stuff on the computer.
Okay. It takes a little bit of time when they come for internship to get used to that scale in your head.
What does this mean? How much does it really feel like? How much is that space, that sense of 3D
that comes in? It takes them a little bit of time to realize that. You know the thing between
designing on a sheet of paper in 2D and then doing it in 3D, understanding space is a very
different dimension because you can create something perspective and all those things, but to
create something on a sheet of paper that will ultimately be built in the real world requires
an understanding of space and structure which we may not be able to begin with. There are two
types of people, right? There are some who are born with that, they're talented enough or they're
born with that sense of imagination and space. They can actually imagine the space without actually
doing a course in architecture for example and they come in and they just click on like yogis
like that. He could immediately get to it. For me, it took time. I didn't come from that background at all
and maybe I'm not as imaginative. I don't know but it took a little time for me to actually start
imagining the space completely. Maybe a semester, three semesters that's when I actually start
understanding buildings and space. It just takes practice. It grows when you actually start building
those lines which you've drawn on paper. After you graduate and you join somewhere or even during
internship, make some drawings and then you go to site and then you actually see those things come
up and it's so satisfying. That's actually when you really, really develop your sense of space and
that's when you can really imagine. Now when we draw something, we're immediately able to imagine
in our heads itself how the space will look. We draw a plan and we can walk through the building.
I feel the course basically prepares you for these kind of things so that your thoughts get
aligned to that line of thought. I'm not making sense but start thinking about space, start thinking
3D. More than that, I don't think the course is good for anything. It's just five years of foundation.
You're not fit to start working or start building anything when you graduate. You're not fit to be an
architect. It's still too late. It will take you a few more years to actually start building it.
But that course is important because otherwise you just fresh from school and you have no idea at all.
That just prepares you to start thinking like an architect. It prepares you to start understanding
those drawings and spaces and stuff. When it comes to the human anatomy, things like the eyes and
ears and nose and feet and all that become important. From an architectural perspective,
are there things that you need to look at? I mean there would be. I don't know which is why I'm asking.
Absolutely. Right from height of a table or a chair to pitch encounters to where the wash basin sits.
Everything, even the scale of the space is basically related to human scale. Everything is related to
human scale. We even taught in college who stuff like that. Periodic marketing. Everything is related to human scale.
Finally, it's humans who are going to use those spaces. How it relates to you. You can't do a house where your room is three
floors high. You can't have a 10 by 10 room which is a city P type. You can't live in that room.
There's this sense of scale. Everything is related to human scale. So at times, I'm sure you come
across people who may not have that sense of scale but believe in grandeur. So does it ever come to that?
It gets all kinds of clients. Grandeur doesn't get you to do things out of scale.
Basically, if somebody wants a really huge space and that sense of grandeur, then you need to have those kind of dimensions and space in terms of food also.
So your width and your length has to be so big to get that kind of height and then to create that kind of big space.
You can do it in a tiny little space and just increase the height and so be it. Done.
Clients do come with all kinds of ideas in their head. Some are good, some are not so good and then we're going to give it. That's our job.
So you finish your course at Manipal and then what happens? Then I go back to Delhi.
So I have done internship in one small tiny bomb. There was one draftsman there who became a good friend.
He was working in another company when I graduated. He said, why don't you come and see what these guys are doing and see if you like it.
I went there and I saw the kind of work they were doing at the principal. I said, sure, join and join.
I started working there and it was good. It was very, very good.
You remember some of the early assignments and what you dug into?
It was doing really big projects. I was working on a big complex which had commercial space,
it had a shopping center, the lower levels, double basement parking.
It was a huge complex and it had row houses but it didn't even start.
So I never saw it actually happen. By the time I left the job, it hadn't even started.
So I never went to site for that job. That one year I never visited any site. I was just in the office.
Good. That's a lot.
And then what is the next thing? So you've got a fairly good grounding of what it means to at least imagine large projects and what was involved in getting very successful.
There are so many parameters which go into planning. It's not just you can't just do whatever you like.
There's the client's pre-eve, there's the site, there's the dialogue. So many things are happening. You learn all that.
And then what is the part of a project that you are excited about doing?
There are parts of a project where some part of it is a job, it has to be done.
There are others which you say, wow, I could do this the whole day.
Yes. So the best part for any architect is the initial designing.
Any architect, that's their favorite part. Obviously, anybody can guess that.
So nothing like designing new building or especially buildings.
That's the best part. It gets you so excited and so exciting. Sometimes we don't want to leave office to do work.
Oh, it's late. Let's go.
And after that, even developing it, like once it's finalized, you start working on the details for it.
You develop it, you fine tune it. I love that part. I really love it.
So interesting work on the details.
Especially, like you said, there are bylaws and there are the space that you actually have.
So when you go to a space, when you're briefed on a particular building which has to come up,
you take a look at the space and based on the utility, do some designs begin to suggest themselves
or you let it marinate for a couple of days and then say, okay, let me do some rough concepts
before I begin to dig my teeth into it.
It works both ways. Some projects, when you look at the site itself and you instantly know what you want to do,
what will work, the site itself will inspire you.
And sometimes it's a very mechanical thing.
Like, you know, it's a small plot, you believe this much, guy wants to call a vastu,
kitchen has to come here and you have very little space to play around with and do something interesting.
Sometimes when you look at the site and you say, wow, this is what I'm going to do.
What's both ways?
What about these industrial architecture where you have to design manufacturing companies or factories,
at least the shell?
That's a different feel altogether.
Yeah, absolutely. That's all you're getting.
Okay, so you think about how that whole thing should be.
Very, very good at it.
So what is your strength to develop more expertise in over time?
I think I'm very thorough.
Okay.
I really like everything detailed and perfect at drawing space itself.
So from our office, no drawing leaves the office without me checking in.
Okay.
See, you might just draw a line, but finally it becomes a building and some weird wall will come up
and people decide and say, what is this? And they show us the drawing.
I feel very embarrassed.
Okay.
Don't let it happen at all.
I think my strength is that I'm able to do this.
A lot of architects hate doing this job.
We know every corner of our project.
We know every project we're doing.
We know every corner of that building.
That's the reason we don't want to make an effort to become big.
We don't join any clubs.
We don't try to increase our network.
We're happy we can do this because we're able to manage these projects.
Some of them are quite big, but we know every corner of every project.
I think that is us.
Okay.
I can certainly vouch for that detail orientation, Tipika, because I remember when you came to our
place and you took a look at the half-finished house and you asked us to move an entire door
by about six inches or one foot in the kitchen.
And your point was that if the door was too close to the wall, then all the fridge and everything
else would be protruding into that space, which we would never have thought of.
I mean, I think, and for us, it was an education that something as simple as moving a door
by a few inches or by a foot can make such a big difference too.
So everything, like you said, the placement of the switches, what works where.
So these are things that most people just think, okay, it's a, you know,
elevation inside this thing and it's done.
It's not like you said, it's a line, but that line will be translated into something major.
The layout, the toilet details, very, very important to detail it out.
Where each switch is, what it controls, what comes on your bedside.
Like you said, it's so important.
We know exactly what's happening in that project.
So this is getting refined as you work, which is the next place you joined?
Actually, I did a computer course while I was doing that first job.
Computers were still relatively new.
AutoCAD was a new thing.
I was very excited because Yogi had done a course and I mean, after he finished,
I went and joined the architect.
I said, I also want to learn AutoCAD.
And then I was so keen because I didn't have a computer at home.
It just felt so expensive.
I said, I'm going to join an office where I can work on a really quiet skill.
So you want to practice it.
And my first office, it was not possible.
I quit the job and joined another office.
They actually wanted an architect on the only one of the two computers that they had.
One was for admin work and one was for architecture.
And it was a slightly bigger office, better known.
They wanted somebody on the computer.
I worked there.
AutoCAD was here.
Okay.
And was that process different?
You found it very different from sketching by hand, obviously.
But what changed as far as you were concerned?
It still happens.
Sketching by hand happens even today.
Basic lines are always on paper.
Brain thinks better when it comes from the hand.
It just doesn't go on the screen directly.
A little bit has to be sketched.
Even there, a lot of basic design was done by hand.
And then it was put into the computer.
What was different was the way buildings were done altogether.
So it was from one architect to the next.
Their way of looking at things, their whole process of design itself.
That was a good experience.
Right.
So having been in architecture for so long, Deepika,
do you think that this is a profession where women get the credit they deserve?
Any profession, it is always tougher for women.
Any profession.
I don't think architecture is any better.
As long as you're in the office environment, there's no difference.
When you go out, and you go to sites, and you have to go shout at contractors
because they're making mistakes, or they're not just...
Some of them will just...
If you're too soft, too nice, they'll just ignore you.
They won't even look at you.
You have to be tough to talk to them on a tough tone.
You have to put on this act that you're a really tough woman.
No fooling around.
You better listen to me.
It is tougher because sometimes guys don't like it when women are scolding them,
or asking them to do stuff, and that male ego comes in.
They don't like it.
It's contractors or vendors or whatever.
It can be nice.
Even when they know they've been wrong.
Even when they know they're wrong, or particularly when they're wrong.
Nice.
See, we all justify our mistakes to ourselves.
Right?
Or we speak our own language.
So they also feel, oh no, I did this.
This is the only way to...
This is why they justify it to themselves.
But it's not what's in our drawing.
This is not what we wanted.
So as long as everything is okay, it'll be nice.
But as soon as you have to actually point it out to them,
or really get it done, or get them to be serious about it,
you have to toughen up.
It's just tough.
It's easier for guys.
A guy who's an advocate goes to site.
It's easier for him to get people to listen to him.
And it is more important.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, I think that is quite deep-rooted, right?
It's not something that you have, or is it?
It's changing.
It has already changed all the years.
It's changing.
So it's a positive.
So shepherding a project through all its stages,
which would you say is among the most difficult?
And is there something like that?
So there is no difficult project.
There are difficult clients, sure.
Okay.
Projects are not difficult.
Projects are, in fact, more variation there is,
the kind of work you're doing, more interesting it is.
If you do different kinds of projects,
it's more interesting for us.
It's more challenging.
We have more fun.
Projects are not difficult.
So is it a lack of understanding of the client's part,
or is it simply that they want their way?
There are different kinds of clients.
So some are like, we don't know anything.
They listen to you, whatever you say.
They place their trust in your hands.
They don't know anything, and they don't want to.
And they say, yeah, we don't know anything.
You do it.
And there are those, the other extreme,
think they know everything.
And it's the ones who are somewhere in between
for the perfect clients.
Okay.
Who are aware of, you know, who are educated enough,
aware enough, exposed enough to this.
They have some sense of what's going on,
and they have a say in it,
have some idea of what they really want.
They're the best types.
Because they'll also be really involved with the project.
They'll keep challenging you.
And they're the best types.
Is there a fair amount of selling involved
on the design aspect?
Now, when you present that design to the client,
they obviously have a mind, in their mind,
what the building should be like.
Not always.
Okay.
Not always.
Some of them sometimes have some idea.
Some of them come with some preconceived notions,
but a lot of them don't know.
Sometimes they're not able to even give us the exact date.
A lot of things they're not able to explain to us properly
before we start designing.
So then what happens is when we present the first scheme,
that's when they realize, no, no, no, no,
we didn't want it like this.
We wanted it like that.
Right.
So it's also, first draft is always,
we always tell them it's like,
this is what will really make us understand
your input and your reward on this.
How we really understand what you want,
not from the brief behavior.
So sometimes it takes us a few sittings
and a few schemes and provisions
to actually totally understand their requirement.
But some of them are very clear from day one.
You know, I'm surprised at the kind of overlap
in terms of the creative fields
when it comes to advertising and architecture.
2D versus 3D.
The first presentation that you make to the client
is when you understand what they're looking for
in terms of what that brand is.
They might not know what it looks like or the, you know,
but the creative and the communication.
No, no, no, we didn't want this.
That they know.
Yeah.
It gives them a clarity once you present something
that they can react and respond to
because then it becomes easier for them.
What takes the longest?
Would you define, would you break up a project into stages?
And if so, what are the stages?
See, first stage is the design stage itself,
which can take any amount of time, right?
Starting from us designing it, some projects,
some buildings we're able to crack very quickly
and some just take so long
and we can't promise our client how long it's going to take.
So we say, okay, give us two weeks.
But sometimes at the end of the weeks,
we've just not cracked it, right?
So sometimes it might take a month
for our first piece itself, for the first draft.
And then it depends on the client.
How many times do you keep revising it?
So we've done a project where we did 27 divisions.
That was the max.
Normally second, third, fourth, depends on the client.
So that part takes a certain amount of time,
which cannot be quantified.
You cannot say, no, in three months we'll be done
or in one month we don't know.
And then the actual then many places, approvals, right?
Sanctions from the local board.
That takes a certain amount of time.
That also depends on the building type.
It takes nothing from three months to one year, right?
Once that is done, you start the construction.
So the superstructure takes the shortest one.
That's like super fast.
Tick tock, it's over.
And then the clients feel, oh, now it's ready.
And now we can start operating from here
or we can move in or whatever the building type may be.
But it doesn't work like that.
Finishing is what really takes a lot of time.
Do it well, do it nicely.
Is it because there are a number of layers
which people just don't understand the amount of complexity
that is there in finishing a project or?
Yeah, they don't know.
They don't know.
They're not going to do that.
See, there are people who have done projects before.
Like it's a factory.
Those guys have done factories before.
If it's a builder, he's done builder projects.
If it's a school, that guy might be doing school.
So they have some idea and they have some control over.
They already have teams in place who can just do it very quickly.
Finishes are sorted out and they have everything.
Everything happens fast.
But when it comes to houses,
then most of the people build only one house in a lifetime.
That's their first last experience.
Right.
And they're not there.
They're not supposed to.
They're not architects.
They don't know.
But sometimes they're impatient.
They're like, oh, it's been so long and you still don't move in
because there's so much structure going on like three months back.
You still know when you're completion.
So where do you think your skill really changes with experience?
What kind of skills one is client handling skills, of course,
get to be much better.
But are there other aspects of the job that you think improve time?
Every single skill, even designing skills.
So we look back 20 years ago, what we were doing.
I don't think we like those.
I think we keep improving everything, whether it's designing,
whether it's detailing, right handling, even site solutions.
Just keep getting better at the site and we immediately see problems.
Right.
We'll see any building, we see problems.
Our eyes get trained to see problems.
Every single thing.
Just take me through one of those.
Let's say anything that you remember, Deepika.
You go to a site and then you see the site.
And then you see that there is a problem that either the contractor
or the person has not noticed.
What exactly has, let's say the contractor or the vendor has not noticed.
But in your mind, how do you flag off a problem?
What do you see?
See, when we make the drawings and we've done the designing,
you already know how the building is going to look.
Like I told you, every corner of our building, even before construction starts,
you know exactly how it's going to look.
And we have some vision in mind, right?
And we go there and we look at it and we immediately know it's wrong.
This is not what we did.
This is not our design.
This is not what we wanted.
This is not the right drawing.
We point it out and sometimes they've not understood the drawing.
Sometimes they've not seen the drawing properly.
It depends on skills of the contractor and the supervisor also.
Drawing, reading skills.
It's not always good.
Sometimes it's terrible. So that's where supervision comes in.
We have to keep on going to size and we have to keep checking.
Because otherwise it'll never work out if we're wrong.
So we go and we check and sometimes we go, sometimes the engineer takes us,
sometimes the engineer will go for the structural part.
For different aspects, different people will visit.
But we keep going.
Unless we do that, we'll do something wrong and we won't like it.
It's our building. It's our baby.
So before you started D+, why the most time you had spent was
at another place.
What is the career trajectory after the first couple of places that you worked in?
When I finished my second job, the one on the computer,
I quit there to get married while we were still in Delhi.
And after that, I joined my father's first work in Delhi.
And I worked there part-time till I had a baby.
And then I took a long break.
We moved to Chennai during that break.
And then Yogi was with another partner.
I used to go to their office just because I needed to get out of the house.
We would go to school and I'd go to office.
We'd sit there and do some work, something.
I'd say, okay, I'll do this.
Let me do something.
I needed to, we didn't have phones.
We just moved in.
Even landline was not there.
We didn't have mobiles.
There was nobody to talk to.
I needed adult conversation.
I can't wait for the baby the whole day.
So I used to just go, spend four hours there, three hours there.
Just part-time.
Long big job.
And after some time, then I had one more period.
I said, no, enough is enough.
I stick up sitting at home, then we start working.
I joined when someone was like one and a half, 15 months.
I'm in a crush.
A few hours a day.
I started working.
I wanted two years.
It was two years.
And I joined a job called Edifrice in Chennai.
Fantastic.
Yeah, I could say.
I learned.
I've been lucky all my life.
I walked into that office to ask for a job.
One of our seniors had put me on to that offer.
And we had moved our dad.
And I didn't want to go very far because I had two small kids.
I wanted to be there in case of any emergency, any problem.
I wanted to be close.
And the senior passed from college.
He said, I know this architect.
He's really good.
Why don't we go and meet him?
He called him up and said, I'm sending you.
I walked into that office.
And Ramon, who's the principal architect,
tells me just two days back, my architect quit.
He had only one architect in those days.
Perfect timing.
And the rest were all gone.
The rest were all gone.
So when can you join?
That was my interview.
Just pure luck.
It's nothing worse.
Everywhere I went, I just got the job, just like that.
It's luck, yes, Deepika.
But I think there is also a background of a network
of people who trust each other.
And OK, the fact that you have access to that network
is part of the luck.
Yeah.
It also means that you're able to get through something
which, if they don't have any idea of your background
at all, then obviously there's a lot more involved
in trying to figure out, OK, does this person fit the bill?
All of those things.
Which brings me to what you probably wrestle with.
How do you get people from the current generation?
And what is the difference that you notice today?
It's so difficult to get people.
Especially all the kids coming out,
there are so many architecture companies.
First of all, all of them don't continue in architecture.
A lot of the kids who join IT companies get trained for six
months, and they become IT professionals.
Or they join some outsourcing companies like L&T and stuff.
Because the initial salary is double of what any architecture
company is.
They're just going there and doing a drafting job.
They're not really architects.
Some people who come from poorer backgrounds
are looking at that salary and not
looking at long-term career path.
School is not so big anymore, although there
are so many architecture colleges
and so many schools are graduating.
Then of course, a lot of them go for higher studies.
A lot of them want to work in Bombay or Delhi or Bangalore.
Bangalore is a big name.
A lot of them want to work for big architects, big names,
well-known architects.
And there, Chennai is very small.
And even there, they want to work for the bigger architects.
So medium-sized firms like us or small firms like us,
it's very difficult.
Once we get, sometimes we don't want to pay.
It's very difficult.
So now we've just been doing it with recommendations
of our existing staff.
From then, they find a senior or junior or somebody
knows somebody, and that's the only way.
Yeah.
That cuts through the entire process
rather than trying to figure out if the person is good enough
and what is the difference that you've noticed.
They get into IT companies and is it because salary
or is it because they've never really understood
what this whole business is about during the course?
It's very hard to answer that question.
They haven't built a sort of liking for the subject
that they've spent five years doing.
All starts from the admission itself.
There are a lot of kids who don't get into engineering
in a good college on merit, on Roman quota.
And then they write the exam, architecture, and they get it.
I'm not saying all kids are like that.
Most of them are good and they want to do architecture.
So a lack of direction and a lack of clarity,
where would you put your finger?
I think it's not neither.
I think it's just immediate gains.
They're not thinking long-term.
They have long-term plans.
They're just looking at my next salary.
You know, when I started working,
I didn't even ask how much they paid me.
Maybe because we're privileged and it didn't matter.
Never bothered about money.
Didn't even ask my first job, second job.
After one month, Pramod asked me,
how much do you want per month?
I said, look, I have two small kids.
They come home at four o'clock.
I can work only till four.
He said, okay, how much do you want per month?
I don't know.
Why don't you decide after one month?
500 bucks?
I suppose we didn't need that much.
Okay.
Yeah, what they know today is how much money they want to earn,
but they're not very sure about what they will bring to the table.
Is that one of the issues?
I think it's also peer pressure now,
because when we were younger,
we didn't know how much our friends were earning.
Nobody asked.
It was not polite to talk about money.
Maybe you brought up like that.
You don't discuss money.
You don't ask people how much they earn.
Don't do that.
You still don't do it.
So it was never discussed
and it didn't matter how much money anybody had.
And so our salaries were never discussed among friends.
So it didn't matter.
Now with all the social media and all this and all,
maybe I don't know how it works.
I'm just guessing that maybe there is that pressure
that your classmate is earning this much,
that one is making some money there.
Maybe, I don't know.
You've never believed in social media or really?
No, Facebook. Now we have an Insta page for our company.
Earlier we didn't even have that.
We don't even have a website.
It's terrible.
It's lazy.
No Twitter, nothing.
WhatsApp is a new tool to manage sites.
It's a very useful tool.
So all our contractors definitely has WhatsApp
and we're able to monitor even our station sites.
You can actually manage them pretty well with WhatsApp.
But is it a pain monitoring or going through so many websites
groups?
Every project has one or two WhatsApp groups.
Every project.
Whatever comments, pictures of the site,
whatever they need, whatever chat, whatever decision,
everything is put on the WhatsApp.
And that works fine.
It works very well.
Because everybody is on the same page.
The client knows what's going on.
Contractor knows what's going on.
We know what's going on.
And in our office itself, the architect, the engineer,
everybody knows what's going on in the project.
It's a good thing.
It works very well.
Yeah.
And it's like for that particular project,
everyone involved is literally being brought up to date
based on whatever messages are being sent.
But this has happened over the last, what, three, four years?
Or what was it like before that?
Was it more email and?
Maybe last seven, eight years.
Eight years?
Sure.
Before that, there was nothing happening.
It's like, WhatsApp, WhatsApp.
And then that's when it really started.
It became popular.
So it's not project management.
It's project management software and tracking.
It's play for the message.
No.
You get the information that you want.
And when you tell a vendor or a contractor saying,
this has not been done, he doesn't
want the client to see it.
The client will see it.
Contractor will tell the client one thing.
And then he'll tell us something else.
This way, everybody knows what's happening.
You can't lie your way through.
Yeah.
Here, there's no fig leaf.
Yeah, there's nothing that you can say.
And it's all out there in the open.
Oh, but this is interesting.
I didn't know that this particular thing is a way of,
yeah, like you said, it is used for everything.
So this normally comes after the project starts.
I assume that it's once the vendors on.
Vendors are not the vendors.
Not vendors, the contractor.
Contractors are there.
You don't put vendors into this.
They'll get a lot of information if they don't need.
Why does a window manufacturer need
to know what is going on inside the foundation stage?
What about the talented kids?
What have you seen about the kids who differentiate
and who look at architecture as a long-term career?
How do you see them doing things differently?
There are different kinds of kids, right?
Right.
Everything is not naturally talented or a natural art.
And they become very fast.
They're really interested.
I had one kid at the office and he came for his internship.
Every time I picked up my bag to go to a site,
he'd be there next to me.
Can I also come?
Anybody who went to site, can I come?
He was so curious.
He wanted to know everything.
He'd go to everybody's table and ask questions.
What are you doing?
Why is it like this?
Why couldn't you do this?
100 questions.
Irritating fellow.
But so good.
So good.
And he was so good at his work.
So interested.
He was genuinely interested.
Really interested.
Very, very good.
So there are kids like that.
But mostly, it's not easy.
You need a lot of confidence to be like that.
Yeah.
Everyone is not like that.
You cannot be.
Even if you want to ask, think 10 times.
You ask, and it's like a process.
Yeah.
I'm doing this already.
It takes a lot of confidence to actually ask
so many questions, right?
So some of them are quiet and you learn quietly.
But as long as your focus is there,
and as long as you really want to learn,
and as long as you're not just spending your time here
and collecting your salary, it'll take a lot of time.
You will get through it.
You just need that attitude.
So yeah, it seems so strange, Deepika,
that ultimately, those are still the sterling qualities.
Curiosity, a willingness to work, a willingness
to accept that you're wrong, a willingness
to learn new things every day is almost
standard for every career.
And yet people think that there is some magic behind.
How can you progress in some careers
if there is some shortcut?
There's a shortcut.
The universal qualities to do well in life
will have been told many times.
And you can read about it.
You cannot learn it until you've been through it yourself.
Until you actually get into it.
And it actually pays to work hard.
It actually pays to have a good attitude.
It actually pays to be curious and try to learn new things,
not shy away from work.
And you're just going to office just to spend time
and just to show that you're working.
And you just collect your salary.
You will never get anywhere in the long run.
It's stagnant.
People are not blind.
They can see, right?
What are you doing?
It's not like seniors are sitting there
and they can close their eyes.
And they don't know what is happening.
Yeah, that's true.
They know.
They know from experience.
He was obviously soaking in every little bit of knowledge
that he could.
He was not waiting to be told.
He was not saying that if it comes my way, OK.
He's going out there and putting himself
into every possible situation to learn.
And that's a good thing.
Yeah, that's a good thing.
The office, we had one girl, she had an internship.
She was also there.
OK.
Yes.
As good as full-fledged architects.
Her work was so good.
She would try to understand everything you're telling her.
She'd come and ask questions.
And try to apply some creativity there.
And try to do something even if she's not asked.
Can I do it like this?
But those are rare cases.
Normally, kids are not like that.
But as long as you have the right attitude,
you really want to work.
You have to be honest, right?
You need that.
Sorry.
You need to be honest to your profession.
Actually want to do a good job.
You really want to do a good job.
You do well in anything.
Yeah.
That's all it takes.
That's all.
Whatever you do, you can keep shining clothes and all that.
You want to do a good job.
You don't want to leave any wrinkles there, right?
You want it to be crisp and beautiful.
You can come out well.
You can become the best ironing guy on the street.
Anything you do.
Do it with sincerity.
Good, good.
Best of luck.
Amazing, Deepika, because we've met so many times.
But I've never really delved deep into what
your journey as an architect has been.
And this has been fascinating at so many levels.
Because I didn't know, for example,
that you started off with maths and then got into architecture.
And then it kind of built from there.
It's always difficult being a woman.
It's not, there are things, aspects of the job.
The office may not be the problem.
There are a whole lot of external issues that you face.
And having got through all of them,
and still you have to be a different person when
you're dealing with people like that.
How certain things about the profession never change.
Interest, curiosity, willing to work that extra mile.
And go all the way to ensure that whatever you're building,
whether it's a house for a customer or...
Is there one thing, is these multi-story departments
have become among the most common?
Does that give architects far lesser room to do something?
Or do you feel that that is something
in which you can do a fair amount of work, of innovation?
It shows.
It does.
It wonders.
I think it's lovely.
You can do a really good job.
As long as you don't just treat it like some way of earning
some money, you actually want to do a good job.
Like I said, you take it as a challenge.
Let's try and do a good job and come up with it.
OK.
If it's, let's say, 16 blocks, four homes on every floor,
you'll see even within that, there's
a whole lot of things you can do which should be very interesting.
A whole lot of things.
Absolutely.
Chennai is a tough market.
Builders come to you.
In other cities, you can just do one apartment,
and you can just mirror it and repeat it.
And your job is done, and it's over.
Every apartment has to follow Vasu.
OK.
You believe it.
Builders will come and say every apartment should be as per Vasu.
Makes it easier for them to sell, yeah.
And that is one of the things their customers demand.
It's so difficult.
It's so difficult to design.
And sometimes those are even bigger,
because these are divine laws, not like the company
or the bylaws that are wonderful.
Deepika, thank you again for accepting this.
And it's been a real pleasure.
Wonderful talking to you.
Thanks a ton.
My first job, the podcast, is a production
from Ideascape Communications.
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is managed by Deepa Ravi with occasional support
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