The Architecture of Man

Artwork: Maithreyi One of the quintessential parts of modern life, I would say, is its imposition of neatly defined boundaries. We have prescribed times that dictate when we eat and when we sleep. We enroll ourselves in ordered institutions with an array of specializations providing us knowledge through pre defined categories. We marry and raise children, hoping to extricate them of the confines that had, in our misfortune, curtailed us. More often than not, we proceed along the perplexing maze of our lives in abject bewilderment, looking for clarity in the voices of the many rather than the wisdom of a few. It appears that a sizable part of our struggles is, in some way, characterized by an attempt to either defy or live within the divisions modern life entails. And these divisions do no merely consist of external rules forced upon a reluctant subject. It runs far deeper, ensuring that we not only remain foreign to seemingly unrelated parts of life but also to parts of ourselves. The…