Creation of a Cell-womb
The aim is to journey down to the skeleton of the human psyche to help reveal the core potential. Among the guided activities is a focused understanding of ones core potential by relating to qualities of a stem cell and using nature as a mirror to understand our inherent strengths.
Each participant created a representation of the world of each cell complete with its components ( its energy house, core, destruction and survival systems, its own intelligence, its growth, its environment), both as an individual cell as well as a tissue/organ/organ system (community). The entire representation is in the form of a space which serves to remind us of the infinite capacity as well as the ‘microscopic’ nature of a cell.
Activities
-Identifying one’s core capabilities
-Identifying the environments we inhabit
-Getting in touch with the triggers that lead towards growth and potential
-Understanding one’s own response through incidents and inspirations one comes across
-Creating favorable environments
-Mirroring and Being the Potential
Finally we made it! An idea that struck almost a year back has finally decided to manifest itself at Nalapat Architects. A big thank you to Vyas for figuring out the length and breadth and height and all such mathematical calculations indigestible for my neuron network! We started off with simple sketches travelling into our selves, starting from joyful childhood events. And from there we slowly peeped into the environments that we occupied on a daily basis, the characters that built that context along with us, like in a story. We probed Visualizations and Auditory inputs that fed us and hardened our beliefs. Our strengths, capabilities, skills, our triggers and our responses to them…helping us to slowly peel out layer by layer and see ourselves through a pair of new eyes.
Sourabh and Pratyusha struggled with the cutting of the cloth to shape because our cell was a wobbling cell. Jayan came up with the binding wires anchoring them and made them behave to an extent. Coir, coloured thread, what shall we use to bind the cloth panels? Let’s stick to natural materials…that’s the in thing I said…But divine will prevailed. Staples came to our rescue! Oh! Thank you, thank you. And Dinesh tirelessly saw it through.
And thus they went up one by one, becoming the semi permeable cell membrane. Their journeys, each one so unique and beautiful. Kabadi, cycling, badminton, running, colouring patterns on cement, dance, numbers, dreams, chairs, gardens, pizzas, family, friends, a draft board, steps… circular, cyclic relationships and interactions along a long endless DNA strand.
“There is enough loneliness in that gold. The moon of the night is not the moon that the first Adam saw. Countless centuries of human vigil have filled her with ancient lament. Look at her! She is your mirror! Remembered Arun in the circles that wove themselves down the panel, an ardent lover of Borges.
“And the shadow belongs to light!”- Louis Kahn. How beautiful is that! All that feels dark right now, all that unaware and moody shadows, all that we just can’t fathom right now, all of that and much more belongs to light and love. All that will be lit, has to be. That is the journey we undertake every day.
“In the depths of winter, I see within me an invincible summer” concluded another participant. Well, if we can all see that, we’re saved.
So a work experience we started with biriyani ended with rum and coke and egg puff and music that appeared miraculously from the wombs of the office space. A huge thank you to all the participants for being open and sharing a slice of their selves with others. Now it is for them to continue to keep that cell womb sacred and alive.
Cell and I in the High Ranges of Munnar
Children in the initial process of ideating, reflecting and painting with Dr Tholpadi, Anuradha and the principal Ravichandran
Baiju sir at his best before the cell was ceremoniously taken to the auditorium.
Inside the cell womb experiencing the connectedness. All stories merging into one. Our story.
we admit it, we just love what we have done
Under the Raintree media presents Anuradha Nalapat’s Cell and I
The Stillness Project 
stillness group done excellent work in HRS
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