ARCHITECTURE BEFORE ARCHITECTURE

In 2025, I realized something quietly astonishing: it had been twenty-five years since I graduated 10th grade.

I belonged to the millennial batch of 2000, the cohort that stepped into the new millennium from the gates of St. Joseph’s Cluny Convent Girls’ School, Malleswaram, Bangalore—certain that life was just beginning, unaware of how profoundly those gates had already shaped us.

In September 2025, I returned.

I stood once again before the gates of the school that held me from kindergarten through 10th grade. Twelve years of mornings that began too early, afternoons that ended too late, and years of growing slowly—and then all at once.

The moment I stepped inside, time softened, folding decades of memory over the present—a palimpsest of the girl I had been, and the woman I had become.

Palimpsest | Layers of Memory

Cycling to school, the weight of my bag balanced against the rhythm of pedaling, I remembered the tamarind tree at the entrance, its pods scattered beneath, sticky and sour-sweet in our fingers. We would gather beneath it, cracking the fruit, savoring the fleeting rebellion before the bell rang.

Mornings were a ritual: early assemblies, the air still cool, voices rising together in synchrony. Once a week, march pasts measured our steps, teaching unity long before we understood the lesson.

As we made our way from the assembly to our classrooms in the three-storey stone building, a teacher’s voice would rise above the chatter:

“Heads up! Shoulders back! Walk like ladies!”

At the same time, house captains patrolled the staircases, calling out:

“Hands off the banisters!”

Uniforms inspected, collars straight, skirts tucked, buttons accounted for, shoes polished, hair tied, nails clean—no short skirts above the knee, no jewelry, no rolled up socks, no nail polish, no fancy ribbons or hairstyles, no exceptions. Discipline was inscribed into our bodies as indelibly as the grooves in the stone steps we climbed.

During breaks I would linger past the music room, drawn to the notes a friend played on the piano. I never took lessons myself till later in life—but I learned to listen, to let music fill a hallway, and to carry its echo long after the final note faded.

Evenings were no less regimented. Sports practice—volleyball, throwball, javelin, discus, shot put—taught strength, focus, and release. Later, karate, sweat and repetition, earned me a black belt, first dan. Then my sister and I would cycle home, tired, exhilarated, the sky soft with fading light, laughter trailing behind us.

Reverie | Lingering in Time

The three-storey stone building still stands—dignified, quiet, unchanged in spirit. As a child, I did not have words for why it mattered. As an architect, I now understand. That building held us. It taught rhythm, patience, and order. It absorbed our voices and returned them as echoes.

Standing before the chapel and St. Mary’s statue, camera in hand, I photographed not just the structure, but the feeling it carried—the thresholds crossed unconsciously, the small rituals that shaped a lifetime.

New wings and modern additions surround the old stone, necessary, perhaps, but quieter in soul. They do not speak the same language as the original. And yet, the heart of the campus, layered in memory, remains intact.

Continuum | Life in Motion

Returning after twenty-five years was not about longing. It was about honoring.

Before architecture school. Before theory. Before vocabulary.

There was movement, discipline, sound, and stone. There were rituals that shaped me, thresholds that guided me, and echoes that lingered across time.

As I walked out of the gates again—once in 2000, and again in 2025—I felt gratitude rise quietly. For the girl I once was. For the rhythms that formed her. For the place that raised me, patiently and completely.

Some buildings do more than house memories.

They become them, stitched into the continuum of our lives.

GOODBYE 2025 | WELCOME 2026

As the final blog of 2025, I pause here with gratitude—and curiosity. I look forward to 2026, to the stories that will unfold as I delve into memories, bringing them back to life with photographs, reflections, and the architecture of the everyday.

Happy New Year!