Pizza papad with the NIDians

Day One
The entrance to the National Institute of Design (NID) looks rather staid for a design institute. I had expected a more radical welcome from this red-brick structure; it’s only fair to expect a little eccentricity from an institute that produces some of the country’s finest designers.

But I wasn’t very disappointed as minutes later I stumbled upon a black ‘thing’ suspended rather low from the ceiling, almost getting in the way of passers-by. On getting closer, I saw that it was a cluster of strings with bird-like shapes pasted on them. I just walked around it like the other students. What a queer black thing, I thought.

Samir More, the media relations officer and my guide, took me to the director’s office. Pradyumna Vyas had just come back from NID’s research and development campus in Bangalore. In his large, neat, white office we got talking about how the design sector picked up in India after the 1990s when international companies began setting up shop.

This year 900 students are enrolled at NID. But India needs 10,000 designers every year, said Vyas. “A good design fulfils a need whilst also looking good,” he emphasises. When Vyas suggested that we visit Design Street, a showcase of NID students’ achievements, I got excited. The name suggested possibilities, but alas, it turned out to be just a dusty street that displayed the innovations of NID students in tall, glass boxes. As

I looked on at the windows with works of bamboo, glass and ceramic, Vyas told me that the NID was committed to reviving lost art forms, such as bamboo work.

Pointing towards one window, he told me that those were futuristic car designs. “Neha Chauhan, an NID graduate, has designed the interiors of Mahindra Xylo,” he said with pride; another feather in NID’s cap. The mention of Xylo reminded More that he had arranged for me to meet some students at the Gandhinagar campus, the following day. These students were working on a project with carmaker Renault, Vyas told me, as I continued to look at those silent works in the boxes on Design Street. Something was amiss.

At night, I got talking to a group of undergraduate students in the hostel mess. While discussing about design, Hannelore Dekeva from Darjeeling suddenly tugged at her T-shirt and said, “I never wore such stuff before. I am so critical of design now!” Later she told me the black ‘thing’ was called the Bat Installation; it was the creation of an NID student.  Before we parted, Hannelore said “Do pass through it, once.”

Day Two
The Gandhinagar campus looks unimaginative and grey, as all structures are the colour of concrete. On this half-built campus, where iron rods still stick out of the buildings, I met the Renault team in the Lifestyle Accessory Design (LAD) room. The team was armed with charts, laptops and notebooks. Gauri Pandey, from the team, told me they were designing spaces for the year 2030. They showed me a few futuristic designs of bikes, cars, tents and community buildings that resembled bubbles.

We decided to continue our discussions over Pizza Papad, a papad with pizza toppings – the invention of Kishore, designer and chef-cum-waiter at the canteen. At the khopcha (NIDspeak for canteen), the LAD team talked about the initial infrastructural problems it faced on this campus. It used to be desolate, with few recreational activities.

But now, there’s a gymnasium, and a basketball court is being constructed upon the students’ request. One student also raised the issue of incompetent faculty but then she added, “When you bring up these issues, NID deals with it. Here the student is respected.” I was impressed by their candour for they openly discussed these issues with me. But as I was leaving, I felt it was truly brave of them to have adopted this dullcampus as their home.
On the way back to the Paldi campus, I thought I had seen two faces of NID in the two days I had spent here. One was the institute’s progressive approach to design – integrating design with management practices, fostering an open environment for students to speak their minds, of nurturing great ideas, which I saw in the National Design Business Incubator. There, I met people like Abeek Bose of Robots Alive and MIT graduate Kranthi Kiran of Dhama Apparel Innovations, who are both doing exceptional work.

No doubt, the institute has invested in the latest design software and the machines, which I saw at the workshops where students were making objects out of steel, wood, glass and clay. The ancient, ceiling-high handloom in the textile workshop was an awe-inspiring sight; a library called the Knowledge Management Centre, where shoes are not allowed in because of the dust, is revered by the students. And of course the bright and colourful NIDUS, a shop that sells creations by NIDians.

On the other hand, on Design Street, I saw NID’s callous approach to the achievements of its students. Had Vyas not explained the works of the students, I wouldn’t have understood a thing. There were neither descriptions of the works nor names of the creators in the display window. The street could definitely be more exciting; the display windows, interactive and modern. Why hadn’t the institute thought of this? I also felt the institute needed to promote itself and its students much more. BusinessWeek lists NID amongst the top 25 European & Asian programmes in the world, but only a handful of foreign students have come to NID in the past 49 years!

The pieces of the NID puzzle were beginning to fit. It’s a great institute that’s falling short of the students’ expectations because somewhere along the way NID has started taking its reputation and its students for granted.

The two sides of NID also offered me a few amusing sights, like the guards sitting at the reception counter in vests while their uniforms rested on hangers or the Paldi canteen where rubbish was strewn outside a half-empty bin.

It was almost five o’ clock when we returned to Paldi. I thanked More for his hospitality – on the way back he had even treated me to pakoras made by the inmates of Sabarmati jail. But before I packed and left, I walked through the bat installation, feeling the soft fabric that was shaped into bats. There, I did it! Then it struck why Hannelore had asked me to walk through it. The bat installation represented a student’s moment of breaking free.I suppose that’s what students look for when they come to NID