The World through my ‘Visuals’

                                                 by Neha Soni

‘What do you do for living?’ – every time when my new hair-dresser enthusiastically begins a conversation as a social norm and sometimes for a good tip, I reply, ‘I am an Architect’. Most often with a nice wow, I get a follow up question, ‘So, do you design houses?’ Well, that’s when the interesting and the challenging part of my answer begin, ‘No, I design cities..! My work includes designing physical spaces like buildings (including houses), open spaces, streets and just about everything in the built environment.’ Not being a very conventional answer, I generally receive a little confusing reaction with some amusement. So, I continue the conversation further with the hope to explain my job with more clarity and details. Though not sure, how many times I have been successful in my efforts, but the process of defining ‘what I do’ has been a great self learning and a reflecting experience.

This reminds me my first day at Urban Design studio, when our professor showed us a map without any street names, direction and scale. In technical term, it was a figure ground map – a map with street lines, solid black color indicating buildings (built form) and white color indicating open spaces. We were asked to identify the city and sketch few places on it. How do we do that? What are the clues? Surprising, we all guessed the city (though not correct) and also made few hand rendered perspective sketches of places on that map! How did we even come up with that? Well, that is when we realised that we have acquired the skills to ‘Read, Feel and Think of 2 dimensional map in to a 3 dimensional real world’. The studio was aptly called ‘Reading an Urban Fabric’ – an introduction to Urban Design. This is what I think defines a major part of ‘what I do’ – viewing and understanding the world through 3 dimensional medium of perspective sketches and drawings.

1.  Sample Figure Ground Map   

2. Courtesy: Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission

  3. Sample cross section of Street

Working as an urban design planner with Planning Commission (local County govt.), I realise the importance of comprehensive visualisation of urban development to bring transformation in the society. Many times, the visual communication of design in terms of 3 dimensions is done at small scale in private architecture firms where as the large scale planning, mostly with 2 dimensional GIS mapping is done at the government regulatory bodies. There exists a gap, not only of understanding the scale of development but also the co-relation between different aspects of design and planning. One of the tools to bridge this gap can be the holistic visualization that communicates the ideas and concepts between various scales and complexities. It can facilitate broader understanding of issues rather than a piece meal approach.

Moreover, there also exist gap between different types of planning within the government like transportation, land use, comprehensive planning, zoning, etc. Each of these planning functions is looked at individually and many times there is lack of comprehensive view. Design can be defined as ‘a process of synthesis’, which is opposed to analysis, Urban Design looks at coordinating between various planning activities through the visual medium. As in the real world, things do not exist in isolation, but in co-relation with each other, a holistic visualization is a powerful medium to understand urban development.

4. Courtesy: Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission, Urban Design Project – Sketch up View

Urban Design involves many different tools and techniques of visualization like AutoCAD drawings, Model making, Google Sketch-up modelling, Photoshop simulations, GIS mapping, Google Street views, hand rendered sketches and animated walk through for the real life experience of the proposed development.

5. Sample Architecture Plan- AutoCAD drawing      

6. Sample Architecture Project Model             

7. Site Analysis through Photo simulations and models 

The visual medium of looking at holistic development can improve the coordination and understanding between government agencies at different levels; and between government and the private sectors involved with large scale development projects. This can help achieve more efficient and effective process of development. The visual communication of urban development is also a powerful tool to improve civic engagement in to the urban development process. When the communities look at the urban design drawings and visual simulations of proposed development in their neighbourhood that gives a real picture of what development they could expect in the future. Many times the planning reports with textual information and quantitative statistical data fail to convey the proposed 3 dimensional built environment to communities. The visuals and drawings provide an effective medium of communication and have the potential to improve community participation in the process of urban development. 

8. Courtesy: Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission, Proposed Intersection Project

        9. Courtesy: Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission, Proposed Bike Routes

10. Courtesy: Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission, an Envisioned Comprehensive Plan

With the increasing use of advance technology in developed as well as developing countries, mapping tools and apps are being used for better public participation in to the planning process. Recently, mobile apps like ‘Bike hazards’ was created by local county government in Springfield (Illinois State, USA) that could help bikers on the street to locate hazardous points on the bike routes. This not only helps increase safety standards but also helps create a means of communication between city officials and communities to share the information and users’ concerns for road safety improvements. Comprehensive planning has started to incorporate interactive mapping tools as part of community surveys. This gives communities a user friendly interface to voice their issues and concerns based on location in to a digital map. 

In developing countries like India, community-led slum surveys involving GPS mapping tools are being initiated. One recent example is the Chandrashekhar Nagar slum in Raipur, facilitated by PRIA (Society for Participatory Research in Asia) for a self-survey task through GPS mapping. This was an effort to achieve meaningful community participation necessary for successful implementation of urban policies like Rajiv Awas Yojna (Source, Terra Urban blog). Thus, visual media has the potential to better facilitate community participation in to the institutional process of urban planning. This can help to achieve just distributional pattern in terms of provision of basic services and resources that can ultimately lead to creating socially just development. 

Whilst visual media can facilitate the participatory approach and communication of ideas and concepts in the urban development planning process, careful consideration needs to be given in representing appropriate information through pictures and drawings. For example, most urban development projects require understanding the existing site conditions to analyse the issues and problems, it is imperative to document as many aspects as possible to capture the true image. Documenting incomplete and sometimes selective information through photographs and sketches has the danger to misrepresent the site conditions and misleading the entire project. Many times, picturesque views of the cities with new beautified development are showcased to create world-class city image that can attract business investment in to the city without ever looking at the ‘backyard’ – the marginalized areas of the city. It is important to show different parts of the city through visual media to create inclusive and socially just development.

11. Global Image created through shiny pictures, Surat   

12. Slums 

Many times photographs of people using the public space and facilities are taken to understand and demonstrate the user behaviour and interface of the built environment. This has started to create privacy issues for people whose pictures were taken without their knowledge and published without their permission. In the United States, laws are becoming strict for using photographs of people in to official reports. Sometimes, written permission of people is taken to use their pictures. With the increased sensitivity to the privacy issues, it is being preferred to take pictures showing the back side or blurring the face that do not reveal the identity. It is important to respect and wisely use the pictures without intruding the privacy rights of common people to represent the data in urban projects.

As the saying goes, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ – a picture is a very powerful medium to see and understand the world. A single picture can tell a story. Hence, it is very crucial to observe the world with lot of sensitivity. Many times, there exist two different worlds for people at the same place. These two worlds could be coexisting together, either contesting with each other or sharing inter-dependent co-relationship. It is the keen observation that can capture the holistic view of the place.

Few years back, I clicked a picture at C.G.Road in Ahmedabad, India – a very busy commercial street, famous for shopping and street side eateries like panipuri. 

13. A family having dinner on footpath, next to the space of their daily living through selling belts on a busy commercial street – C.G. Road, Ahmadabad, India.

I looked at this family having their regular dinner on the footpath, next to the little space they used for selling leather belts to earn their daily living. Such informal sectors that exist on streets are many times not even considered while large scale infrastructure projects are proposed. The streets are treated as a channel for vehicles to flow and the life that goes on the street edges which plays a dynamic role in the society is sometimes totally missed. Visual documentation of activities helps in understanding the integrity and finer elements of streetscape design. Visualisation has the power to convey message. A picture tells the story here. Such careful observation documented through visual media can be very effective in understanding the site and guiding inclusive development proposals. 

Looking at the world through the camera lens and pencil renderings on my sketchbook is something I say defines the ‘what I do’ part of my life. It is a fascinating medium to see and understand the subtleties of life. Professionally, the 3 dimensional medium helps me see the qualitative data on otherwise 2 dimensional GIS maps representing quantitative data. As an architect – urban design planner, I feel my contribution to the society can be through understanding the life that exists on the plan view of the maps. Visual medium is a very powerful tool to shape our built environment. A holistic and appropriate visualisation is what is needed to guide the development of our physical world and bring the transformation in the society.

Author's Bio- Note:

Neha Soni is an Architect, Urban Designer and Urban Development Planner with global exposure of studying and working in India, UAE, Qatar, UK and USA. She is a licensed architect in India and has Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from CEPT University, India and Masters in Urban Development Planning from Development Planning Unit (DPU) at University College London (UCL), UK. She is awarded with full Commonwealth Scholarship for study at UCL. Her past experiences include working for GHD consultants in Doha (Qatar), participating in Global Studio and UN-HABITAT World Urban Forum III, Vancouver (Canada) and Asia Link studio at Karachi (Pakistan). Presently, she is working as an Associate Planner (Urban Design and Transportation Planning) in Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission, Illinois, USA. She performs variety of Urban Design tasks from designing Transit Oriented Development to streetscapes, Place-making ideas for disadvantaged communities and establishing place imagibility in comprehensive plans. She is also a LEED Green Associate and is looking at creating sustainable development. As a designer, she wishes to contribute towards making our cities ‘socially just’ with a strong emphasis for gender equality and women empowerment in the overall development.

Garbage Protocol

                                                          by Radhika Chopra

I live at the corner of a street, in what used to be the downmarket segment of my neighbourhood. The lane is narrow, and when my family and I moved in, it faced a jungle area that was nominally separated from the lane with sagging barbed wire. The putative fence drooped even more at a juncture; my neighbours called ‘T-point’, wilting under the weight of garbage bags slung over the fence by passing domestic workers who didn’t want to walk all the way to the ‘official’ garbage dump and confront the smell of rot. 

 My first encounter with my neighbours who had lived in the street almost from the time the colony was first established in the 1960s was through the T-point garbage dump. I was of course a fledging inhabitant of the neighbourhood since I had moved into the apartment in 1990, almost thirty years ‘junior’ to Mrs D, Mr M. and S. Sahib, denizens of the street. In the way of all new home owners, I was almost militant in my campaign against the T-point dump at the corner of my home. I would stand on my balcony and shout down to garbage bag slingers, entreat the street sweepers to clean the bags and grumble into every possible ear I could find. Sensibly, no one paid any attention to me. Finally, in a fit of private enterprise, I engaged a small group to come in one Sunday morning; to clean out the dump and ferry its contents to the official garbage dump a little way down the street. 

Midway through the Great Clean Up, the men returned from the official dump saying that a sahib had stopped them from dumping the T-point garbage in the official dump. Not quite getting it, I imperiously instructed them to continue and told them to convey to the sahib that the madam at the corner was getting the garbage cleaned. I continued to stand at the corner, in supervisory regalia of headscarf and dark glasses. Soon enough a dapper gentleman came down the street right behind the cleaners trundling their wheelbarrows from dump to dump. I had a little time to decide my strategy; should I be morally outraged at the mess? Cravenly subaltern and stop the work? Or arrogantly middle class about my rights over a public street? 

With spare seconds before the Sahib of the official dump reached me, I took recourse to anthropology and decided the best thing would be to open in a familiar idiom by acknowledging hierarchy. Folding my hands, I greeted ‘Uncle ji’ and tossed all gender equality to the wind by introducing myself as Mrs. S. He was flattered and unmanned by my opening gambit but made a quick recover and asked ‘beti ji’ what she was up to. I pointed up at my apartment, and said the flies were infesting my home, affecting the health – and here I pulled out my uber card – of my mother-in-law. S. Sahib looked appreciative, recognizing the gambit, but by no means beaten. “Did you know” he said, “that the men are dumping malba in the dhalao, the garbage dump?” Not quite grasping his point, but not willing to give in wholly either, I resorted to a prudent mixture of meekness and bewilderment, and damning the cleaners to their fate, pointed out that “They” didn’t know.

As I said, I wasn’t quite clear myself at that point about the fine distinctions of disposal. S. Sahib was happy to instruct the greenhorn lady about the niceties of garbage. Malba he said, could not be dumped into the dhalao, the official dump, that was in the charge of the Residents Welfare Association who supervised the street cleaning staff, whose job it was to clear out and clean the dhalao of household waste. Malba on the other hand, was building material and had to be dumped outside the walls of the dhalao. This upstart garbage then had to be removed by the Municipal Committee tractors, paid for by the Individual Malba Dumper. 

This, continued S. Sahib in his discourse on disposal, was the decision of the Residents Welfare Association of which he was a long term elected member. He then did me the ultimate honour by saying that of course he and I knew that no Individual Malba Dumper ever did the right thing and it was left to right minded residents who cared for cleanliness, to remove “Their” malba and indeed their garbage from unofficial T point garbage dumps. He and I, he said, graciously inclining his head, worked For the Health and Welfare of All. I was quite overcome by his gesture of inclusion that transformed me from a newbie to a Resident, and almost instinctively folded my hands again. Happy at having won his point, with the added beneficence of initiating a new resident into the niceties of garbage, and finding a fresh audience, S. Sahib turned and began directly operations from dump to dump. It wasn’t my business anymore, but had been taken over by an elected resident member of the association, transforming a spot of private enterprise to an official act of regulation. S. Sahib, needless to say, introduced me to the old time neighbours, and ended his triumph and magnanimity by sending the colony chowkidar to my door with a letter announcing the death of a denizen, in an act of official neighbourliness. I had finally arrived.

Author's Bio- Note:

Radhika Chopra teaches at the University of Delhi. She is the author of Militant and Migrant: The Politics and Social History of Punjab (Routledge, 2011) and edited Reframing Masculinities: Narrating the Supportive Practices of Men (Orient Longman, 2006). She has published widely on issues of gender including among others, as guest editor of a special issue: Indian Masculinities of the journal: Men and Masculinities, (2006), and co-edited South Asian Masculinities: Contexts of Change, Sites of Continuity (2004).

She was the curator of a film-cum-discussion series “Making Migrants: Dialogues through Film” (2009), and “School in Cinema” (2004). She is on the editorial Board of Culture Society and Masculinities, Men’s Studies Press and Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, Taylor and Francis. She has been Co-chair, U.N. Expert Group on the Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality (Brasilia, 2003).

Hyderabadi Irani Chai

                                     A short film by Sampurna Ghosh

When we think of Hyderabad, it is Charminar and Hyderabadi biryani that comes to our mind. Hyderabad and Hyderabadi biryani is almost synonymous, each giving the other its unique identity. In the short film ‘Hyderabadi Irani Chai’, filmmaker Sampurna Ghosh explores one of Hyderabad’s most well kept secrets – its Irani chai. She beautifully captures the essence of Hyderabad, its quaint old world charm and its rich living traditions – in this case the Irani Chai – that continues to survive despite the many onslaughts of CCDs, Baristas, Starbucks.  Like many Indian cities, Hyderabad too is never about- out with the old and in with the new; it is about the old with the new.  It is about Charminar and the IT hub, and Irani chai with the Starbucks.  

To watch the short film, please click on this title: Hyderabadi Irani Chai

Author's Bio- Note:

A Dreamer, who sees things in a different way; A Story Teller, who wants to share every story she knows and she can imagine; A Maker, who wants to merge the reality with dream, fact with fiction and gifts the same to the rest of the society. This is what she is aspiring for, right this very moment.

Sampurna Ghosh is a Kolkatan by heart whose urge has allowed her to explore the cities of Hyderabad and Los Angeles as a film-making graduate. She is at present, working as a creative consultant in Ramoji Film City and is also a freelance filmmaker currently residing in India, who wants to work for films, with films and anything which is related to Films and keep finding the world and its beauties.

VIDEO CULTURES

For further exploration of Media Spaces and Digital Cultures, we have created a new page: VIDEO CULTURES (besides Home, below title).

Please visit on this page linked with YouTube to explore our pick of videos along with those submitted by our different blog authors.

All you have to do is click on VIDEO CULTURES and go to Playlists, there click on CULTURAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF MEDIA to watch, enjoy and explore.

Life is not a (b)rat race!

                                                By Sutirtha Saha

Some days back, Aparajita approached me to write an article for her blog. “Me?” I asked, “What do you want me to write?” She said “Anything.” So I thought for days and finally did some freewheeling .Hope you folks like it.

First, for some introductions. I am Sutirtha and I am happy to meet you too. My job limits me to a computer most of the time (except walking around to colleagues’ desks to exchange some gossip, which more often than not, does not end up being fruitful exercises, both having read the same Hyderabad Times) and lugging up and down the stairs to the cafeteria to catch up on lunch. Apart from that, my work life is mostly limited to binaries and we pride ourselves in producing state of the art cutting, bleeding, leading edge technology that makes people even lazier.

On the home front, I have two great kids and a great wife. All three of them are low maintenance folks (well, not quite so, the younger kid is very demanding but becomes quiet once I hand over my mobile phone to him in exasperation – he then spends time watching Doraemon on it or playing some games) and it is quite humdrum on the life front as well.

In short, it’s a humdrum life with an AC in my bedroom to take care of the heat in summer and a geyser in the bathroom to take care of the water in winter, a bank balance to take care of every month’s expenses and an “owned” home to take care of middle class uncertainties. So then, if life is so gnawingly routine, what’s there to write about?

Well, lots actually and I would dedicate the next few bytes to that. It was precisely during the course of this humdrum existence on a trip to a tulip field in Redmond in 2011 due to the insistence of a colleague that I happened to take a photo with my point-and-shootthat I liked.

Figure 1: Tulip Garden, Skaggit, Redmond (April 2011)

I came back to India from that trip, troubled. I took a good shot but I did not understand why the photo attracted me. A neighbor was conducting a one-day workshop on photography with a visiting photo guru around that time and I jumped at that opportunity. I realized after that all about rule of thirds, framing, composition, shutter speed, ISO.

After that there was no looking back. I lapped up Scott Kelby, Michael Freeman, Jeff Smith and a lot of other folks. I upgraded my camera to a Canon 550D ( an entry level DSLR), subscribed to photo magazines and photo blogs, read up photo critiques, bought Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. Very soon, I would be found rushing to the balcony with my camera on a stormy day to get the perfect shot:

Figure 2: Lightning strike on IBM building (April 2012)

I came across some bird photographers and they invited me to a bird shooting expedition. It needed waking up at 4:30 am, meeting up at 5 am and leaving for a forest around 90 kilometers from my home. As we parked our car in the wee hours of the morning, I realized that with a weak signal on my mobile and no GPS, if we lost our way, there was no way of getting back to the parked car. Getting to shoot birds in the wild for the first time was very disappointing. My friends were shooting birds for years and their equipment were far more sophisticated ones than the ones I was carrying. I had taken almost 600 shots, with only 10 or so photos coming out really presentable. But it really opened up my understanding about birds – I could differentiate an egret from a heron and a green bee eater from a cotton pygmy goose. I realized that there are a lot of varieties of kingfishers apart from the ones popularized on beer cans by the Mallya Empire. I upgraded to some better lenses and learned techniques of taking sharper photographs.

I started enjoying the various forms of photography – portraits, nature, landscape, macro, street photography – you name it, I had tried my hand in it.  I made friends with a few enthusiastic folks who were equally interested in learning photography and we would often meet before dawn and drive to some place to photograph some new birds, some new aspects of dawn or some aspects of humanity. Life is not a humdrum rat race (or brat race?) to the finish anymore. Deadlines are still important but what holds more importance for me is the wish to catch something more interesting, something that I have not captured still.

“I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

Forever and forever when I move…”

Figure 3: The dawn breakers (February 2013)

Author's Bio- Note:

I am Sutirtha, a computer engineer, employed with a MNC, living in Hyderabad. I am interested in photography, writing and have contributed to many Chicken Soup for the Soul collections. When I am not shooting birds or landscapes, I can be found reading or watching some nice classic movie or playing with my kids.

Sutirtha Saha(photo blog:  http://www.facebook.com/fotosynthesizer)

The endgame of media ethics

                                                     By Papiya De

On a hot summer day way back in 1998, I landed at the Delhi airport to find that autos and cabbies of the city were on strike. Since I was traveling for work (a rarity by itself for a young scribe working in the media industry reeling under a severe cash crunch) I availed car hire services with the comfort that my company would foot the bill. It was my first visit to the magazine's head office in Connaught Place as I had recently joined its Mumbai office. After the exchanging pleasantries with my senior colleagues, I met our editor. His reputation of being a task-master preceded the friendly guy I met at his office that morning. I was to proceed to Gurgaon to meet the CEO of an electronics MNC that morning and the PR manager of the company had thoughtfully landed at our office with a car.  She knew I was an outsider in Delhi and wanted to ensure that I did not face any difficulty in reaching that far flung destination. Here I was, happy and relieved and shared this piece of news with my editor. To my utter surprise, within seconds the friendly smile on his faced was replaced with a firmer frown. A few phone calls later, he casually told me that he had arranged a car for me to travel to Gurgaon and if the PR manager wanted, she could travel in that car but under no condition should I ever avail facilities provided by companies, other than mine. Especially, when I was planning to write about them.

At that time, in a short span of my three-year career, I had worked and met several senior journalists. But, here was this guy, who stood out amongst all of them not because he was the editor of the then largest business magazine in India, but his journalistic ethics were right up there. Over the years, with media houses becoming money making machineries, this insignificant incident is perhaps of little relevance now.

After a sabbatical, as a news reporter in a financial daily in 2007, I realized that the world of journalism has gone through a metamorphosis. I learnt about Private Treatise, a legal arrangement by which a media company picks up a stake in a company in return for discounted ads and favourable editorial coverage. With such arrangements in place, is it possible to insulate the news and opinion writing from the growing interests in business. The answer is a clear no. Examples galore when reportage has been slanted in favor of its clients and where trouble shooters have ensured that negative coverage is minimised. Media houses choose clients wisely. These are most often companies that are about to be listed and looking for a leg up, without deep pockets to support its advertising and marketing initiatives. There have been reports about editors who have sent out mails to teams to provide editorial coverage to these client companies so as to enhance their value and thereby the value of their own investments. Ethical questions have been deftly brushed aside by such media houses as sour grapes from rickety rivals raising issues irrelevant to readers of Indian newspapers.

What was pioneered by the Times of India Group, way back in 2005, is a coveted business model for practically every media house today. Reportedly, every listed media house has jumped on to this ad-for-equity bandwagon and been signing such deals at a feverish pace.

How does a media company strike a balance? On one hand it is responsible to its investors for raising the value of their investment and on the other what about its responsibility towards its readers and the media community at large?”

With practices such as these and in an age of instant gratification, journalists shy away from spending hours chasing news. Re-hashing  press releases is an easier way to the get a salary,  a means to prevent dampening of the multiplex and mall mania. The infamous Radia Tapes are just another case in point. There are exceptions, of course. But, those are few and far between. For any seasoned media person, a perceptible slant in news coverage, be it political or financial, becomes but obvious. Editorial integrity is not just a challenge, it is passé.

Little wonder then that even after 15 years, my ex-editor, a short guy by average Indian male standards, will always stand the tallest in my world of journalism.

Author's note:

Papiya De has been a journalist for 12 years with publications such as Business Standard, Business Today and The Financial Express. She started her career with The Asian Age in 1995 while pursuing her post graduation studies. She has a Masters degree in English Literature from the Jadavpur University. Papiya quit journalism to move out of the country and moved into communications on her return with a leading Indian conglomerate. Currently, Papiya is a freelance writer.

CULTURAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF MEDIA

                             Exploring media spaces and digital cultures

                                                                            by Aparajita De

Imagine the excitement in the 70s when Television first came to India - of the unthinkable possibilities that it could open up and subsequently the irrevocably changes it would bring in our lives. A completely New World, new ways of seeing and be seen in return. Television was most definitely a game changer with a new set of rules. But it all seems passé now having seen so many avatars of the media. Just think of the present generation, who much before they can walk or talk is well conversant with computers, mobile phones or the social media. What disassociates us - the past, present and future generations, are the form and the technology of the media/medium. But more importantly, our connection lies in the manner in which media and its varying avatars have impregnated our lives and our minds.

The blog, Cultural Cartographies of Media endeavors to create an insight, and a narrative/s on media, media practices and its wide ranging influences. On one hand, the blog will be a commentary on various aspects of media and media practices. On the other, the blog tries to highlight media as a distinctive form of seeing and understanding the world around us.

The blog also attempts at giving space and engaging with the multiple voices - both academic and non academic, media practitioners and non-practitioners, artists and non-artists and beyond – that are continually trying to make sense of our everyday worlds and lives through media.  Hence, the blog page is not only an interface between the aforesaid binaries but intends to initiate an experimental space for all – people with different forms of expression and perspectives.      

If you like to know more on this blog or like to contribute to this blog, please contact us at medialabtalks@gmail.com

Author's Bio-Note:

The author is an Assistant Professor in Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.She is also the Convenor of the Department's Media Lab and Digital Library. She is currently working on Mediaspace, Bollywood and popular culture.