The previous versions of the text that was to become this chapter can be found on the internet by searching "My Grandfather's House".

The first part of the talk was a nudge to the students at Srishti - a school of design in Bengaluru. This audio can be found here - link tbc.

LINK to the first part of the Bengaluru reading session, the setup or the training: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ooVwdNMHYYhyfrMGVglNN?si=b1140dd6464c4a01

What I want to say is that sometimes books are written to be topical, books are written as a commercial venture. I write a book and then I make money from it. Sometimes books are written to inform people, and sometimes books are written because that is the way people make a living. So Murakami writes because he’s a novelist and he writes every day and that’s all he does. And then he lives off the royalty and he pays his bills.

I have a problem. I have been an academic for many decades. I get a salary to come and do some teaching and to do some research. So the money I get, the income I get, is not connected to what I write. So what do I write?

Now, I entered university at the age of 33. And I entered as an Associate Professor. But I also entered after a decade of working with not-for-profits. So I went to university saying that if I go into university and if I don’t need to work for… you know, like, I’ve got my income. My salary is coming and I’m paid for. So I’ll get up in the morning and teach, and then I have to figure out what is it that I want to research.

It’s a different kind of world. So people who are university academics, they can propose a research project. Many people don’t. Many people say that I will only do research if somebody pays me to do the research. But in my case, there was a sting in the tail. There was a pivot. I was leaving working for money. I had a factory, I had workers, and I would do interior fit-outs, I would make prototypes and models and workstations for factories and I had a metal fabricating unit. And so you pay me money, I make something for you, and I give it to you.

And when I went into university, I said that I will not do this work, I will not work commercially. I want to be an intellectual, or a public intellectual, or somebody who’s, you know, taking things forward or… So I—my first project was called Design in the Public Domain, which means that I’m not going to work for private commissions.

When I started my PhD, I was also working—I was collecting waste. I had a sustainability project, and I had reached this point where I said, “The problem with waste is that we’re allowed to move.” So many of you put your clothes in pink bags. Yeah, let’s have a show of hands if you’ve ever put any item of clothing into a pink bag, or given anything to Salvos. Thank you, Laurie. Yeah.

If you were to track that piece of clothing, where do you think it would have reached? Because I researched that. I can offer it to you that you will be able to go to Ghana and find it there. So waste moves at very, very high speed. The minute it leaves you, it just zooms off, it goes somewhere.

And I was a waste researcher, and I said, we must stop the movement of waste. Okay, so I was teaching in a campus university, which was a gated community. There were some 8,000 people living there, and I said, I’m going to tell the municipal trucks not to come into the campus. And I ran that project. I collected the waste from that university campus. I had 30 people working for me and some trucks. And it’s in the book, the story. So that’s chapter one.

But if you were to go into the world, if you were to go into communities, if you start to look at things, then you start to wonder.

What is the way to do Industrial Design?

Soumitri, 4 August 2025

I did a reading - a little bit of reading - from the book. But this event was more like a stop on my book tour. My world book tour.

Thank you Rahul & Babika for organising this. It was a treat to speak to an audience that is into books, writing and reading. I focussed the talk also on all my past students who were there. It was like I had brought my own audience. The affection was electric? Something like that.

The evening began with us landing up at 6 ish. We left at 9.30 PM. I am now hankering for my other readings to match this.

Too lovely. Thank you all.

I wrote a book.

It’s called The Social Object.

And now—I read it aloud.

Into a microphone. In a room. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with others.

What does that mean? Do I just read?

No. I breathe life into words that were once still. I carry them from the page into the air. I test them. I wonder about them. I let them echo, and I let them be overheard. I ask: does this text still work when spoken? Does it touch something in you, the way it did in me when I first wrote it?

For more visit the website.

Website for transcript - https://thesocialobjectbook.wordpress.com/