Collaboration

Over the years there were many people I’ve wanted to collaborate with- people whose work I admired, people who I liked, people who respected me and my work. I collaborated with a few of them, some of them worked and the others were unsuccessful.

I deem a collaborative work as successful or not successful based not just on the outcome of the project, but also on factors like ease of working together, how much we could learn from each other, the value of each other’s contribution, etc.

The first notable experience of collaboration I had was back in college when I was pursuing my bachelor's degree in Textile Design from NIFT, New Delhi. Our college had a rigorous and very strenuous curriculum, requiring us to take up multiple projects and assignments very close together. One such project was the craft cluster documentation wherein we were required to form small groups of 2 or 3 students and document a craft by visiting the cluster in person and also make design interventions if possible. I partnered with P, a smart boy with a spark;y personality and a kind heart. I knew him and his struggles personally and we both had mutual respect for each other. For this reason, we both thought we would make good partners. He also lived in Dharamshala, extremely close to the monastery where Thangka Paintings were created. So, all in all, we felt very positive at the onset of the project.

We began work on the project, both of us focussed, but very different in our approaches to the work at hand. While both us were sensitive to each other’s opinion, we were both unsure of the other person’s approach. I found his communication to be very weak and couldn’t stand that the artisans couldn’t understand the gist of what we wanted as the design intervention because P couldn’t and wouldn’t explain with more fervour and repeatedly. He also found my personality to be too loud and wild for the surroundings of Dharamshala, which he claimed was very conservative and didn’t take kindly to raucous women. There were also other issues added to the mix like his inability to provide time to the project together after 8 pm because we were boarded at his family’s home, my inability to adjust to the surroundings, our general disagreement on the methodology to follow for the project, etc. Long story short, The final output was lacklustre, did not follow a fixed pattern, and was badly formatted, also not covering some critical areas of discussion about the craft. My lesson from this collaborative project was that while 2 people can like and respect each other, their collaborative work will only work if they are both aligned with each other and the common purpose, willing to adjust and to accommodate each other.

An example of successful collaboration, at least at the moment, is my marriage. While there were a lot of apprehensions while starting our married life, given the struggle that came before to reach the point of marriage, the apprehensions slowly gave way to confidence that we could work it out. Of course, there were 3 months of absolute chaos and discomfort in the beginning, and we struggled with adjusting to each other’s lifestyles. But it soon gave way to understanding and peace, that came with our combined decision to build a life together, where we were both individuals too, but also one singular unit. Today, when I have taken up this long 2-year course at TII, my husband is acting like the perfect partner, where we both share the household chores and other everyday activities required to run a household peacefully. He cleans, I cook. He makes the bed, I complete my classes. I make breakfast, he brings me to lunch to my room. At this point, we work together well and almost like a well-oiled machine. There still are disagreements and squabbles, but we see it as the spice that keeps boredom and monotony at bay. So even though it’s a work in progress, our marriage is a good effort at successful collaboration.

Overall, I feel like I am sufficiently sensitive to others but perhaps lack in the assessment of potential failures. I also am a bad judge of character, but do possess a talent for good communication and negotiating well.

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