(our) Parking Mag

Hi Radha, so first things first. Why parking?

The reason I chose to work with parking spaces is because they seem to be becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our cities and day-to-day urban lives. Some cities, especially in the US, dedicate as much as 40% of all their public land to the sole use of parking, inherently changing the way in which we experience, navigate and remember the world outside of our own homes. Despite this, little thought and reflection has gone into parking spaces, their design and function as vital components of our everyday, urbane lives.

What kind of person would be interested in the (our) Parking Mag as a reader? 

The first kind of course would be the urbanist. An urbanist could be someone with an active or passive interest in their cities or someone who has studied any of the spatial sciences like architecture, planning, design etc and whose interest thus is in a more professional sense. Our tagline is articulated as 'parking news and literature for the car owner and parking enthusiast', the latter of which, is a yet to be cult of people, inspired by ideas presented in the magazine and its vision overall. 

You explore parking through various lenses in the magazine. What are some of these ways you have approached parking in each issue?

Broadly, the works in the magazine can be categorised into themes like studies, perspectives, aesthetics, interviews, reviews, fiction and entertainment, each featuring a unique way of thinking and looking at the phenomenon of parking and parking spaces.

Amche Parking has an article about Parking Lots in Poetry by Kanishk Devgan, titled 'Lost and Found'. The aesthetics section features a fictional collage titled Flowers For Flame by Kerala-based artist Vinayak Suresh, a photo-series by Vishesh Anand featuring Panjim's parking attendants as well as another photo series of vintage cars parked in front of old homes in Goa by Nathan Fernandez amongst other things. In Namma Parking, one study was about parking lots' potential to be good public spaces while another was a phenomenological exploration of the same kinds of spaces. I could go on but I think I should allow for some room to discover!

You had initially printed copies of Namma Parking only for some of your mentors. What prompted you to take the magazine to a wider audience?

It is true, my rather unambitious intention for the Namma Parking Magazine when I first printed it was only gifting it to scholars and industry mentors who I knew of and had worked with before. It was by chance that Robert Stephens chanced upon my book and I proposed to trade him a couple copies of it in exchange for a Bombay Imagined book [Read about it on LOVER]. Much to my surprise, he accepted, read my writing and found it intriguing enough to review it on his book's Instagram account. Spurred by this, I decided to create a parking Instagram account and started regularly featuring works from the Namma Parking Magazine on it after which interest and traction steadily began to grow. I haven't looked back since. 

You studied at Srishti in Bangalore. What was the process of creating an issue that is especially for a city that you had lived in for a while?

The problem is that having lived in Yelahanka for most of my time in Bangalore, I can't exactly say that I have had a very typical Bangalore experience of the city. When I started this research I was still a student at Srishti and so this project really began from a learning lens rather than, say, a professional one, which allowed me to be very experimental and playful in the way that I crafted the idea and concept for it, overall. Being able to pull out the 'student card' in my fieldwork also really helped me in many ways I suppose. One time, I rented a cycle, and drove straight into the basement of a BBMP parking lot under the pretense of a schoolgirl wanting to check the place out for a class assignment. I found that this metaphorical hat gave me much levy and allowed me to unsuspiciously do a lot of the work that I would have otherwise required numerous documents and permission slips for. 

The other thing about Bangalore also was that I had no vehicle of my own at this time, so though writing and thinking about parking, I didn't engage in the act of parking very directly myself, through ownership and/or use of a vehicle. I suppose the language in Bangalore was also somewhat a barrier in some cases where locals did not speak Hindi or English.  

For Amche Parking you lived in Goa. How did this process change from creating the first issue? How is the magazine itself different?

By the time I started working on the Amche Parking, my magazine community itself had grown and I felt confident that this time I wouldn't be the only writer in my own magazine. I was lucky to have 13 different submissions from a variety of creative people in Goa as well as a few other cities, who sent me their works - articles, studies, artwork, reviews, etc for me to edit and publish in this book I was putting together. In Goa I had a vehicle of my own, so I was able to experience parking and parking spaces first hand! I should tell you though, that I really struggle with parking my vehicle, because, being a person with a small bodily frame, I find myself often unable to move the hunk of metal that has been my scooter, even enough to drag it into and out of parking 'crevices' more like. Other than that, it would be interesting to note that Goa has the highest per capita vehicle ownership in the whole country at almost 50% for 4-wheelers and as much as 80% for 2 wheelers, as compared to the national average of 7% for the former. For me, digging into Goa's maritime (and land) trade history has given me some insight into how and why this could possibly be the case. 

Other than that, Goa is also unique because of its "rurban" landscape which is a hybrid of the urban-rural dichotomy we often see in other places around India. This itself has garnered a rather unique sense and perception of real estate and land, which is an essential question when having any discussion in relation to parking. 

What roles do you wear as a self publisher?

Marketing is one aspect of publishing that I hadn't realised was as crucial as I have found it to be in my role as a publisher. This has been the first time ever that I have felt the need to have an active presence online and am still learning my way around it. Having to do sufficient outreach, public events, reviews, interviews, newspaper articles ,etc, is all part of the marketing aspect of publishing. Other aspects include licensing, editing and designing though these duties come up once per book as compared to needing consistent attention on a daily/ weekly basis.  

You divide your time between field work and indoor work. Can you tell me more about your process, and your approach to research. 

There are some kinds of people who can be on field everyday, all day and then there are other kinds of people whose homes are their respective paradises and cannot be lured out into the public realm no matter how hard one tries. In my work, I try to find a balance between working on field and working at my desk. What I have found works for me is to alternate field days and home days such that I spend at least two or three days a week on field, in parking lots or meeting with people. I like to do a lot of reading at the onset of a project like the Amche Parking so that when I when I am on field and speaking to people, we don't have to spend precious time talking about things like important dates in the place's historical timeline, largest sources of employment and revenue or other common place-based knowledge. Once a preliminary plan and intention for the book takes shape, the process for it also emerges in such a way that it demands from me specific skills in relation to what it requires. 

You’ve met many interesting folks that have expanded the way you think about cities. Who are some memorable people you’ve encountered?

Indeed I have! Fernando Velho, faculty at Goa College of Architecture has been an amazing resource being an architect and urbanist himself. Through him, I happened to meet a couple of Goan nonagenarians, each with closets full of old books, the likes of which are impossible to find and buy anywhere anymore. Visiting their homes and hearing them talk about a different Goa from a century ago was a treat in and of itself. Another person it's been a pleasure to be acquainted with has been Nathan Fernandez, whose love for cars and automobiles has kindled within me a tiny flame of interest in classic cars and the people devoted to their preservation. A third person who I am glad to have met and gotten acquainted to is architect Dean D’Cruz, who being an avid electric car enthusiast himself, shared with me a design for a car which when parked could be used as a leisure space to sit and hang out in! This design is featured in the Amche Parking Magazine under the title '8 Feet Car'!

What are some of the materials and ephemera we are looking at? 

When I was researching the lead article for the Amche Parking Magazine (titled 'Comunidade Lands to Car Parks'), I found that I was doing a lot of referencing work alongside conducting interviews, and so I built a timeline on a wall in my home to keep track of dates and events that I was being told of. A few images above feature this same timeline. I also would draw lots of mindmaps of ways in which the many different ideas I was hearing and seeing were not only connected to each other, but also to parking and mobilities and one of the photographs above, with big green letters spelling the words 'care', 'ambition' and 'aspiration' features one of these mindmaps.

Other things that you are seeing in the photos above are spreads from both Amche and Namma Parking, the inside of a parking-themed gift box I made for all my contributors after the magazine was published and lastly though most interestingly, fold-out flaps from the No Parking Signs spread I made in the Namma Parking Magazine, each of which I individually and manually attached to the books after I found out too late that this work was beyond the scope of the printing method that I had opted to use for this particular book. 

What are some lessons you have learned about being an independent publisher during these two years?

For one I have learnt so much about crafting a book which relates to being able to design its layouts, choose the paper and decide on methods by which to actually print it. Another important learning for me has been in marketing and networking, something that I couldn't say I very much prized myself in, before the inception of this project. I have also learnt how to manage stock through keeping a precisie tally on a number of excel sheets all linked to one another. This is a system that I constantly find myself having to update and reiterate for I have multiple retailers, each selling books at their own pace and their individual commision rates in addition to customers who may pay on razorpay in cash or via gpay. Too many variables. 

You are in the process of making a parking poetry zine. How’s that going and what’s next for you?

Yes! I am! I have almost collected as many poems as I had hoped would go into the first zine, i.e. 10. I am now in the process of figuring out illustrations, layouts, paper size, paper folds and whether or not it will be in colour. I think the larger vision for (our) Parking is to be a hub/repository/archive for all things parking. In addition to an annual parking magazine on a different city every year, I do also want to create a line of parking themed merch, collaborate with artists to make parking artwork that can be for sale on my online store, as well as publish more books on and around parking itself. I am pondering a photobook, maybe in a coffee table style of images of different parking lots around the country. Just waiting for the right time and circumstances to make all these things happen! 

Thank you Radha. To order copies of (our) Parking Mag, head over to their website, and follow them on Instagram.