Dhairya Dand: Moved by stories, driven by curiosities

From growing up on the outskirts of Nashik to creating a shape-shifting screen and working on a bacteria-based computer, the 27-year-old has been widely hailed as a path-breaking innovator. In an interview spanning emails, Skype conversations and phone calls, the award-winning researcher-designer-inventor tells Marisha Karwa about his formative years, why he skipped his college lectures and what motivates him to keep inventing. 

Where did you grow up? What were your childhood years like?
I grew up on the outskirts of Nashik. My father was a plumber and my mother, a storyteller and housewife. My father built our house with his own hands. We had many animals — three monkeys, seven dogs, five cats, one wild goat, an ant colony and a dozen white rats. I was supposed to take up my father's craft, so I was taught plumbing when I was six. I also picked up carpentry and masonry from my father's friends. My mother would tell me stories, which fed my imagination. The stories, combined with my dad's hands-on approach added to my personality — the hand played with mechanical objects even as the mind created stories about it in an imaginary world. For example, SuperShoes , which has insoles that tickle you to guide you in the right direction, was born out of the mind imagining the possibilities but the limbs working in sync with the thought.

I was a bad student in school... I barely passed. I could never pay attention in class and I hated structured learning. I did enjoy reading and I liked making (things) with my hands. When I was 14, I saw a computer and was awestruck. This was a medium, a tool, that I could program with my intentions and it would follow. It was a magical tool. I decided that I didn't want to be a plumber and instead learn more about this new love of mine. So against my parent's wishes, I moved to Bombay in 2005 to study computer science at Veermata Jeejabai Technological Institute (VJTI). I learnt much at VJTI but soon dropped out because the classes never taught me anything. I absorbed what I could from the Internet and by meeting new people.

What is the one thing/one lesson you most remember from that time?
From my father, I learnt that the mind and the hand are one. Creating new things is a form of human expression and the only reason that humans are different (from other beings) is because we express. To truly create, you must act from your hands and govern from your mind. Philosophy and craft should be balanced. They are one – not one higher than the other.
From my mother, I learnt the power of stories. You can live in a land of pure imagination with stories. They have the power to transform your life and that of others. We become the stories we tell ourselves.

The 'Cheers' ice-cubes measure how much alcohol a person has consumed and at what pace. Accordingly, its sensors send an alert SMS to the person's friends to intervene. 

What prompted you to study engineering?
It was the beauty of a tool that is so receptive to human intentions... I like to observe, question, self-reflect and find new knowledge, which turns into hard-earned wisdom – which then never leaves you. Engineering seemed to be one science that shared my ideals. The other was philosophy. I used to crash into St. Xavier's for that.

I've read that you funded your own education since you were a teenager. Can you tell us more?
When I moved to Bombay, I started working at Lamington Road, assembling and selling desktop computers. Mostly because that was one more way I could learn more about this magical tool. That is how I funded the first year. In my second year, I got an internship with Google, and in the third year, with Harvard University. Harvard paid me enough dollars for two months to suffice me in rupees for the next 10 months. By the fourth year, our start-up (with classmates Ravi and Mini) was functioning and our product, Lokshahi, a low-cost, mobile platform for civic complaints and redress for rural areas, was sold for a good sum. That funded many more years ahead.

And how did you end up spending more time at IIT's Industrial Design Centre instead of attending lectures at VJTI?
After my first year at VJTI, I realised how messed up the system is. Gaining pure knowledge for the sake of it is discouraged. What is rewarded is conformity. Not just at VJTI, but at most places. At Harvard, I created a system that analysed the Persian blogosphere and mapped emotions and sentiments on a 4-axis map of intentions. That made me very interested in the human side of creation — the emotions and the accordances of objects and structures. Design seemed the logical place where I could find more answers.

Professor Ravi Poovaiah of IDC was a most gracious mentor. He gave me an opportunity to create a new device that would allow autistic kids to communicate their emotions. We worked on it together for two years and a whole new world opened up to me – that of human empathy in the context of creating new technologies. I still owe to Ravi for opening my eyes and creating this balance between technology and design, between possibilities and ethics, in my mind.

After the second year of engineering, I only went back to the VJTI campus for exams – which I barely passed. I spent most of my time crashing on the Masters of Design classes at IDC. And since I wasn't a student, I didn't care if I was attending a class on product design, interaction design or mechanical design. I dropped in (for a lecture on) whatever caught my interest.

Would you say that curiosity makes learning a joyful activity?
Of course. What is learning if you can't open your eyes to the immense beauty of the world? What is the use of knowledge if you can't see it in everyday life? What is the use of formulas if you can't see it's core essence in action around you? Education is what others do to you, learning is what you do to yourself. Curiosity isn't a gift. It's just the act of opening your eyes, being fearless, and looking – looking for grace, for beauty, for truth. It isn't an easy path, but it's one that's more rewarding. Walking on that path, I have lost my religion, I have lost people, I have lost relationships, but there is nothing more of value than living a life of your own conviction. Creativity, and hence creating, are central to humanity.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you read 'innovation'? And then 'design'?
Innovation = Search for truth. When do you know you have found truth? When what you work on, looks like beauty? Truth and Beauty are innovation.
Design = Asking questions and finding answers.
The motto of my studioXfactory, oDD is: To see the world differently, however aching; To search for the truth, however difficult; To find beauty, however ugly; To live in the land of pure imagination, however delusional; To share this gift with the world, whatever it takes.

'Obake' is a shape-shifting screen that was created by Dhairya Dand and fellow MIT researcher Rob Hemsley.  

From Coucou and Jellow to MediumX, Radical Kitchen, SuperShoes, etc – your creations are meant for very diverse audiences. Is this a happy accident or a conscious decision?
My name, Dhairya, means patience in Hindi. I'm the most impatient person I know. I'm also very curious... to the point of ADHD. I know I've so little time to live, that the only thing I can do is to do more. I'm not a workaholic, I'm a creatoholic. That is the only way I feel alive. To love, to see and then to do.

A lot of your creations seem to have come from the realm of sci-fi. Does popular culture inspire you?
Yes, I'm also a professor at the design school at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), teaching Masters in Fine Arts and Masters of Design courses in Artificial Intelligence. I created and teach two courses – Mythology and Design, and Science Fiction and Design.

Stories that have survived generations through mythology, and stories that we yearn for in fiction – both carry a nugget of distilled human desire, which is what makes them so elusive. So, half the time in class, I urge my students to read and create their own stories, then to distil those stories into essential principles or philosophies that they find inspiring, and then use them to re-imagine, redesign and re-engineer modern life. It's my way of paying tribute to humanity's biggest gift – stories – and make my students realise the beauty of the human legacy they have inherited and to put that to good.

What is your approach to a new piece of work – where do you start and how do you crystallize what needs to be done?
I observe a lot. I keep a diary, I sketch a lot, I meet strangers, I collect textures, I live in the moment, I don't judge, I absorb everything I can, I long for new experiences. I do this without the hope that any of it would lead to a project. Just to experience nature and its elements. Somewhere, at some point, you have an epiphany. No Eureka moment is an overnight job. It's a product of years of work and care.

I start from a strain, a scent that intrigues me. I put faith in it, I follow it mercilessly. I think, I keep churning out new prototypes and expressions. Over time, the mystery unfolds. Most of my creations are projects that are derived from things I have experienced or things I need to change about myself. I keep at it, and eventually, the solution presents itself. For example, Lokshahi came out of seeing suffering due to the civic body's lax attitude in our village. To even lodge a complaint, one would have to go all the way to the district headquarters, and then the complaint would be lost in the bureaucracy's files. So we created this software platform that would enable people to send complaints by messages and the complaints would then be recorded, assigned to an officer and monitored.

Similarly, when I was at IDC, I'd smoke often and realised that cigarette butts ended up creating a pile of litter. So I fashioned a cigarette in a manner that its butt contained a seed covered by a flap. Upon smoking the cigarette, the flap would be exposed, and stubbing it out would plant a seed inside the ground. So I ended up adding many plants to the IDC campus!

How soon will we be able to see your creations in shopping aisles?
Each work has its own end. Some of my works have been bought out, some will be in the market, some end up as exhibitions, some as videos, some as acquired limited edition pieces. I had a recent exhibition at the Victoria & Albert in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Toyota and New Balance bought out three of my technologies/inventions in the last year.

What are you working on currently?
I'm interested in time and age. Age is a shadow of time. I'm making a bacteria-based computer that would eventually die and in the process multiply. A computer that uses bacteria as its basic logic blocks instead of silicon, replacing the ones and zeroes with a cell that is alive.

Our minds decay and a photo that you capture in your mind will not be the same 10 years from now when you try to recall it. But technology remains constant — the same photo and pixels even 200 years from now. I'm working to make technology that can be empathetic to human age and die and grow old with us.

You've travelled, worked and stayed in 10 cities in the last seven years. How does a new environment/culture shape you?
It's like growing up in different cultures and having many eyes, all compressed into the small timeline of life. I grew up in Nashik, lived in Bombay, Bangalore, Singapore, Phnom Penh, Tokyo, London, Ad-Damman (Saudi Arabia), Boston, Cambridge, New York and Seattle. And I travel much more. It's my way of putting myself in uncomfortable, new situations where my mind's idea of the world is thrown into the dirt after seeing a new reality. And then you have to recreate your idea of the world accommodating and being informed with this new experience and culture. It's the same feeling as being reborn.

What is your greatest fear?
To not be able to express what I see through my medium and tools.

What is the trait you most admire in others?
Kindness, compassion and openness to the new.

What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
Being able to create, to be endlessly delusional, to be fearless, to put faith in the ways of nature that things will work out. I've been so close to death or self-destruction half a dozen times while madly trying to pursue my work, someone or something has always saved me. If you can do what you like and give the gift of your creation selflessly back to the world, the world will always find a way to repay you.

What makes you happy?
Being alive.