CODING THE CLAY

EN years ago, Ajay John was knee-deep in the oil fields of Oman, sketching flowlines, marking weld paths, and mapping refinery layouts under the desert sun.

- RONNIE KURIAKOSE

The landscape was bare, the work precise. There were no trees in sight, let alone flowers.

Now, the 34-year-old spends his days molding flower vases.

Some are tall and thin, others squat and wide. On the shelves of his modest home-turned-studio in Kochi, they sit quietly in various states of becoming. Half-dried, bisque-fired, or glazed and gleaming.

Ajay doesn't speak of his shift from mechanical engineering to ceramics as a dramatic reinvention. There was no epiphany. "It just kept happening," he tells TNIE. "Until one day, this became the only thing I wanted to do."

The blueprint years Born and raised in Kochi, Ajay followed the path expected of many middle-class boys who liked math and machines. Science stream in school, then the ordeal of engineering college. In his case, mechanical studies at LBS College in Kasaragod. There were no wild dreams of art. If anything, only a quiet fascination with systems that fit together and made sense.

Elaborating on this, Ajay says, "I always liked mechanical things. How parts fit together, how movement happens. Aeronautics was my first goal, but that didn't work out. So, I stayed with mechanical."

After graduation, he spent half a year working with his father's architectural firm before heading to Oman, hunting for enough at Galfar Al Misnad. That year shaped him more than Ajay realised at the time.

"The work was rigorous and included extensive planning, poring over blueprints, field visits, flowline drawings for oil and gas fields, welding charts, supervision and more. All this, in the middle of nowhere. All around us, there was just sand," he recalls.