A Restoration Process

The Senate House of Madras University has been restored to its original, radiant glory. Conservation Architect Kalpana spoke eloquently about what she and her team had to go through, the months of hard work, research, mixing, scraping, climbing precarious hieghts, rediscovering old relics that had been thought to be lost forever ... before stumbling upon the inner, hidden beauty of the Senate House.

It occurred to me, as I was poring over my manuscript, that editing was a process that was a lot like restoring heritage buildings. Think about it, if you will: when an editor receives a manuscript, it's rather like a faded cloth, containing little glints and gleams of the original, of which it is a reflection. Then, the editor sets to work, scraping away the blemishes, rediscovering original patterns, sifting through words and meanings, digging through paragraphs, chiselling away misinterpretations ...

And the end process reveals the complete manuscript, in all its glory.

Kudos to the architects of this world, don't you think? :)

- Pavithra Srinivasan.