Weekly notes 3

We’ve spent this week in Bidar district mapping centuries-old wells and measuring well-depths. When you look down into a well, you see the glint of the water that the sun touches, you think that it does not appear so deep - let’s drop a stone. So you go about searching for a stone small enough to fit the top-grill, the jail that prevents us - modernity from being existential around the well. You drop it, and you discover in a few seconds that its a pretty rich, throaty well. So you drop the measuring tape with a plumb-bob attached, let it race through your fingers when gravity takes over and wait for the splash - because you can’t see the bright yellow after a point. And then you discover that the well is well well well, well over 24mts in depth, because at 24mts, you find water, and then the tape runs out. And then you all collectively realise that this is the third day you’ve forgotten to buy a 50mtr tape…

• Wells were situated near settlements…settlements had places of worship… and places of worship needed water, so they too had wells. Wells were probably much more fluid in the times they were built. But now, wells are also becoming entities to be possessed by much more radical forces. I read about the Shahi Jama Masjid at Sambhal, and a well nearby that is being contested by the hindu-right. A spatial survey in November 2024 by the administration led to 5 people being killed in the violence that followed

• A ‘survey’ is a tool of the ‘Administration’, it may be the ‘District Administration’ or the ‘Supreme Court’ that ordered it, but at the end, it appears that local administration performs it. The Supreme Court cites a survey and a plan diagram of the Babri Masjid from the 1950s in their 2019 judgement - it appears to a be simple plan diagram, heavily daubed with saffron, somehow concentrating the state of the site’s history till that point: from the division of the masjid into two parts in 1856, the outer courtyard for Hindus and the inner portion for Muslims. This and the other zoomed-out plan are the only two graphics in the 1045 page judgement, complete with addendums and so on.
  
  I am appalled that the only representation, the only graphical representation (incuding photographical) is this map. There is so much assumed-truth, shaky-axioms that will be carried forward from what is likely a not-so-genuine-map, based on its bold color choices, titles and the complete lack of representation of places of Muslim Worship (Multiple witnesses attest to Namaz taking place in 1949 before the placing of Idols inside the Masjid.)

• We began the complex process of mapping the Bidar Fort area on OpenStreetMap, see here. There are multiple dynasties that have built and added to the same complex, so it is a difficult to map and document the timeperiod of each palace/structure, so for now, I’ve documented the fortification boundaries (across dynasties seemingly, so it is not a singular boundary), the palaces with the help of Shreyas, Vinay and Harsha who have extensively worked in many different ways for the fort. I also mapped the triple moat, which is on the southern side of the primary fortification. The northern side is a steep 30mtr drop at the edge of the Bidar city’s plateau. I write about this along with other folks at Untold.Town

• In Chapter 9 of the Personal is Political: (In)Spite of It All: Parochialism, Idenitty, Religion and Politics, Aruna Roy talks of a people-financed kirana store that the MKSS setup in 1992, when L. K. Advani was bringing the Rath Yathra, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and how the MKSS stood against the Bandh that followed because then CM of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadava stopped them at the border. And goes on to talk about the Concernet Citizens Tribunal (CCT) that investigated the Godhra Riots of 2002. It is here that I realised that Harsh Mandar was a serving member of the IAS, when he wrote the article ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’. I found a version at the South Asian Citizens’ Web
  
  I was born a few months after the riots, and it is only now that I am learning much of the 92’ fuelled history. I wonder how many people from my generation carry this knowledge. I am worried that the lack of this history in our minds allows for history to repeat. I atleast learnt from NCERT textbooks that carried direct references to the Gujarat Riots and the Babri Masjid Demolishment, but now even that is removed. What is public memory for the post 1992-2002-2014 generation?
  
  Edit: Harsha read this and requested that I watch Lalu Prasad Yadav’s recorded speech when L. K. Advani was arrested. You can see a clip of it from Anand Patwardhan’s Ram Ke Naam here

• This Thursday and Friday, me, Vinay, Harsha and two other Directed Research Practise students from the CEPT Masters’ programme, Gokul and Chinmay, accompanied us to Basavakalyan to map and document more stepwells. We seem to discover stepwells or large wells in this city everytime, even though we might have walked or passed by on the same road. Many of these are not noticeable unless you have grown up around them because of the amount of vegetation and foliage cover that makes us blind from the street.

• The kind of conversation and networking that must happen to make new acquaintances and discover such wells is wonder-inducing. It is a lot of chai, hand shaking or namastes, calling each other sirs’, meeting farmers and talking about changing climate, talking to the security guards at monuments about the recent history of the wells, sitting in staff rooms and meeting councillors and professors who are from the region. These are genuinely interested folks, who are happy to see TeamYUVAA intersted.

• We have been looking for Thick Descriptions this week. Eshwari introuced us to it. Thick Descriptions (as i understand it) carry imagery beyond the written word, describing a time or place or event far beyond similes. It is almost metaphorical and specificly describing an action, event occurring in a place. Kannum Kannum Nokia is a song that came in Anniyan, a 2004 Tamil Film, starring Sadaf Mohammed Sayed (Sadha), Vikram, Vivek, Prakash Raj. I realised the song’s repeated use of ‘Apple laptop penne’ (Apple laptop woman), and ‘Cappucino Coffee ah?’ are facinating descriptions of class, place, context and the time in which the song was made.