Writing History
Few days back a very intensive discussion happened on writing history…I will tell…Rupali and the 2 Prasads were putting together a dummy of Tracing Urbanism: Vol 1, which is to be called ‘Manufacturing Histories’ with me generally henging around. If anyone is wondering where was Aditya? He had been pondering over an article for almost a week’s time, had we all not ‘snapped him out of it’ he would still be home finishing a PhD. thesis on ‘transport situations in 3 cities’. Ok, back to the main story…as we did what we were doing, Rohan zoomed into the design cell (with all the things he is managing for Paul, KRVIA, Design Cell etc, ‘zoom’ is the only word apt for Rohan’s locomotion). Rohan was talking about Dipti’s Thesis, about her family having a property that went into dispute and today is completely encroached by slums with the family bungalow still existing, but has disappeared in the sprawl of huts. To this Shetty asked What? When? Why? and How? (Also answering each of his own questions in the same breath). Rohanromantic asserted his point of view followed by Rupalirationale joining in. This was followed by a huge discussion on history, why history is recorded, big mega narrative with its generalization, recording family history, why family history, recording family history for building an identity, recording personal history to get an idea of a smaller unit of local history often overlooked, history, history and more history. Design Cell had turned into a nuclear reactor (civilian purposes). I got a little excited and decided to undertake the task of recording one such pixel of history from the closest, convenient, historical source – pappa…
(‘pappa history’ releasing soon on a blog near you …)
