The First Museum Visit of Speaking Archaeologically Volunteers, Season I by Aditi Joshi

Where do I begin about the whole Museum Visit! Okay, so we had a Coinage Workshop. A task was assigned to all of us to present our observation sheets based on our enlightenment on the subject by Shriya. A date was settled for a next SA meet in the Museum of Natural History in Chandigarh. So, we all met met again; this time, better acquainted with each other.

Being slightly behind the schedule due to losing the direction, we lost a bit of the wisdom shed by Shriya on the origin and evolution of life on Earth, as we know it today. The Cyclorama - Evolution of Life is housed on the ground floor of the Natural History Museum. The geological landscape paintings illustrate the origin of earth, evolution of life from unicellular organism to multi cellular plants and animals through the Archeaozoic, Paleaozoic, Permian, Devonian, Triassic, Jurassic, Oligocene, Miocene and Pleistocene periods.

The Cyclorama - Evolution of Life

International Doll Museum

We were divided into two groups: those who had qualified in the panel's eyes for the coinage task and the other who did not (though they were equally brilliant). The latter were formed into a group to cover up the International Doll Museum in Chandigarh, which was actually the better and more fun task!

So forming two "teams", each divided into pairs, we watched as Shriya, being her informative self, taught us to draw inferences from the outfits and the significance of dress cultures (which as it turned out, was one of the essay tasks we were given).

Pairing me with a fellow volunteer, Anubhav, we were allotted the metal sculptures where we were allowed to be our "crazy, chatty" selves. After scrambling through the sculptures and eating up Shriya's head, we decided to go with an essay on Garuda. As informative as it was, we could not compete well with the others. However, the whole idea of the visit was to help us be better at deciphering the given information in a museum instead of clicking and posing for random pictures which would lie in some corner to be forgotten. Certainly, the whole experience enriched us on a whole new level.

Our fellow volunteers were assigned textiles, scripts and sculpture sections. The museum staff was certainly amused to see a bunch of enthusiastic youngsters clamoring around the museum. A few of us like Vidushi, Anubhav, Vedant turned out to be frequent guests of the museum library. A beaming lady (my memory fails me here) graciously hosted us until we were all strutting around the place as if we owned it!

After a lot of musing over our respective topics, we all gathered in the reception area, where in an interesting conversation with the museum staff we came to be acquainted with the museum's limitations. They were mildly surprised by the enthusiasm of the volunteers and offered to help us around in case we were to come there again (and we fully exploited their graciousness!).

To while away the time after being bombarded with truck loads of facts, Shriya offered to tell us her experience of getting through the University of Oxford (with the minute details of going crazy at midnight after she received the news!).

The day had drawn to a close and we all parted to our respective ways. Often people form ideas and notions about certain streams or jobs or places for that matter. Its like you tell someone that you are a History Honours student and their reactions be like "Oh! That must be so boring" or "History! Isn't that all about just mugging up dates and wars!" or the most offensive one yet "Why History? You could not get admission in any other stream?" Our replies are synchronised — "We love History!" because the statement holds true to its core. However, getting back to the museum visit and archaeology, I doubt if we could have been provided with a better platform to exploit our love for the subject. It has been a long journey with Speaking Archaeologically and there is more to come our way. I say we just sit back and live it one precious moment a time!