Bhima Devi Blogs #1: How it all began

Context is imperative to all archaeological studies.

This is the line you'll encounter when you first start reading our journal on the Bhima Devi Project if you skip the Preface, that is. 

So, what better line to begin this memoir with than this? It's doing precisely that for you right now—establishing context. 

So, let's go then you and I...

Let's not waste time. Let's go back in time!

June 3, 2015

My first encounter with the site Bhima Devi Temple happened literally two days after Speaking Archaeologically was born. Back then, it was never going to be a Research platform. It wasn't even going to be a teaching platform. It was only going to be a page about forgotten sites and monuments on Facebook that people encountered by chance—and that's what I was doing that morning—writing about the Mughal Gardens of Pinjore (now known as the Yadavindra Gardens) when I stumbled upon what Wikipedia claimed to be The Khajuraho of the North. 

Intrigued, I let one webpage lead me to another. Khajuraho of the North? In Pinjore? Adjacent to the Mughal Gardens?

That wasn't likely! I have been visiting the place every year since I was two and a half years old. It was (and still is) the best place for a sunny picnic for the inhabitants of the Kasauli Hills, especially in the bleak and dreary midwinters. How is it that I have attended the Meena Bazaar at the Gardens, taken camel rides in front of the sallyports, seen my first porcupine in a long gone zoo within the fort, even learnt to play skittles (bowling for the Americanised late millennials of today!) and go-kart there in game arena that no longer exists, and never spotted a Khajuraho like temple complex? Agreed, I wasn't always an archaeologist but I wasn't exactly blind either!

I had to see this!

However, seeing it never happened until Valentine's Day, 2016.

That morning, I gathered all the single ladies of the then Research Wing and we all went for a preliminary site survey (or as the insider joke ran: a date with Varun, Ishan and Sharabh—the three most prominent Sculptures on the site).

We spent all day drawing preliminary plans, verifying coordinates and taking pictures of the sculptures housed in the four identical large rooms that serve as the site Museum and returned enchanted by the Alasya Kanya, the Darpanadharini and—what one of my volunteers was keen  to point out— a naked miniature Ganesh figure with no phallus but very distinctive breasts. 

Just a glance at the site was enough to tell you there was so much to write about this place but I couldn't have done it alone and the girls who had come in for the site survey conveniently got away on the pretext of final exams. So that was that! We composed a site report and once Kate (the late Catherine Holtham-Oakley, one of the Senior Panel Members at Speaking Archaeologically) had reviewed it and approved of it, we published it in the Speaking Archaeologically Journal Volume I. The story ended there. We were done with Bhima Devi Temple but little did I know that Bhima Devi Temple wasn't done with Speaking Archaeologically just yet.

October 15,2017

The Third Batch of Speaking Archaeologically Research Wing. First Workshop. And the third workshop now at the site of Bhima Devi.

On a whim, I had decided this should be a site based workshop. I had recruited these people in a museum, after all and then we'd visited the Museum of Man at the Department of Anthropology, Panjab University as their first ever Research Wing event. Why trap them with more objects when there was a site just at a driving distance from Chandigarh? 

I arrived early even though I was being driven down from Solan by my maternal uncle, my Mamu, who had work to do in Chandigarh. The students were all fashionably late even though they were literally taking an autorickshaw from Chandigarh. And yet, everyone from among the new recruits was present.

Admonishing them that this was the first and the last time I'd tolerate their lateness (it wasn't!) and inwardly gloating at many of these kids I would see for the absolute last time because they had a deadline that very night for a review paper that they were very unlikely to honour, I divided the group before me into two teams. I gave them each a handout with basic archaeological drawing conventions and lectured on about the basics of griding a site.

"You have all day. Here are the measuring tapes.Grid, draw and plot away on the graph papers you have. Whoever finishes first wins and will be treated to lunch by the losing team."

Three and a halfs hours later, neither team had finished yet and I was losing self control. 

Late and slow! Here was an intact, pre-excavted temple floor plan and they were unable to measure and plot it! What would these kids do on an actual trench if they had just excavated a new feature with truncated contexts?

At long last, Team A walked up to me.

"Ma'am, we are done," said a tiny little girl, leading the four really tall others towards me. "I would like to retake the measurements later, though. I am just not satisfied."

"That's fine... Priyanshu," I plastered a smile as I congratulated myself on remembering her name right. Almost everyone looked alike among the new recruits, except for the guy, naturally and this one had her name in alliteration with the guy, too. It was easier confusing their names with each other even if you had everything else right! 

"Lunch break," I shouted at the others, glad the whole thing was over at last. It was then  that I realised her partner—the guy with a name that nearly rhymed with hers —needed a word with me.

"Do you have something to add...Divyansh?" I managed to croak his name out successfully.

"Do you think Ancient Indian System of Measurements applied to this site, Ma'am?"

"What do you mean by Ancient Indian System of Measurements?"

"Well do you know the Hanuman Chalisa?"

Not sure where this was heading and having half a mind to tell him that not only did I know the Hanuman Chalisa, I had also been reciting it under my breath all morning so that I didn't end up murdering one of them, I replied in the affirmative.

"Well, the word Jojan refers to a unit of measurement used in the ancient times," he told me matter-of-factly.

 "I didn't know that," I admitted to him candidly. No archaeologist is all knowing after all and I still hold that each student adds something to your knowledge. "But if it did, does that mean something for this?"

"Well, as far as I remember reading in a school textbook," he replied, his eyes respectfully downcast. "There's a formula called Ayadhi that can tell you how tall this structure would have been when still standing if we have the exact measurements."

I got up. 

"Well, if that's factual, you have until tomorrow, young man. Convert what you have in metric today to ancient measurements and if it means something, perhaps you can write about it with a little more research."

3:00 a.m., October 16,2017

A series of frantic texts set my phone all abuzz, forcing me to open an eye blearily. Pictures of a handmade table in an untidy scrawl, showing an unmistakable conversion of angula, hasta and yojana to the metric, followed by conversions of the measurements of Bhima Devi to angula, hasta among others.

"Time to open, JStor," I muttered under my breath, flooding my tormentor with even more papers on the topic of ancient measurements ranging from sthapatis  to Michelle Danino. 

A week later

"Ma'am, sorry I called you against your explicit instructions but can we go back to Bhima Devi?"

"Divyansh, if you're going, you're on your own this time. I won't be able to join you."

"That's fine. We'll manage as long as we have your permission. Also-?"

"Yes?"

"Whenever convenient, could you see us somewhere and give us a small lecture on temple architecture, please? I think I may be on to how these measurements can help us reconstruction the original temple at least on paper."

A pause followed, broken only by the sounds of our breaths—his, baited and anticipatory, wondering what I would say next; mine, rasped and shuddering—could he really?

"I am scraping off all your tasks, Divyansh. Round up everyone, I'll see you Sunday at the Rustic Door in Sector 11."

As I gathered everything I possibly had in temple architecture and visual cultures of ancient art, I caught myself thinking, Is this really happening?

Did I finally have students who saw more to a site that only I had been interested in so far? Could this be the team I was looking for? Or were they just a bunch of college kids with beginner's high?

"Only one way to find out, Shriya," I told myself. "Let's reanalyse the site and allot each kid a research angle."

That afternoon, I wrote what would be the first ever break of papers that eventually became the core of Bhima Devi Project. Of course most of the students I met at the Rustic Door later that weekend were indeed just a bunch of college kids with beginner's high! However, I didn't know that there were two in that group of ten who would be as crazy and passionate about this as I was and there, at that table littered with books, cappuccino and floor plans, lay the seeds of what was soon to become the Bhima Devi Project.