Of Museum Visits, An Intense Game Night, and Reluctant Goodbyes: The All India Meet Blog Part II by Neldria Crasto, Vanshika Poddar, and Diptarka Datta

 After that extremely eventful session, we ventured out on a rainy Chandigarh afternoon to visit the Le Corbusier Museum. If you are looking for a place to really understand the entire historical journey of the city of Chandigarh, this is your place. From letters between Prime Minister Nehru and Corbusier, the architect of Chandigarh, to large maps detailing the city’s plan, this museum was a fresh and exciting space to visit. We saw Harappan artefacts that had been unearthed when the city’s foundations were being laid, and glimpsed at the personal belongings of the architect himself- his chair, paintings and sketches, and the ‘open hand’ concept the city was based on. We were a little amused and (and slightly irked) with one very curious staff member. “Don’t get too close!”, “Don’t sit there!” “Don’t touch the lights!” Someone was REALLY passionate about their job. 

Our hotel being just a few minutes from the museum, and it being a beautiful drizzly day, Diparka and I saw the opportunity to just walk back and enjoy the rain we both loved so much. I truly saw how beautiful the city was then, with a newly-formed friend beside me, admiring the city washed with fresh rain which had made everything cooler and brighter.

(One of my favourite pictures from the meet: us outside the Le Corbusier museum. From the left: the two Divyansh’s (senior and junior), Diptarka, Mrinalini, Sanskriti, and Me.)

We then settled in for the last session of the day: Coin Analysis. Our collections had coins right from the time of the Mahajanapadas till the Mughal times. As we settled down, Ma’am started passing around the coins chronologically. We were just beginning to analyse our coins, when we heard “Here, look at this.” Divyansh (senior) had already scanned the coin, found its origins and dateline, and located a database with all the types of coins found in the region! I really understood the importance of being adept with technology that day. We then resumed our own analysis. We weighed, measured, and observed the coins, asking questions and learning from each other. We told each other stories of how coins have different meanings in various rituals and traditions, and also tried to read some of the recognisable inscriptions.

(Deep in thought: snippets from the Coin Analysis Session)

It was the same group, the seven of us huddled together on the same bed, gloved hands holding coins and discussing best ways to preserve them. After yet another fulfilling session, we decided it was time to move to lighter activities, namely, a game of stone-throwing, also known as Pachika.

Pachika was the specific name of these small die-like objects Mrinalini had brought, but I recognised the games as gitte, something I played with my mother with pebbles on the sidewalk. You basically throw these objects (hereon called dice for convenience) up in the air, and then try to catch them all at once at the back of your hand. Fairly easy, right? Wrong.

It turned into the most intense game that required all of our prayers and concentration and went on for hours. We laughed the loudest playing this game. It was hard to picture the same people who were professionally discussing archaeological approaches and techniques a while ago were now huddled on the same bed again, this time chanting ridiculous mantras in hopes to catch the pachikas correctly.

(This image may look calm, but everyone had their fingers crossed at this moment)

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted, our shared joy and energy finally shimmering down. We reluctantly settled onto our beds, ready for another day of the workshop, but only after some much-needed sleep.

Day 3: Time to Wrap Up!

The final day of the SA All India Meet was here! The last two days had almost passed by in a jiffy. We all are probably going to be there together for just another day.  All of us, coming from different regions and different parts of the country, had somehow become the best people to live with! For me personally, it was all the more exciting to be commuting from the Punjab University Boys' Hostel to the hotel room where the other members were putting up (I am sure the hotel manager would have started suspecting us of being engaged in some kind of shady business by that time!)

The final day of the Meet was devoted to the Object Analysis workshop at the Government Museum and Art Gallery. Being a Member of Speaking Archaeologically for three years, I had read a lot about the objects in the Chandigarh Museum. I was only very excited to be visiting this Museum, with everyone else. Ma’am had told all of us to get ready by 10 AM. And yes, there was of course that last-minute flurry to fill in our water bottles and pack our bags for the day!

That reminds me, did I tell you how we ended up having the Museum session on the last day of the Meet? Well, this is what happened:

The original plan was to visit the museum on the very first day of the Meet. However, having realised later that it was a Monday and the Museum would be closed, we thought of  shifting the Museum visit to the final day of the workshop, and visit Bhima Devi on the first day instead.

Anyway, here we were at the Chandigarh Museum. There were 5 of us and we had booked two cabs to take us to the museum. Thankfully, it is easier to fetch cabs in Chandigarh than it was to reach Pinjore from Mohali (well, you might have already read about it from our First Blog, didn’t you?)

People who have been to the Chandigarh Museum before would know that it is a huge modernist building standing right in the middle of a big and spacious lawn. I remember me and Divyansh (Junior) had to spend some time figuring out where exactly the Museum reception stood! Thankfully enough, we saw Vanshika soon enough, waving at us and directing us to the right place!

We started our museum workshop with the basement gallery. This is an open gallery area in the museum, right before one enters into the main building. The entire Gallery area had rows of stone sculptures placed there. Some were more exposed to the sunlight and the winds, while others were placed in a more covered space. All of us were listening to Ma'am, in rapt attention, who told us about the vagueness of the provenance data, and how that might hamper our research. For instance, the fact that a group of Hoysala Period sculptures, sculptures from the Vijayanagara Empire, and some others were just clubbed together under an umbrella label "from South India" made it look really perplexing! Imagine a native of Chandigarh who would never have visited the southern Indian states before. The moment they encounter these objects in the museum, they would be completely clueless as to where this object has come from. Shortly, Meharleen also joined us for the day’s session, armed with her DSLR.

(All of us, listening in rapt attention to Ma'am, teaching us different aspects of Object Analysis).

We started walking from one object to another in the Gallery, taking multiple photographs and noting down our observations. It is then that Ma'am told us to divide ourselves and look at separate objects from the Gallery, rather than all of just huddling over the same object! That really made so much more sense and we started moving towards separate objects.

Ma’am told us how Object Analysis research papers have to be composed and why they are important. “And please don’t fill your paper with fantastic adjectives and loaded statements that you yourself don’t understand. You would get a good beating from me if you ever do that!” Immediately, I remembered, in an instant flashback, my initial papers on the Shalabhanjika and the Alasya Kanya, both equally "rich" in elaborate jargon and fantastic adjectives! I knew Ma'am would have remembered that very well, too (given the torture of having to read through and evaluate those papers!)

We might as well have spent the whole day in the basement gallery itself, unless Ma'am, as always, poured some sense into us and asked us to move towards the main building of the museum!

Once inside the main museum, we realised how big the museum really is. There was this sense of being overwhelmed that prevailed over me, at least! We did skip the ground floor gallery for the time being, given that it almost entirely consisted of artworks (not that none of us are interested in art; it's just something that a group of archaeology students would most likely skip for the very first time they are in a new museum!)

We walked up to the Terracotta Art Gallery. Early terracottas are what a lot of museums in India would generally start with, but it was interesting to observe the possible uses of some of these objects. Next was the cheerfully bright metal sculptures and bronze art gallery. Interestingly, the first object that caught all our attention in this gallery was a seated sculpture of the Buddha. Despite all its beauty and intricacies, it turned out to be the "least photogtaphable object" in the entire museum! The reason for that being the light falling on the object from all sides, and all of that getting reflected through the glass casing. Of course there were several other interesting objects in that gallery. Mrinalini told us about the legend of Khandoba, while we encountered a bronze sculpture of Khandoba and Mhalsa. We also did get to see a lot of "folk art" and "tribal art", with nothing more in the description commending them. We all recounted our own experiences of museum covers, where tribal artefacts would be labelled only vaguely as one could imagine!

(That's how you are ideally supposed to take photographs of museum objects: stick your mobile phone camera along the glass case)

Eventually we came to the Gandhara Art Gallery. Stepping into this gallery, my sense of awe was palpable. The Art of Gandhara had always fascinated me, and every Research Wing Member at Speaking Archaeologically would have had to deal with the Gandhara sculptures at least once in their tenure. We all sat down with baited breath, looking forward to what was to follow.

Ma'am handed us all an Object Analysis sheet. This was a worksheet with all the necessary details and observations that we were required to note down,  choosing one particular object from the gallery for our study. All of us spent some time going through the worksheet (with the palpable sense of fear when you generally encounter worksheets), and then started walking up and down the gallery, passing by each particular object, till something particularly caught our attention. Soon, each of us had picked up one object to work on. There were questions like "how difficult do you think it was for the artist to have sculpted this object", or "what challenges do you think the material would have posed for the sculptor"! We also had to compare our chosen sculpture with objects from other schools or art in the same museum. I could see everyone dispersed across the gallery, each with a sheet in their hands. Some of us would be standing or squatting down in front of the object of our interest, while others would sit at a particular place and write it all down. I could very well see Vanshika, standing in front of the huge Hariti sculpture, bearing an inscription in Kharoshthi, jotting down points in her observation sheet. Eventually, we all did finish our individual worksheets, with most of them packed with lines and words struggling to breathe within the limited space of the worksheet!

By the end of the workshop, we suddenly realised that Vanshika and Divyansh (junior) had to leave! They needed to catch a train in the evening, and would have to get their luggage from the hotel before going to the station. I mean come on, did we all not know that was going to happen eventually! But it just took us some time to realise that two people had already left for their home, and there was this sense of void that slowly started sinking in.

(The Object Analysis Sheet: one which all of us were so excited to look at)

Finally, it was time to visit the Miniature Art Gallery. This in itself was an overwhelming experience, to be walking around huge miniature paintings in the gallery walls. We all tried taking photographs of these paintings, again attempting to minimise as much as possible the impact of the light and the reflection falling upon these. At that time, almost as if to fill in the void that had just been created by Vanshika and Divyansh's (junior) departure, we had Divyansh (senior) joining us all at the museum, all of a sudden.

With his reassuring smile and calm demeanour, it felt very much like a godsend!

Soon after, we came across these sets of Pahari miniature paintings, with Takri inscriptions on them. Having done a recent course on Takri with Sarang Sharma Sir, most of us were very excited to be able to read and decipher them! Some of these, interestingly enough, depicted different diseases that affects horses. These were actually illustrated pieces from the Shalihotra Samhita, a text on hippiatrics.

By this time, we had reached almost the end of the day's workshop, and indeed, the Meet. We were famished and hungry, after having walked through the museum all day. However, none of us really wanted to leave the museum so early! There was still a lot that we would want to look at. Ma'am and Divyansh (senior) left to have lunch, and three of us (Sanskriti, me and Mrinalini) joined in a little later.

The rest of the day would involve a lot of things: walking through a book shop, pouring over hundreds of books all around the shop, sipping our cups of coffee and happily annotating each other’s books, sitting for a Urdu poetry session, singing songs that we all cherished, and laughing our hearts out, together, for the very last time. But oh my, time flies really fast, doesn't it?

It was indeed a very difficult moment for us to bid farewell and part ways. I remember the words which Ma’am had told us before leaving, and the warm hug that I received. I shared the last few parting words with Sanskriti and Mrinalini, members whom I might not meet personally in the near future! Divyansh (senior) drove me back to the hostel. By then, I had almost stopped speaking. This usually happens with me when I am contemplating something that's equally sad as well as painful. I consoled myself: "We all need to go away, just to be able to come back once again!"

Once the Meet got over and we all were back home, that sense of void stayed with me for quite some time. I realised that it is only workshops and archaeological meets like this that make our ventures meaningful. All that we learnt from our interactions, all that we gathered from our practice, everything would stay with me for a long time. And yes, there is a promise of another Meet in the future: one that would be bigger, hopefully longer, and involve meeting all members of Speaking Archaeologically. That indeed, my dear readers, is a hope and a promise to live by!