Speaking Archaeologically™

Having had more than 2 months off of SA, it was time to get back to work. And, what better way of doing it than working on a topic that relates to you and your region, and with a partner you are more than happy to work with(yes, I do mean Rakshanda Thakur!). So, we started to work with a rather uncharacteristic way, before time. Most of the early work involved discussions that were more familiar situations on not talking about actual work.  Time went by, it was the final day before submission. We had read all that we could, went to museums and handloom stores, met with people, interviewed them,  shared our findings, so it was finally time to ask Shriya to repeat the briefing she gave us at the start of the task! Finally, after the much needed push from her began the writing part.   Work was divided as it usually is by this stage in a task, it was time to translate our knowledge into words. With a partner who is as comfortable and familiar with a topi...

Our first visit to Government Museum was back in November, like Aditi Joshi told you , which started with an interactive lecture on geological periods from our very own Shriya Gautam. What followed were a series of interactive sessions on the development through the prehistoric eras. Finally, we arrived at the Art Gallery, where we were split into teams for our very first team task (Again, we have come a long way from there. But, yes, this was where it all began). I remember not having my partner around, the "now in vogue" Rakshanda Thakur.  So, as it turned out we were given our own sections to work with, I for one got textile Chamba Rumals on display, Textile Section Chandigarh Museum and disappointed (little did I know what was to come). As far as I can recollect, the others got subjects ranging from Mughal paintings to Manuscripts. We were given our own private time with our sections to narrow down on the subjects. And narrow down is what we did, to Cha...

Which is completely different and totally better than Rakshanda and Vedant's partnership which the Panel has decided to do a feature on. Which doesn't bother us.  At all. Before I, Athira, start writing about the details of my first With Arundhati and Anmol in the Doll's Museum partnership I'd like to explain how the both of us ended up as partners.  Shriya had just organised our first workshop on coinage and provided us with the task of writing a report on the coins we had observed during the workshop. The results were announced and guess what? I had FAILED the task. Yes, FAILED. Not lost the task, FAILED the task. Also, I wasn't the only one FAILING the task, there were others and one amongst them had been her. It was then that the task for the ones who had just FAILED was provided and partners assigned. A tragic start to the beautiful, wonderful, awe-inspiring, totally better than Rakshanda and Vedant's, bond we share now.  A barch o...

As early as in Season 1, two people from sister colleges (and competing sister colleges at that) were paired together for  two tasks, just like the rest of their peers. What the Panel did not know back then, while making this random sorting of partners, was that this would be one of the most powerful and reoccurring partnerships on SA Volunteers. "Ideally, you partner with one person only once as a Volunteer, simply because, we want everyone to have a chance to work and interact with each other," says Shriya Gautam, who plays the head honcho of all the tasks allotted to the volunteers. This was a rule Vedant Chandel and Rakshanda Thakur were not going to follow... "Not because they are such rebels, but because, somehow, they always end up being sorted together, in the most serendipitous ways despite the best of our efforts," the Panel answers, admitting that maybe it's not such a bad thing after all. Vedant was labelled the Panel's Favourite...