Month: December 2013

Do Din Shorts #1: Mallepally

One week since Do Din. We would like to start sharing short write ups about the different events which were part of Do Din. We will start this section with the Mallepally exhibit.

Mallepally in Hyderabad is adjacent to the Afzal Sagar tank which used look like the shape of South America, and was built by the fifth Asafjahi ruler – Afzal Ud Daula and was a largish tank. All of it has disappeared in the last 30 years.
There is a detailed map from a hundred years ago (including Afzal Sagar) from before any of the housing areas were developed. There is also a map of the City Improvement Board plans which created the CIB quarters in Mallepally.
Hyderabad City Improvement Board (CIB) was formed in 1914 A.D. The work carried out during the first 15 years since its formation is given in two reports one in 1919 A.D. and one in 1930 A.D. The board took on several tasks such as slum clearance, constructing and improving traffic roads, constructing drains and other miscellaneous works.
Slum land around the Khaiatabad, Habibnagar and Red Hill localities was cleared and people from the area needed to be relocated. Since the lands near Nampally below Afzul Sagar Tank were fallow paddy fields, the CIB reclaimed the land and constructed model houses which then housed those who had been disturbed by the CIB’s operations. This part of Hyderabad came to be called Mallepally.

During Do Din, there was an installation on Mallepally, the history of the neighbourhood and the 100 years of change that it has undergone.

What is it Like Here (There)?

Interactive installation by Madhu Kaza

“What is it Like Here (There)?” is an interactive performance project in which I engage participants one at a time and ask them to share an experience or memory of a place in Hyderabad. Through conversation and the use of objects I will guide participants to tell me a story, offer a description and explore their associations with that place. I will respond to each participant with a story or description of my own of another city (real or as imagined in art and literature) that responds to a particular element of the participant’s story. This project opens up a brief, intimate moment for participants to connect with a stranger and explore what resonates about life in cities, both here (in Hyderabad) and there (other cities).

Urban Sensibilities

Curated by Madhu Reddy & Aditya Mopur. Photographs from several contributors.

From the submissions we have selected images which show us stories from your city, its changing or static factors. People who make it, heritage which need not be measured in brick and mortar, culture which is integrated or still defining within new boundaries. Challenges and success stories, evolving and preserved, nostalgic personal tales, celebrations reinterpreted or transferred rural sensibilities now part and parcel of the skylines and by-lanes.

Boundaries are no issues, definitions fluid, left to your interpretation. We aim to share stories which we hope will raise questions about the “Urban” and lay to rest some. Common threads are emerging, cities all around seem so connected.

Contributors for Photo Exhibits

Many thanks to our many contributors who came together to make this community driven event happen!

  • Chandan Gomes
  • Gopal MS
  • Harsha Valdamani
  • Javed Iqbal
  • Krishna Tummalapali
  • Madhu Reddy
  • Maniyarasan Rajendran
  • Mithun Kumar
  • Neha Malholtra
  • PeeVee PV
  • Reflections
  • Sankar Sridhar
  • Shilpa Gavane
  • Shiva Chiluveru
  • Soham Gupta
  • Srinivas Kurungati
  • Swarat Ghosh
  • Vivek Muthuramalingam

Collective Essays

  • Bholakpur walk
  • Hyderabadi walk

Trades

  • Pradhan Thandra
  • Rajesh Pamnani

Individual images

  • Ashwin Mudigonda
  • Lipi

 

Visual Memories of Hyderabad

Curated by Madhu Reddy & Aditya Mopur

Visual cultures are among other things also about urban spatial practices and behavioural norms – in some sense – technologies – being deployed for tactical purposes.Their histories reveal much about the city itself. Visual cultures are about history and erasure. They are about walking and remembering and talking and changing.

Imagine if we all got our image archives and put it all in one place. Then take these images and build a timeline for the city, watch how the city unfolds. How little details we have forgotten surface to the brim of memories.

We hope to start on this project by requesting you to look into your family albums and share with images which have been taken in public spaces or show public spaces with you in them. Bring them to the Do Din event and get them scanned. With the help of the trickle of all the images we hope to build a timeline of the city in the days to come.

So, scour your albums for images of Hyderabad
Bring them to the Do Din event
Get them scanned with all the info
Wait to see what unfolds!!

Find out more on Facebook.

100 years of changing neighbourhoods

Anuradha Naik

Do Din will have focus on two neighborhoods for this year’s event. Bholakpur scrap market and Mallepally CIB quarters. Both of them are historic neighborhoods. The first was a tanning centre in mid 19th century grown around a Qutub Shahi Mosque now popularly referred to as Musheerabad Badi Masjid; gradually became the centre of an industrial belt between Hyderabad and Secunderabad and attracted a lot of migrants throughout the 20th century and finally became one of the main scrap markets in the city. The second was the immediate catchment of the Afzal Sagar tank and was mapped in detail in 1912 municipal survey. It was built up by the City Improvement Board and then gradually got built up. The Afzal Sagar tank now remains only in name. Mallepalli was the area to which the elite of both Hindu and Muslim religions moved in the 50s. Long time residents recount how every famous Urdu writer had passed through Mallepalli. It was the cultural elite but not necessarily the affluent families that lived there.

Reflecting a Vision

Art Installation by P.C . Prasad
Part of City On The Edge

Medium – Cloth , mirror.
An urban man works round the clock and leads a mechanical life by making maximum use of increasing technology to fulfill his needs .
The city is a red carpet welcome for him but he needs to realise the pitfalls below the glowing path .The mirror is an invitation to reflect on the loss of holistic and a wholesome life .

Urban Farming

Art installation by Pavan Kumar .D
Part of City On The Edge

Medium – Aluminum wire and plastic

Life in a big city has many disadvantages too and particularly in modern India. The remark of the English poet Cowpen, “God made the country and man made the town” is very apt. Life in a big city is artificial and sophisticated because man is divorced from nature. He lives, grows and dies in the lap of artificial agents and machines. He does not know how a crop field dances, how a river glides smoothly, how the cow-herd drive his cattle and how the Nature herself nourishes her countless children through various agencies. In a big city, man is cut off from the nursing, educative and for­mative aspects of Nature.

Life in a big city is exceedingly unhealthy. Here men live like pigeons in holes. The filthy and nasty atmosphere of dirt, smoke and trains makes life poisoned at the root. The smoke emitted by chimneys pollutes the natural purity of environment ,day and night. Fresh air, golden sun light and clean water are rare in a big city. Here men live on tined food, refrigerated water and conditioned air, with the result that their body and soul become hollow from within and are polluted right from infancy.

The installation called ‘’farming in big city’’ is an experience of creating artificial surroundings by planting flowers , plastic in nature.
I experience it because i am part of the city and equally responsible for it………………

Man is always happier in the lap of nature than he is under the artificial shadows of modern amenities.