ARCURATION
A BLUE MAGAZINE
What does one really consider as an everyday object? How does the space really take a shape from the mundane everyday? These four carvings in the blue walls of an open but yet another inner courtyard are suggestive of items that are really left to idle and use. As the day advances, one object replaces another, as the cycle continues, the objects keeps changing its position. Mirror, leaf stalks, over turned plastic container, lipstick, nail polish, medicine, black plastic crumbled sheet, yellow sack, orange cloth, polyethylene bag, talcum powder. The perpetual clock takes the people in this courtyard and their items along with itself, for them to only leave the souvenirs of the clock in these perhaps the “time capsules”? These Time capsules are suggestive of the very fabric of lives that runs throughout this decelerated town of Orchha.
ARTERY AND THE GATE
Ms. Pandey takes a turn as she enters the Machhli Gate Market lane to enter the temple complex, to what she refers to as “Humare Ram ka Durbar”. The Macchli Darwaza historically was a watch tower and an entrance to the Grand City Palace Bridge. As its utility it acted as an exterior entry point for the Palace complex and the very same for the Raja Ram Durbar Temple Complex. The in between spaces of this structure and the market, where the interaction of different spheres of people, animals with the built happens. These in turn gives rise to a lot of momentary structures like the phool wala baskets, shop keepers setting up tables for the customers that sit on chairs and some hang out along it. Every day the clock points to the 4 PM mark, and there comes a dynamic shift in the claiming of spaces by people. The shop edges are taken over by the souvenir and gift shop set ups, the malai milk walas take out their stoves to fill the air with the sweet fragrance of the milk, as they decorate the milk container with almonds and pistachios. The claiming of spaces keeps changing throughout the day as different people occupy the same spaces.
CHACHAS MORNING
A Jouska emerges. One cannot stop themselves from enquiring as to what is the monkey doing? What is the Chacha thinking? The routine sets itself up, waking up to the chilling mornings of the Orchha town, there runs a slivered street almost perpendicular to the market and along side the Raja Ram Temple, it connects the outer market and the Mammoth like Chhaturbhuj Temple. He takes his chair and guards the drying clothes from a particular monkey. He sits on a rock, particularly orienting his back to the old man. Not really seeming to care, sits and enjoys his leaves plucked from the nearby bushes, while the figure behind goes to shew him away with his stick. He takes a turn; sitting on the same rock to eat his morning meal. Almost mocking the man for his efforts. Chacha and his mornings are greeted by this unbothered ape who really fleets around the Machhli Gate market and the adjacent residential spaces, going wherever his hunger and frolic takes him.