Growing up, I drew illustrations. Ones that had our family of four in the centre with my imaginary dog and a picturesque background of the hills curtaining the bright sunset and a bunch of random objects in the frame. Were they amateur waxed drawings? Perhaps, yes. But now when I think of it, I feel I was creating maps that captured- the space( the wide green pastures and hills which I picked up from one of the cartoon backgrounds), the physical passage of time( imagining the time of the day and the time when we as a family were together though in reality we were actually separated by different time zones), the emotions that were captured through facial expressions and the feeling of wonder ( a childlike wonder and excitement that led me to imagine and express). Since the oldest civilizations, maps have relied on shifting knowledges to become more accurate and efficient, a process that was later accelerated with science. Yet the unrealistic proportions of the Mercator map point to a critical reflection: maps show no absolute truths, nor are they neutral. Maps tell stories; they represent ideas as much as spaces.
Mapping the narrative with respect to subjects, time, emotions, and space has been a medium for my imagination, observation, creation, and curation of ideas. It has not only helped me with channelising my thoughts, but also paved a way to express them and narrate a story.
under transdisciplinary research- Multilinguistic Addressal of the city (addressing Bengaluru through its existing representations), I chose the medium of visual storytelling and sequential mapping. My visual research about the city made me realise that it is a city beyond its books stored well in the libraries, songs and narratives once sung and now hummed with lost lyrics, old prestigious monuments that once were a victory emblem now that gather dust, old lanes that once saw the harmony as men and women that marched in unison, now jammed like a sea of 2,3,4 wheelers. This city is beyond what is seen, it is all about its people that call their own- Nammuru Bengaluru (our Bengaluru), their tales and their voices.
The outcome of this research is a graphic novel named - Nammuru Bengaluru which is like a movie with a theme of “story of the land” and with its characters like Kempe Gowda and others, the narrative format represents the city with the help of a poem and visuals that complement the same. The most interesting part is when subjects merge like markets with cuisine, famous personalities that make it big with the architecture that remains etc. While researching, as a creator I found myself immersing in the journey and being in wonder with heritage and so is the tone of the narrative- one of wonder.
The main idea of this research was to reimagine, observe and experience the city with the help of archival material, oral history, artistic practice (existing art and narratives) and empirical research like interviews. The goal is to highlight panoramic view of the city with all its aspects without a heroic narrative of any one subject that overpowers. It is narrated from the first-person point of view of the founder of the land- Hiriya Kempe Gowda, visualising him back in the city of this time and age and experiencing the place from a wonder of a person new to this land.
