When we visit a place we cannot absorb everything about that place. Our past experiences and knowledge orient our observations about the place. 

This is what I realised soon after I visited the site last time I went in to measure-draw the site. I thought that I had recorded what I had to, to be able to make the drawings. 

But when I started making a model of the site, I couldn’t get the sense of a few nooks and corners. It felt like I had forgotten about these spaces. I had no recollection! So I went through the photographs that I had clicked. And to my surprise, I hadn’t clicked photographs of a few such spaces. And a few spaces whose photographs were clicked, I couldn’t recollect my feeling of those parts. 

This experience reiterated the importance of different mediums and methods of recording documenting a site- sketching, measure-drawing, photographs, videos, model making, body work. Each of these tell a different story about the site. The more stories one knows about different aspects of a being,  the better one can understand that being!

Spending time on site has many revelations. While sketching, few group of friends who were regular visitors of this place came to me to see what I was doing. They initiated the conversation and asked many questions regarding the process. The conversation also revealed that these people have been visiting this place since 3 years now and they choose to hang out in this place only because in other places in the university vicinity, they feel ‘out in the open’. This place protects them from the unnecessary gaze and they feel free with their friends here!