KOCHI: In the past, the Kodungalloor ponds and its surroundings were beehives of activity. Conversations that usually took place at small tea shops would occur around these ponds. “This is how special these natural habitats were. The ponds gave us the water we required, for drinking, bathing and agriculture and we took care of them with the same intensity,” said K R Sunil, artist and photographer, who won the Delhi Habitat Centre award for his photo series, ‘Chronicles of Disappearance’ which focuses on the vanishing ponds of Kodungaloor. His work has won him a ticket to the ‘Water Wisdom’ exhibition at the RMIT Art Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. The four-month show will begin on December 1.
According to the artist, it was a visit by a friend from North India to his home village in Kodungalloor that sparked his enthusiasm to photograph all the dwindling ponds. “My friend was surprised that we had very big dumps to throw our plastic waste. Though I felt amused that he had mistaken these areas as plastic dumps, instead of ponds, it set me thinking about the seriousness of the issue,” said Sunil.
The ponds, Sunil said, were given the sanctity associated with religion. “We still have those ponds attached to temples. But times have changed and so has the attitude of people living around it,” he said.
Growing beside the ponds were the screwpine leaves, which brought livelihood to the local women. “They would toil to create mats from these leaves. In those days, these mats brought fame to Kodungaloor. However, these handmade ones lost out to the industry manufactured plastic mats and the women in our village lost their livelihood,” he said.