CHENNAI: When we establish human connections within the context of shared experience, we create a community wherever we go.’ These words by author and educator, Gina Greenlee echoes with the work that social history collective Nam Veedu Nam Oor Nam Kadhai (NVNONK) has been doing for almost a decade. In line with their school of thought — to establish such connections and a community, while recording and recalling our heritage — the group has launched The Nam Madras Logbook, an initiative that hopes to document tangible and intangible experiences, memories of people who’ve made Madras their home and/or been inspired by it.
Curated by the founder of the collective, Thirupurasundari Sevvel and architect-artist Srishti Prabhakar, the logbook has so far travelled to multiple locations and is now rich with memories of seven Chennaiites from different walks of life. The book currently houses the musings of Padma Shri recipient Manohar Devadoss and his memories of the tram; heritage enthusiast Aafreen Fathima and her recollection of her memories of Royapuram, and musician Anirudh Krishna, who has traced his experiences in the city by correlating it to a song, embedding it with barcodes, among other entries.
“People have been logging in experiences through several forms — stories, artworks, technology and objects. Along with the logbook, a Madras Memory Box too has been travelling and the contributors can add any object that they associate with Madras to the box,” details Sundari.
Every participant will get one or two pages/spreads to weave in their memories. The book will travel from one person to another via post and contributors who cannot access the post can scan and send their spreads via email. In the first phase of the project, the book will travel to Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Vishakapatnam, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore and Chittoor.
“The logbook has brought to the fore, aspects of the city that are not just popular but also which are unknown. The perspectives have been very refreshing. For instance, Anirudh, an aspiring music producer, who is not originally from here, grew to love the city during the last two years as a result of experiencing and exploring it during his bus travels. His spread has auditory barcodes which can be scanned and listened to. This is a different take on how one can record memories and that’s precisely what we are trying to encourage. One doesn’t have to be an artist to document their memories,” offers Srishti.
Every contributor will leave a word, a prompt of sorts for the next person and at the tail-end of the project, these words will be picked and weaved into a story for children. “We will be working with Payil Pathippagam, a new children’s book publisher in the city for this vertical of the initiative,” says Sundari.
The first phase, she projects, will conclude by April 15. “The first logbook will have 50 entries and there will be another logbook, part of the second phase with 40-50 more entries. However, we have been receiving more enquiries and will chalk a plan for it. Going forward, this logbook will become a part of Nam Veedu’s recurring moving exhibition and library,” she details.
For Prathyaksha Krisha Prasad, urban conservation architect, the logbook has given her the space to extend her love for the city’s art deco structures through art memoirs. “I started Art Deco Madras, an initiative to document the deco structures in the city in August 2020. So one of my spreads in the book is an assembly of that. Another spread is inspired by the word, ‘home’, that was left to me by the previous contributor. Anna Nagar is where I live and I connected some of my memories with my experiences as part of the Art Deco project and put it together,” she shares, noting how the unique character of the logbook is its heterogeneity.“Each spread has a different style. The book enables one to practise freedom of expression and this allows us to soak in the different perspectives and learn lessons,” she shares.
Last week, Nirosha Shanmugam, a student currently pursuing medicine in Bengaluru, was eagerly waiting for the logbook to reach her doorsteps. Discussing how she hoped to decorate her spread, she shares, “When I was pondering about what I wanted to record, the first thing that came to my mind was my memories of the Central station. Along with the changes and evolution that the station has gone through, I too have grown up. My father, a civil engineer with the railways used to narrate stories about the towering structure. Those narratives coupled with my formative memories of looking through the wooden gates and rickety stairs of the clock tower, atop which my father used to stand, inspecting the functions, were a few fragments that I wanted to document. I am happy I was able to do it just like I envisioned!”
The project, while walking on the line of ‘expressing one’s love for the city, simply for the joy of it’, has also been mindful of making it an inclusive experience. The logbook now has a collection of lived experiences of those from the LGBTQIA+ community and their outlook of how the city has been a welcoming home to them. “We also hope to have contributors, who create spreads that can be accessed by tactile learners and those who are visually impaired,” says Srishti.
The project is an outcome of the different memories that NVNONK has been trying to collect as part of its other experiential initiatives. “While historians are doing excellent work by documenting the city’s nature and evolution, we want to also focus on the other part — of memory and nostalgia. This will be a collection of social and personal history. This belongs to everyone,” says Sundari.
For details, visit Instagram page
@ namveedu_namoor_namkadhai
