Workshop: Recollecting histories of Pune’s Engineers and Builders



The workshop 'Recollecting histories of Pune's Engineers and Builders' gathered a diverse group of 22 contractors, contractors' descendants, Town Planning and Public Works employees, historians, and restoration architects for a morning of inspiring discussion, photo analysis, and mapping exercises.

First, we invited participants to look at twelve old construction site photographs and jot down their thoughts on five of them. The discussions which followed did not shun controversy. The photograph of a collapsed under-construction bridge, for instance, raised questions about 'failed states'. It was associated by some to a perceived decline in the technical expertise of public works engineers after the implementation of caste reservation systems. A most revealing moment was when two 1950s photos of concrete casting led participants to emulate the rhythmic chanting that work teams produced as they passed ghamelas (head baskets) of fresh concrete mix upwards on a building's scaffolding. We also came to know of the hand gestures workers used to communicate across distance and machine noise on whether a concrete mix needed more or less water. As Elizabeth Edwards has noted, experiencing photographs is not only visual but incites corpothetic engagement. Very often “visual, sound, and touch merge”.