For thousands of years people in Guharay have carved up sanctuaries of water into the earth, lakes, tanks, stepwells, earthen vessels inundated and the holy sacraments received. The lifegiving water brings with it fertile clay sediment which is redistributed in the fields. Earthen mounds and veins spread the water across these fields and life sustains.
Suddenly, a wall of indiscriminate infrastructure appears, scrounged from the depths of the lake’s refuge. The top of the wall and the bottom of the lakes now too far apart to reach, the arteries of the earth clogged, water and life stagnate. A desecration of the ancient inundation and the earthen reclamation cycle.
Global events like the Olympics ruthlessly move mountains, often right on top of social, cultural and ecological histories. This project hopes to reactivate and make porous these infrastructural barriers, relinking the existing village of Godhavi to the site of the new Olympic village. Re-negotiating earth and water, this project hopes to provide the international athletes with alternative narratives of the sports and related spaces they usually engage in.
