[Reader-list] First Post-My building and the Shahar

[abhinandita d mathur]

Hi All!!

This is Abhinandita Mathur, my mother Venu and I have collaborated on this project titled, My building and the Shahar funded by Sarai this year. 

This is a study of a community living set up in a middle class east Delhi suburb, Patparganj . 
The study seeks to observe and document the day-to-day life in Shree Ganesh Group Housing Society where more than 100 Mathur families live together!
Dilliwale Mathurs are one of the early inhabitants of Delhi and lived in the walled city. Shree Ganesh Group Housing Society was formed by the Mathurs who were jointly moving out of the old city. The project engages with the following ideas:

Social history
The history of the Mathur community and the city are closely related. Therefore by researching the history, studying the changing culture and documenting the community life of Dilliwale Mathurs the project attempts to correlate the history of the city and the community. Also, how does this community view the change in the city?

Community and culture
Certain cultural practices are developed and nurtured within a community setup. How has this Mathur community retained some of these cultural practices and how have these changed since the days of living in the Shahar? What strategies did the community develop to retain some of these cultural practices and how have they adapted to change?

Concept of community living
The community can be a site of conflict between the individual and society. The idea of personhood is determined by the competition between the individual v/s family v/s clan v/s caste v/s class v/s state
 In the clash between tradition and modernity which of these social units are becoming more dominant over the others? How is this Mathur community facing up to these challenges?

Transforming communities
How is the idea of a community changing? No longer confined by physical and geographical proximity, old communities are using telecommunication technologies to retain and propagate their networks. How is this Mathur community coping with nostalgia? Is there a clash between the hardliners and the liberals and who is winning? Have the individuals of this community found stronger associations in newer communities based on alma mater, profession, class status, specific interests, political affiliations, sexual preferences, etc.?

This shall be presented as an interactive multimedia website with a virtual model of the building complex. Clicking on the different flats in the virtual model shall allow the user to enter the house, so to speak, and access the biographies of the residents, their photographs, stories, recipes, songs, clips of shaadi videos etc. 

About us: We moved to Shree Ganesh Group Housing Society in April, 1990. 
I grew up here in Delhi and moved to Bombay after BA in 2002. I do research and take photographs. I am in Delhi for the next few months. 
Mummy works in a 5 star hotel where she heads the Telecommunication department. She is super excited and it’s the first project of this kind that she would be working on. 
You can contact us at abhinandita at gmail.com or venu.mathur at gmail.com

We also have blogs but they have been quite dead past few months. But now we will be uploading updates and photos as regularly as we can. Here are the links: 

abhinandita.blogspot.com and venumathur.blogspot.com

Thank you for your time and have a remarkable day!

Abhinandita with Venu

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