The idea of India Lost and Found came to Pasricha when he went to Indore some years ago. “I had some time on my hands and thought of exploring old monuments,” he recalls. However, when he typed ‘heritage’ in Google Maps, he came up with hotels, schools, even shops, but no monuments. It made him wonder: How was it that Indians lived amid such monumental history but it rarely became part of their daily lives and discourse? It was this question that compelled him to turn from professional photography, to what may best be termed photographical activism.
“I decided to involve students and experts from different fields across the country to participate in creating a ‘virtual museum of thought’ around our untold monuments,” says he. “We are now mapping lesser known monuments using mobile phones, and bringing them back to life by viewing them through different lenses — culture, craft, folklore, mythology and even cuisine, among other things.”
Dome of Safdurjung's Tomb | Photo: Amit pasricha/India Lost and Found
Today, ILF has got 200 colleges to participate in the heritage map challenge and a growing network of experts to tell their stories, including historian Swapna Liddle, culture and cuisine scholar Pushpesh Pant and craft doyenne Laila Tyabji. He has already received entries from over 1,000 sites across India. Pasricha is now thinking of creating a curriculum around this project. “Several colleges have expressed interest in this,” he says. “They like the idea of treating a monument as a symbol of its time, not just for its architectural merit.” He likes the idea of using specific questions as triggers that will make people view monuments in a new light. “Imagine if, for instance, in Delhi’s Lodi Garden, one ponders what the Lodis liked to wear or eat,” he says. “Or what their everyday lives were like.” At the end of the day, it’s the youth that Pasricha is keen to attract. This is why his project is on Instagram, where he has already uploaded over 790 photographs.
The ambitious project is so far largely self-funded and self-motivated. “All content on the heritage map is free to use,” he says. “I hope it will enable more heritage walks and be used by tourist guides to make their tours more interesting!” Most of all, he hopes that the heritage map will be used by travellers, perhaps to find an India that is threatening to get lost in this rush towards modernity.
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