Highlighting the need of intimate research and urban discovery, this article is an attempt to establish the need of ethnography in urban planning and beyond. It draws on lived experiences while my time in the streets of Kumartuli, Kolkata.
Having being grown up in a culturally rich city of Kolkata, I have always found myself essentially inclined towards understanding my own roots and how the culture of this has evolved over the years to accommodate diversity. After getting into my under-graduation degree, I was especially intrigued by the different communities that lived in Kolkata and their backgrounds.
During my initial years as an undergraduate student, I was introduced to urban sketching by a group of my seniors and soon found myself taking interest in this activity as a hobby. And when I was back to Kolkata for my next vacation, I introduced this to one of my school friends from Kolkata, Smriti and we started planning our sketch walks for autumn evenings in the city.
We thought we should kickstart with something simpler, maybe some historical places and we ended up at a British era cemetery in Park Street area of Calcutta, South Park Street Cemetery. I apologize in advance because this was far, far away from a good sketching experience, but nevertheless it was a lesson.
A lesson mostly for my very dear friend and an eye-opener for me, that this urbanist should use her expertise for any upcoming sketch walks!
“I need to see emotions of living souls, not silence around crumbling tomb-stones,” said Smriti. Guess, it was time to run a full-fledged research.
I spent a few months understanding areas of Kolkata, built by the people, run by the people and are brimming with expressions of people who live around us, make this city a place to always come back to.
And just like that I chanced about the nitty-gritties of one of the last-remaining, occupation-based neighborhoods of Kolkata, Kumartuli. Back in the 17th century, kumbhakars (potters) moved from Krishnanagar to Gobindapore (in Bengal, colonial India), situated on the banks of River Hooghly. Their livelihoods were dependent on making pots, utensils and toys out of clay.
But when India was colonized by the British east India Company, Gobindapore was ordered to be cleared for the construction of Fort William, and thus the residents migrated to further up the river to the north to Sutanuti. This potters’ neighborhood came to be known as Kumartuli.
Today, Kumartuli is one of the only remaining larger caste-based neighborhoods – narrow streets along which shilpis (artisans) are working in their tiny workshops using traditional techniques, passed down from one generation to another.
We ended up spending one winter morning at Kumartuli, just sitting, chatting with the kids of the neighborhood, sketching some artists at work and photographing people busy in their studios.
Kumartuli is a unique mixture of both rural and urban characters of Kolkata – houses are compactly packed along narrow ‘shared’ streets where the ground floor of the houses has been converted into ‘studios’.
Clay idols left out to dry in the open as the artists do not believe in the idea of ‘private’ spaces.
And just like that, one of my emotional strings got attached to the place and little did I know then, that this shall keep calling me back.
A while later, I wished to write a research article about intangible heritage and realized there was no better place than Kumartuli! Fate had its way, and my abstract was selected for a conference. I visited the place once again, but this time with a different aim – to understand its people, expressions and their emotions associated with their art.
And the year that followed, I visited Kumartuli several time and observed the community through a close lens and had deep, intimate conversations of families that lived in this neighborhood. With every visit, I found myself viewing the urban form through the eyes of those who have lived here for generations.
As an urban practitioner I was introduced to a new facet of research, wherein solutions to urban issues lie disguised within the intertwined layers of complex urban patterns that are waiting to be discovered by us. Owing to the limits laid out by scientific documentation and due respect to my professional pursuits, I must name this intimate relationship between the researcher in me and the community as ‘ethnography’.
Ethnographic techniques in urban planning act like a magnifying glass that allows us to perceive communities scrupulously. Since people are driven by their societal relations and cultural phenomenon, I believe ethnography is an important guide in planning considering our work is essentially people-centric.
Living and experiencing the same events the same way that the community does, leaves a deep impact on our minds and hearts that no third-party research or survey can. In the jargons of urban practices, it is difficult to escape tokenism that limits us to see communities from a predefined lens that limits our innovations to our preconceived notions about traditional practices and cultural determinants.
As urban planners, we are discoverers, not inventors. And through the lived experiences within the community, our human emotions get rooted to the cause of the community, binding us to the people that ensure justice to indigenous communities. The world around us is evolving and therefore, what is acceptable today is bound to be questioned tomorrow.
There is always a better way of reshaping lives, but let’s thrive to be an aid rather than an upgrade!
Currently pursuing her major in urban planning, Sayani believes that design and literature are two paradigms that can change the overall outlook of the world, when backed by practical data.
She is inclined towards urban planning as it presents to her the opportunity to work closely with the society and converge her understanding of the domain with other human aspects.
When she is not re-defining cities for communities, you can probably find her scribbling on a sketchpad about her visits to the streets of Old Calcutta, or rushing the mouse cursor on a blank artboard on Illustrator!
For more info, you can write to her at sayaniatwork@gmail.com