The project will attempt to create a ‘monument’ to the river Yamuna, via the light boxes at the ISBT / Kashmere Gate metro station. Kashmere Gate is the northern portal of the walled city of Delhi, and a historical site and protected monument associated with the 1857 Uprising. The Metro station here is perhaps Delhi’s busiest, and is next to the inter-state bus terminal that is also intensely crowded at all hours.
The station’s light boxes would feature photographs of the Yamuna, taken within Delhi – not the conventional images of polluted water and degraded environs, but eccentric and tangential representations that nudge viewers to question their established notions of the river. The images will build
a narrative that leads viewers to Kashmere Gate’s main chabeel – a temporary site set up to distribute free water, lassi or food to all who stop there, on festivals or to commemorate historical martyrdoms. This custom is a traditional north Indian way of connecting communities.