Chopda Pratiksha Sanjay

LA4007

The hamlet selected for the study lies in a valley on the leeward side of North Western Ghats. The idea of nestedness is manifested in many scales. The ridges protecting the valleys and the valleys nurturing the water and the water-holding wetness and this supporting the soil is a cyclic process. In this context is where the Warli people dwell, in a hamlet of Walvanda. This is currently an agrarian society where the male members of the family are now migrating on large scale to nearby urban centers as laborers. It was observed that similar to the mountains and the valleys and their act of nurturing is a particular aspect of the society here - the act of a woman who is nurturing the culture and community from within.Women, here are the anchors of the family. They sustained families and farms. They fed and nurtured children and nature. They remained unmoved and became keepers of the culture and tradition. Their act is invisible, unacknowledged, and taken for granted. The program looks at opportunities to Improving the life of these women by not looking at them as individuals but as a community. It focuses on improving and formalizing women-oriented social spaces that promote co-existence and comfort at its core. The aim is to improve the quality of space by rearranging the fragmented pockets for co-generating and co-constructing a framework. The ideas derived are based on the close observations and inferences from a detailed on-site mapping done by following and interacting with the women. This act of walking along helped understand their simple requirements of comfort and movement patterns and also their engagement with the larger landscape of the place. The routes they take at different times of the day can be spatially relooked and improvised. A place for drinking water, a temporary shed to unload the firewood halfway home, soft earthen paths, shade, flowers, common stop points, and shortcuts. There could also be attributes/elements that bring in momentary repose or even joy. The metaphor ‘nurturing’ and the palimpsest type spatial-temporal were considered to arrive at a program and the idea of point-specific spatial inserts. Point interventions are going to make the project lively and the act of doing it together will lessen the stress on the women by reducing their task list. The sharing of load that rural collective units bring will reduce the stress the women face daily. Some extra time for a conversion or a simple act could bring in some difference in their quality of life. The idea of a place of sharing looks at; • Sharing the load • Physical comfort • Mental support As a project, this should make the hamlet the most beautiful amongst all in the villages of this valley, it should have the most friendly and comfortable places for women to talk, walk, and laugh together. This could only be a small acknowledgment to the biggest workforce the country has at the moment, of women of our Indian rural.