Introduction 

Trails, paths, and roads are essential structures of the human landscape. They weave together the disparate elements of daily lives, establishing connections and bridging distances between them. A major road running through parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh is the Grand Trunk Road. 

My first serious encounter with the Grand Trunk Road took place while I was working on my graduate thesis titled “Transience and Materiality”, in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh. Several stories of migration, and of lives being in a state of flux due to repeated migration surfaced during the research process. I found this phenomenon to be heightened in small towns such as Dadri and Chithera.  

One of Asia’s oldest and longest roads, the Grand Trunk road is currently included in the network of national highways and forms a vital link for trade and communication.It extends from Kabul in Afghanistan, through Lahore in Pakistan, through Delhi to Kolkata, and Chittagong in Bangladesh. Of special significance to me is its passage through Bengal’s Birbhum region, which houses my hometown, Suri, the Zilla Sardar of the Birbhum district. This project, titled “আবর্তন / aborton” or “Rotation”, is anchored in the seven villages of Lambordarpur, Chhora, Husnabad, Amgacha, Tasarkata, Sarisha , Pathra, which lie within a close radius of Suri.

Kinesthesia, sight, and touch enable human beings to have a strong feeling for space and  spatial qualities. By making repeated visits to the aforementioned locations, and in the process of documenting the journeys, I attempt to expand the ideas of Place, Space, and Location, their interconnections, and the affect they produce in us. Our perceptions of these concepts shift as I document them through a mark making process using different intimate devices, such as a cellphone, a pen, and a pencil. I also note the space-image-body relationships that emerge as a result of such mark making. Mobility acts as the core of the project from which this process evolves.

Project Outcomes: Documenting space using various devices

As per Simmel, our perception of modern times is shaped largely through our changing relations with proximity and distance, and more broadly, through cultures of movement and mobility. 

What happens to our perception of Space, Place, and Location, when there is no sense of direction? 

Shot on my cellphone as I rode my motorcycle through a particular road, this video evades a clear sense of direction. Movement forwards, backwards, and sideways are not experientially differentiated: how does this affect our subconscious sense of movement and the human body’s sense of direction, location, and distance? 

Recording Experience

Experience is often called the content of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995; Nagel, 1974;  Searle, 2000), or the stream of phenomena that pop up in our conscious mind through direct bodily experience (on-site experience). Thus, the body functions as a site that constantly accumulates experiences from the past, and reconstructs them through a mark-making process. 

The marks in these drawings were triggered by a certain sensorial experience that occurred as I encountered different surfaces while traversing different roads and paths. I often find that the sense that riding a motorbike produces is very different from that produced by walking. The former not only enhances mobility, but also creates a unique sensation that comes from contact between the wheel and road. These drawings are a residue of that experience, and the act of recalling it is also the act of tracing the journey. 

Recording Perception 

According to Bell (1996) perception refers to “the activity carried out by the brain by which we interpret what the senses receive.” It is not merely factual reporting but references associations and expectations already present in the mind. In these drawings, I try to explore the relation between the perception that develops as a result of visiting different places beside the road, and accumulating experiences in the process. Most of these roadside places function as buffer zones. 

My experiences in these buffers zones are shaped by various factors and elements, including mobility, my body, my bike, the road, and the shifts in my body that it caused; each experience is also attached to a landscape of emotional reactions. These emotions are further triggered and influenced by personal history and culture (Damasio, 2001). The marks made in the drawings thus respond to this depth of experience. 

Visits to Tasarkata, Bataspur, and Pathra

These drawings are a consequence of my visits to Tasarkata and Bataspur villages. These villages are approximately 8-10 Km away from my hometown of Suri. It’s a long road, with only a stretch of forest between the villages and my hometown of Suri. I found that my understanding of such landscapes is closely tied to our bodily experiences within them, with objective and material reality serving only as the starting point for experience.

I also made repeated visits to Pathra, a remote village where I could hardly find any shops open, especially during the pandemic. Returning home from Pathra after every visit created a notion of temporality, and gave rise to a strong sense of familiarity towards home through an upward timeline. These drawings made from memory act as schematic diagrams that the mind produces as a result of repeated visits to a place; they provide an insight into the relationship between space and temporality.