My Kottige (Bhoota Sthana)

December 2022

Site specific Installtion
Cast Iron, copper-wire, Debris, Wood, Charcoal

Fort Kochi Aspinwall,
Kochi Muziris Biennale KMB05
Photo credits – Whistlemanfilms

“Kalu-Kudka will save you from all harms and evility.” This was my grandmother’s tip to me in my growing up years. KK even had designated shrines that are called Bootha-Sthanas (Ghost Shrines) and his idol was a black stone. I always am nonplussed about the fact that Kalu-Kudka literally means a Drink-Drunk ghost and stoned. The folk imagination of a revered spirit who is known to be always drunk co-habited with the high-end Brahmanical culture of my home.

In the sharply polarised village life along the line of caste KK has a vantage status. He is revered by all. As children whenever we committed some blasphemy, such as, boating with the Dalit boatman or drinking ginger-soda from the low caste vendor, we were advised by our co-conspirators to – Call KK 100 times if you think you have made a mistake. Only the drunkard spirit in the form of a stone could rise above the caste and gender hierarchies of the Indian village and revered by both my puritanical grandmother and the untouchable village folks. Unlike the hordes of codified gods and goddesses in Hinduism no one could take KK home. He lives in the public place at the outskirt – the Bootha-Sthana.

Nazr, in multiple Indian traditions, means evil eye as well as gaze. Gaze is a documentary reality if we consider the evil eye a popular imagination / some sort of ritualistic belief. How do we deal with the gaze architecturally? Jalis (perforated screens) to break the continuity of the vision, jarokhas (hanging windows with lattice) to peep out without being exposed, pillars to hide behind… there are many strategies to intervene into the gaze. Yet I long for a contemporary Bootha-Sthanas that can deal with the Nazr that haunts my time.

Gujri is a special kind of local flea market in Bangalore. Within the market there is an enclosure called Garadi Mane (Pehalwan / Strongman Place/ wrestlers den) that is now getting modernized into gymnasium and they are discarding and selling the old-fashioned body building to the Gujri. Traditionally women are not allowed to enter that section. But with the increasing pressure of real estate these kinds of markets are disintegrating or pushed to the periphery, and their wares are now considered discarded or even as urban waste. Since no one is bothered to guard the sanctimony of the wastes the objects have become accessible to all. I have been visiting these markets over the years and witnessing the fall in status of these objects. Though the objects are in post-utility phase their gendered attributes are still loud. Body building dumbbells, lathis of martial sports; kitchen articles such as stoves, garment workers tools like scissors, knives, scrapers; and tools of labour such as hammers, shovels, wrenches etc. are collected. The materiality of these gendered-objects is same – casted iron. For this installation I have welded them together and made them cohabit in the same space. In this second life, the objects are sculpted into totem-like pillars and jharokhas to structurally hold together a new urban Sthana.

I wish to mark the installation site with these object-sculptures as my own Bootha-Sthana, a shrine that would protect the environ from the nazr of contemporary social conflicts – between genders, classes, castes and sexual identities.

As a non-religious person my offering to the uncodified drunkard spirit-god is the welded objects that are processed to become non-binary items. In typical KK style my Sthana is also porous and playful.

Window 1

Window 2

Window 3

Window 4

Window 5

Documentation

Acknowledgement:
Vinayak S Kattenahalli, Yadhunandan N, Kiran Kumar, Santosh Pattar, A Ameera Noor; Joseph Savio CJ; Madhukar P; Madhusree Dutta; Di Ball, Mahin M, and Mohammed Razooq

Supported by Chemould Prescott Road