How this sculptor's installation art pays tribute to the ruins of a Goan village

What happens when home drowns disintegrates and slowly disappears It takes a part of you and your memories with itThe villagers of Curdi and Kurpem in the Sanguem taluka of Goa have been living with the grief of this loss for decades Goabased artist Sahil Ravindra Naik tells us over a phone callVillagers from Curdi recording compositions that tell their stories at a studio in GoaThe undoing of these two historic villages he says began in the 1960s sometime after Goa was liberated from centuries of Portuguese rule Buoyed by the possibility of extending the benefits of irrigation and drinking water supply to the newly independent region Goarsquos first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar commissioned the construction of the Salaulim dam on the Salaulim river a tributary of Zuari When construction began in 1975 there were concerns of the reservoir submerging forests sacred to communities mangroves vast stretches of fields and 20 villages including Curdi and its sister village Kurpem Over the years as work was expedited water levels began to rise drowning the landscape slowly forcing villagers to reluctantly relocate Several of them stayed until the waters finally entered their homes The heritage temple of Mahadev originally located on the banks of Salaulim was dismantled brick by brick and carefully transplanted near the dam Over 3000 families were eventually displaced ldquoThe residents of Curdi were moved into colonies up a hill not far from their own homes They were forced to make peace with the land parcels given as compensation for living and farmingrdquo shares 32yearold Naik Resettling into what is today known as Vaddem Colony 1 and 2 and Valkenim Colony 1 2 and 3 they watched their village vanish from the ground and memory In the 1980s however a miracle occurred When the waters of the reservoir receded in the summer Curdi briefly resurfaced for a month sometime during midApril Shree Someshwar Temple one of the few structures that remained intact was where they celebrated the occasion Hundreds of villagers would sail across Salaulim to visit their beloved home and witness the degradation brought upon by the submergence ldquoThey would clean the ruins and place vessels to symbolically occupy their homesrdquoNaik who hails from the city of Ponda in North Goa remembers listening to the legend of Curdi as a child But the remoteness of the village and inaccessibilitymdashyou could only travel by boatmdashprevented a visit until after he had completed his Masters in Sculpture from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda ldquoAround 10 years ago the villagers built an access road When I came to Curdi it was out of sheer curiosity I wanted to visit the ruins and understand how the architecture told the story of a placerdquo Timing his visits with the festive gatherings allowed him direct access to its original inhabitants ldquoMy interactions with them made me see the place differently I got to hear many stories about Curdirdquo he recalls adding that the place became a living breathing entity for himFrom left Naik and his teammates Kalpit Gaonkar and Girish Naik with an elderly villager Milan KudrikarHis sculptural installation All is Water and to Water we Must Return which was on display at the recentlyconcluded KochiMuziris Biennale and is a visual representation of the ruins of Curdi was a result of Naikrsquos nineyearlong engagement with the village its architecture landscape and peopleldquoThe landscape has deteriorated rapidly in recent times due to warmer temperatures unpredictable rainfall and flash floods Climate change has wreaked havoc And the residents have zero control on what remains When I first visited the place there were about 15 to 20 houses Today there are two or three There was this urgent need to document the structures before it all disappeared completelyrdquo says Naik adding that every year when Curdi resurfaces it seems like a completely different placeSahil Ravindra NaikThe immediate response to this rapid degradation was creating art Naik mapped some of the structures and composed a scalable form of the ruins at the stage provided to him in Kochi The original structures were made of laterite stones ldquoWe procured two or three laterite bricks and created rubber molds of the same and cast the molds with different raw materials like Plaster of Paris fiber and mud In total we made about 1500 bricks which we then shipped to Keralardquo Apart from this they also used real laterite bricks so that when people walked on them they were transported to Curdi The sand and other materials used to recreate the damp and broken earth and the scattered landscape were sourced from Kerala itself ldquoAt the venue it took us about a month to recreate the ruinsrdquo he says A miniature sculptural installation was previously showcased in Kolkata in 2018 and in Milan in October last year What made the show at Kochi standout was that Naik in a first had incorporated the stories of the villagersldquoIn Konkani there is a saying lsquoHistories may die with people but a song like hope survives timersquordquo says Naik Since the people who knew Curdi as it once was were at an advanced age Naik with the help from friends Kalpit Gaonkar and Girish Naik began work on recording and documenting the oral memories ldquoThe stories were mostly about lossrdquoAn aerial view of the partially submerged village of Curdi as visible during the months of April and MayAt the time of Curdi being relocated the village didnrsquot have electricity Naik shares the story of one Gajanan Kurdikar who just five years before the villagersquos submergence brought a flour mill from Mumbai then Bombay to Curdi ldquoIt was a big deal for the village a new piece of technology that had come all the way from Bombayrdquo Naik shares ldquoEveryone was fascinated The mill became a gathering point for them more like a social spacerdquoOften to bolster the act of remembering Naik and his team would take the residents back to the village of their childhood and their ancestral homes and conduct the interviews there ldquoWhen you are at the site you remember morerdquo he says On one such occasion after the interview Naik and an elderly villager Milan Kurdikar were sitting and observing the ruins when she shared this in Konkani ldquoBaba sagle bare ha re dam baandlo aamche ghara gele but yeh dam munlar kite Everything is fine baba the dam was built our houses were destroyed and we had to leave everything behind but I donrsquot know what is this dam I havenrsquot seen it yetrdquo ldquoOne of the major ironies is that they sacrificed everything to solve the water supply problems for the rest of Goa but because they were situated uphill they themselves ended up falling short of water The compensation was never really enoughrdquoNaik collaborated with three folk songwriters from Goa who summarised the stories into songs The music was inspired by the folk songs sung by Curdirsquos villagers at ceremonies and festivals ldquoSo what we did was adopt the new lyrics to the existing tunes to create compositions that were still familiar to the villagersrdquo Naik then invited the residents who sing these songs at their festivals to record their new compositions at a studio in Goa ldquoThe villagers were excited Wersquove had over 25 villagers come to record at the studio It felt like a mini festivalrdquo In transforming this loss into songs Naik says he was attempting to prevent erasure of history ldquoMost of the stories only exist in peoplersquos minds this is the last generation that lived in Curdi and experienced their village firsthand We wanted the songs to be an act of rememberingrdquo he says Three families from Curdi also visited the exhibit at the KochiMuziris Biennale ldquoThey were overwhelmedrdquo he remembersHis hope is to bring the sculptural installation closer home to Goa ldquoLast year Curdi didnrsquot resurface entirely and while itrsquos that time of the year where it is expected to show up one doesnrsquot really know how long before Curdi completely vanishesrdquo