‘Song of Stones’ - Sohail Hashmi (July 2024)
As the academic session began and the team members returned from a month of rest, the team reconnected through our customary collective Large Group Circle Time. This session, we had the honour of hosting Sohail Hashmi, an oral historian of Delhi, social activist, filmmaker, and heritage conservationist. His talk, ‘The Song of Stones’, took us on a journey through the story of civilization and human nature from the invention of pottery to the monuments we see today.
The talk revolved around the appearance of some architectural motifs throughout human history worldwide - the Kalash (pot), Lotus, Swastika and Six-pointed star - and their significance. For instance, Sohail Bhai began by explaining the vital importance of the clay pot to the hunter-gatherers, providing safety from the elements by allowing them to reserve resources for later use. This was the origin of the reverence for pottery, whether in the Indus Valley, Ancient Egypt, or the Aztec civilization. This revolutionary invention to store water grew into a symbol that represents life, sustenance and death. Similarly, the other motifs were also explained in great detail through their depictions in archaeological monuments.
The purpose of this was to explain through the lens of architecture that these symbols transcend religious and geographical boundaries and make us question the flawed knowledge passed down through generations of bias. The session continued with team members sharing their questions and thoughts that were handled deftly and answered by Sohail Bhai, engaging in further discussion to lead them into discovering the answers. He wisely pointed out that curiosity is often dismissed as doubt when coming up against ingrained beliefs but it is central to the idea of education. All who attended left the talk with plenty of room for thought and agreeing with the importance of asking questions, which is core to progressive education.