Today makes it a week. A week ago this art residency was largely conceptual. An idea I heard of for the first time. One generically seems to assume that something only really begins when one first starts becoming involved with it. Such a false sense of self importance. Some wisdom seeps in as you get your hands and your mind soaked in the oozing fluid of any matter. Any idea lets you know very quickly, that it existed long before you ever came onto the scene. It was just waiting to happen. The artists took all their lives to get ready for it, as did the organization and people who are putting it together… and in a way even I took a lifetime to get to this starting block….and the ideas that this art residency will throw up will continue in one form or another long after each one has moved on and gone away.

Like the biblical conception of creation, for a week we’ve played with the space of CP. The actual putting of it on the ground, the definition of the space from the ceiling, the dimensions, how the artists would populate it with their observations, the concepts that would emerge, the handling and how it would all come together. Essentially creating a space, putting the ingredients together, and then leaving the space and ingredients to the wisdom of the occupants one peopled it with. They could make heaven or they could make hell. The Almighty couldn’t have been as insecure as we feel now, when the space is ready and will soon have occupants other than us in it.

Yesterday we were busy measuring how big the space of the central CP installation should be. 15 feet ? 18 ? 20 feet? Herbert Baker and Lutyens must have had the same concerns… is the capital of India going to be too big? Too small? Just right ? Will it accommodate all the aspirations of all who will come here? Do we even know what its going to be like once its done ? I can see this art space, this facsimile of the big CP out there, beyond the windows and blinds, already populated in my mind. A virtual CP in the belly of the real CP. Already the last date of the exhibition, three months away, is beginning to feel strangely in the here and now. Closing day - the day that all that has yet to be created, will be taken down

Today I walked into the same space alone for once, and watched the earlier exhibition being taken down and packed away. Its always strange to watch a world being dismantled. I feel a sense of déjà vu already, watching two different movies with the same ending. Ultimately the blank walls that were till now, the cinema screen, are once again the audience. I took pictures of my deja vu. To remind me I had been here already.

Today we also froze the name for the entire art initiative. CONNAUGHT PLACE, THE WHYNOT PLACE. To reflect the rejuvenative quality of interventions in a life / marketplace process. I just hope that the thought and its expression resonates all down the line, the way we’d like it to. By tomorrow, a million other things will have been frozen. The identity and our first steps towards igniting the awareness machinery. The posters for the film-makers’ initiative should be printed and out on institutional notice boards. The mails have already gone. Looks like this thing is taking off !