The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place is a short, interactive tale about a building eater consuming a tower on the edge of the town of Matsyapura. Using a blend of descriptive text and surrealist visuals it is our attempt to ponder the violence of erasure and the profound grief of having to survive on the margins of history.
In 1960 when the state of Bombay split like an egg on the jagged edge of the Western Ghats and formed the territories of Gujarat and Maharashtra, the town of Matsyapura was abandoned by government decree – to make it easier to draw a clean border between the new states.
Mir UmarHassan, the fabled Gujarati poet, lamented this willful and violent erasure of an ancient town and in a delightful satirical poem titled : The Building Eaters of Matsyapur, he wrote about the vapid consumption of a place and the creation of a populace that is devoid of the flavors of their individual and munificent past.
With recent cause to recollect the horror of the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, and in solidarity with the protests against the draconian actions of our government – we are revisiting UmarHassan’s original poem.
Created with support from Phoenix, Leicester. A site-specific variant of the game was displayed at Phoenix, Leicester. And at the Video Game Art Gallery in Chicago.