Dhuriwada, Malvan,
Maharashtra

​Dhuriwada is a small fishing village along the Chivla Beach of Malvan. It has around 70 houses with almost all households involved in fishing. But every household has at least one person working in Mumbai or Maharshtra’s water departments. A few youngsters have also ventured into adventure water sports as an occupation. Studies were conducted to establish the relationship between economy of the place and built-form. The communitarian dimension of work reflected in the builtform very clearly where there were no boundary walls between houses. The backyards and front yards of different houses flowed into each other. There were also work-related common areas like boat repair yards, fish sorting and drying yards, net repair yards and a large temple, where the community gathered every evening. Being connected to water on one side and the market on the other side, and also having many people of the community working across many faraway cities, the people and households of the settlement seemed to be tied together with gossips and legends. These fables brought out the softer dimensions of the community - the anxieties and the idiosyncrasies, the dreams and aspirations, the obsessions and quirks and all kinds of madnesses. The form of a graphic novel was explored to hold all of these along with the landscape and morphology of the place. It was called ‘The Water People’.