What I talk about when I talk about a road numbered zero

Each epoch dreams the one to follow.

— Michelet, “Avenir! Avenir!” (Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project)

Is Road Number Zero the remnant of such a dream? Or a kind of preface, tasked with introducing the disruption that is to follow? Is the space of the village the ‘original space’, which now wears the urban infrastructure like an itchy sweater? Or is the village, through which the road now passes, yesterday’s dream; the residue of unfulfilled aspirations and the detritus of an anticipated tomorrow? Is the city that is yet to be built the trace of this desire to dream a different tomorrow. What traces do our dreams leave behind? 

In this project different mediums come together as I reflect on the blurring of social relations, and think about how the biology and geography of the place has been effected by the road and all the elements that the emergence of the road has brought with it. The photographic structures echo the architectural spaces within them, opening up to house the debris from the road, which together with the writings can be seen as a maquette for future monuments.  

The idea of a monument has interested me, as it is necessary only when the actual thing is no more, and when the public needs to be reminded that it existed. The road, a public space; an immense object made of tar, stone and sand, laid flat on the surface of the earth, is to me a monument to the idea of what it was intended to be. 

The road is an object that connects places, and is itself a place, a destination in its own right. And when one is on the road, one is in the in-between, between departure and arrival. As I think about the road, I watch in my mind, as Jules Michelet runs past me on the road, screaming, ‘Avenir! Avenir!’, and then stops a little ahead, out of breath and bent over, panting, in between breaths he whispers to the road, and I catch him say, ‘each epoch dreams the one to follow’. Walter Benjamin sitting at a Chai shop nearby, hears this and begins to write in his notebook. Road Number Zero has become a place where many such dreams have come together, overlapping one another, at times colliding, sometimes ignoring the presence of the others, and always on the verge of being realized. 

The history of the road is evident as one walks from the village end of the road towards Delhi; large fields, at times used as farms, or just left abandoned, give way to massive farmhouses with high walls, warehouses of different business houses, small chai shops, a recycling unit, and a few dhabas. Further down the road, just before Road Number Zero meets Road Numbers One and Two, the houses become smaller and more crowded, and the boundaries between public and private spaces become more clearly demarcated. The road belongs to no one, it is not public, it is not private, yet it is both; caught in a perpetual state of becoming.