Map of the Hyderabad Collective drawn by Manpal Singh (housekeeping team), showing the areas he walks and works every day.
We live in a world of maps today. Can we imagine our lives without them? It may seem impossible. Almost every single day, we use Google Maps to navigate and get somewhere, have things delivered to our homes, look for a place, or try to know where we are. These maps are technically precise, accurate in real-time coordinates, measure distances to the hilt, and point out exact locations. Simply put, maps of any kind help us find a place. And, they also help us find or locate ourselves within a place.
The images you see above are also maps, sketches of Beforest’s Hyderabad Collective. Look closely, and you will see that birds appear as large as the hillocks, trees and dwellings lean in unusual ways, roads and paths ignore direction and measure, the lake shifts from where it is in reality, and letters and spellings wander. By the standards of geography and science, these maps are inaccurate and imperfect. Yet, do these hold a lesser truth than the satellite or survey based maps?
These maps and sketches are not trying to depict the land as a satellite sees it with precision, or as a drone captures it in a perfect shot; nor are these meant for navigation. They do not capture coordinates, but what they capture is connection. They reveal the land as it is seen and, importantly, experienced and felt by those who till the soil, harvest the produce, build the homes, maintain the hospitality spaces, and tend to the land to keep our Collective alive with their own hands, sweat and toil. These are sketches of Beforest’s Hyderabad Collective drawn by our field staff who steward it day in and day out.
Jaypal Singh (core staff of the kitchen) sketches the Hyderabad Collective, depicting his close familiarity with it.
What emerges from these drawings is something that a device cannot record. If we look beyond their geographical inaccuracies, a certain truth does appear. These maps carry memory, routine, familiarity, feeling, and reveal what has become significant through everyday life. What is being remembered here is not geography, but one’s own self within a place.
Most workplaces will ask, “What can people do for this place?” A Beforest Collective invites another kind of question: “What does this place do for people?” And that is not a question about productivity. It is a question about becoming.
Brij Mohan Singh (hospitality team), depicts the glamping area of the Hyderabad Collective, with all the landmarks that give it identity and a sense of pride to him.
Through repeated encounters, shared routines and everyday relationships, a physical site gets etched into memory, identity and belonging. Even as people shape the place, quietly, the place shapes them too.
Returning every morning, knowing every path, recognising every tree, finding meaning amidst routine and feeling at ease. The extraordinary slowly becomes ordinary, yet never loses its significance. Inspiration, then, can we say also lies in settling in? In inhabiting a quiet, enduring relationship with a place, in presence and belonging.
Badal Murmu (hospitality team) draws his everyday path to the glamping area, dotting the trees that appear to greet him.
The view that settles in Rajkumar and his team (civil team) as they close their workdays at the Hyderabad Collective.
This is not to romanticise our Collective or suggest that living and working together is automatically meaningful. But when the conditions are right, something gradual and profound can emerge.
These maps depict a place where slowly and almost unnoticed, people come to rest and simply be, and in doing so, return to themselves. These are not an attempt in trying to locate a place, but echo how people come to find and locate themselves in a place. Just as maps are meant to do.
