Ancestral Record Chain · Collection 002
Some memories
have an expiry
date.
This is not a metaphor.
The people who remember what came before are leaving.
Before liberalisation. Before mobile phones. Before the city became what it is now. The people who carry that memory, who grew up in a different India, who remember what neighbourhoods sounded like before construction, are in their seventies and eighties.
Each year, the living record thins. Not because it was unimportant. Because no one recorded it while there was still time.
ARC is recording them now.
"The urgency is not the seal.
The urgency is the recording."
One session
A single conversation. Two to three hours. In person if possible, remote if not. Conversation-led, not an interview, not a questionnaire. The Steward asks, you speak.
Photographs
A portrait session alongside the conversation. Formal. Not candid. The way people used to be photographed, like it mattered.
The capsule
The recording and photographs are sealed for ten years. The seal is short on purpose. Some participants may not be here when it opens. That is part of the record.
The certificate
Upon sealing, a certificate with a QR code linking to your place in the archive. That is the only thing you keep.
Why ten years
Most ARC collections seal for fifty or a hundred years. This one seals for ten.
The ten-year seal is not a compromise. It is an acknowledgment that the people being recorded may not be here in ten years. The capsule opens for their children, their grandchildren, people who were in the room when it was recorded, or almost. That proximity is not a weakness. It is the point.
If there is someone whose memory
should not leave with them,
the Steward is reachable.