Settlement STUDIES
Khijadiya (ખીજાડિયા) is a village located 15 minutes from Jamnagar, Gujarat. It lies in the Bagasara Taluka, Amreli District. The entire village covers an area of almost 3200 meter square.
This village is occupied by the Patel community. It is famous for the Khijadiya Bird Sanctuary, located in Jamnagar district, 5 minutes away from the village. It is home to around 300 recorded species of migratory birds.
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To understand the village as a whole, we were divided into four groups landscape, economy, housing, and village planning. The idea was that, by working together, we could grasp the overall picture of the village.
I explored the landscape of Khijadiya, which is a fluvial landscape. Since the river had dried up, it left behind small ponds, salty patches, and muddy areas that shaped the terrain. This landscape supported different life forms, including animals..
Our task was to create stories around the strange and mysterious characters of the village. By building narratives around these characters, we could uncover what was truly going on within the village. i explored so many method to imagine ,define and experience the space whether its orthography , through forms , now in this module i learnt how one could imagine or feel the space through text .because some experience cant be drawn but a written text is also another way to read the space or visualize space.
The story behind the story
The text we developed is titled The Leopard Paw. It draws from a rumour or perhaps a truth ,that a leopard had been sighted moving around the village. While walking through the landscape, I came across what looked like a paw print. Not far from it, there were also buffalo footprints. This became the seed of a story: the landscape itself as a stage, with the leopard as a central character.
