Sprinting through a museum marathon

A museum cares and protects a collection of artifact, preserving relics’ importance for posterity. It is a place that rekindles your cultural memory, so much so that even being in midst of the present, one tends to get lost in the passage of time.

So much for museum lovers, until a husky voice belonging to the museum guide penetrated the eardrum, forcing a hasty retreat back to reality. Recently I experienced this in my visit to the Calico Museum of Textiles. In anticipation of a ‘silky dream’, I met with a matte reflection of present.

I got up early with the intention of catching the guided tour of one of the most famous textile museums in the world at daybreak.
Missing such an experience would be a shame for a person, who had travelled more than 8,000-odd kilometres to understand Indian culture.

So I cut down my 8 hours of sleep and dot at 10:30am found myself at the entrance of the museum. However, my euphoria about my punctuality was cut short by a stern command ‘Follow me!’ by an old woman — it also surprised me as, for a change, some event in Ahmedabad (of the ones that I have so far attended) happened on time!

Unfortunately it was also a limited edition — when I practically had to survive a kind of ‘museum marathon’.

No sooner the guide opened the doors, I fell in love with the collection of fabrics from different part of the country, including court textiles used by the Mughal and provincial rulers of the 15th to 19th centuries. So impressed was I by the decoration and colours of the fabrics that I stand, in some cases, a few minutes longer in front of an exhibit than allotted, not knowing that I committed a big mistake thus! Immediately, I am bombarded with instructions to continue ahead.

Additionally I am also told about how and from what distance I should be looking at the exhibits, with several punctuating remarks like: “Have you seen that?”; “Do you like it?”; or “Can you go a little bit faster?”

With every question I increased my pace and at equal speed was also losing my tolerance — thus not being able to enjoy the last part of the exhibition to my satisfaction. Finally, I arrived at the finish line and here I was given an offer — one which I would have very much liked to hear at the entrance and not in the souvenir shop of the museum — “Please, take as much time as you want!”

Aylin Gunsam is an Austria based journalist, currently on an internship in India