Heritage lovers to climb Pahadishareef

Pahadishareef: Sahapedia will be taking out the heritage lovers on Sunday to Pahadishareef, which is rarely visited by people. The Delhi-based organisation, Sahapedia, which started its venture in the city about a year back, has started exploring the sites which are rarely visited by denizens. The organisation has already completed more than 20 heritage walks, which include old mosques, temples, dargahs and almost all heritage sites with their scheduled programmes on Sundays.

According to Sahapedia’s cultural curator Dr Haseeb Jafferi, the organisation documents all these walks in the form of multimedia modules, articles, interviews, photographs, videos of performances, timelines, walkthroughs and bibliographies. “We curate these collections because we want to explore each subject in-depth, showcase its multiple facets and give you options of reading, watching or listening your way through each topic,” he said.

“Every curator is given the responsibility as per his knowledge about the topic. Recently, a curator visited Shahi Masjid, Aghapura Dargah, etc. The lead of the Heritage walk is of 25 members including locals and foreigners. To invite people to attend these events an ad is published on Facebook and the organisation’s website. The person should apply for it and after 25 applications it will be closed automatically,” he said.

Next Sunday, that is on August 12, the Sahapedia will be taking about 25 applicants to Pahadishareef. As Pahadishareef is a dargah which is open for all and has no entry fees, but in other cases if anyone of the heritage has an entry fee the applicant should buy their own tickets. Generally, people visit these heritage sites, but due to lack of knowledge about its history they are not able to understand the importance of the visited site. So, the curator will have to explain about the importance of the heritage structure.

“The information should be provided during any of these walks by a professional curator who is well versed in arts, culture and heritage with his rich historical knowledge to explain the facts with ease. For this, the expert generally explores for knowledge by referring old books by visiting national and international libraries,” adds Dr Jafferi.

BY MM Farooqui