Today marks day 6 since we soft-launched The Peepli Project.
The four of us could say “Thank you for the response”, and it would be grossly inadequate to express the surprise, the pleasant shock even, at the kindness with which so many people — readers, industry leaders, journalists — greeted the initiative. So we’ll just say we are humbled, and determined as hell that we won’t give you cause to rethink your initial favorable opinion.
Besides the mentions on social media, each of us has been getting calls, messages and mails from friends, journalists and well-wishers — calls that contain feedback, suggestions, ideas and questions, in equal measure.
Two questions have been universal: (1) How do you hope to fund this? and (2) How are these projects conceived, what is the story arc, is there an “end”, how will these narratives mesh together?
Both questions are valid — and we think for every one of you who asked, there are more who wondered but did not know who to ask, or how to reach out to us. So this is for you:
First, funding: The honest answer is we don’t know yet. Everything that you see — and everything that you will see in the next month or two, which is going to be a lot — is funded (to the tune of Rs 21 lakh thus far and counting) privately. Some of it has come from our own pockets; for the bigger chunk, we are indebted to a common friend, who knew of our dreams and our difficulties and said to us, “Here is all the money I can spare right now — take it and go make those dreams come true”.
That is where we are now — a road trip away from being broke. About the future, we don’t know. But we are having fun, we have narratives planned for the next six months and more, and we intend to make those stories the best they can be. At some point, we hope to have built value, and we hope that people interested in investing in good content will see this value and step up to be a part of this, to help us sustain.
So that is the answer to question one. How are we doing this? Oh a wing and a prayer. If, as, and when that picture changes, we will let you know.
Secondly, the projects, and your questions about how the stories, narratives, themes are structured, and how they mesh — the best way to answer that is for us to walk you through one project. So, as an exemplar (the same thinking applies to Rahul Bhatia’s Noble Mansion and Kalyan Varma’s Nature Without Borders), here is Arati Kumar-Rao’s Freshwater Trail, decoded:
Top Of The Page
The top of the page gives you the project overview. Arati’s current theme is freshwater — our rivers, lakes and other water-bodies, groundwater… The linked story below that (indicated in the image above with an orange exclamation point) is prologue to her next field trip, which begins in under a week; it tells you where she will be going, and why, and what stories she hopes to tell from there.
Immediately below this mission statement, find an interactive map that walks you through the trail thus far, which is intended to catch you up with the places already visited, the stories done.
These two elements lead into the various narratives that collectively comprise the project:
The greening of the desert
The Teesta waters
Below that are the sections, each dedicated to a particular theme, a narrative strand (see the two examples above) that plays off the main project definition. The first segment in the given example is the story of ancient wisdom transforming an arid desert into a fertile, fecund land capable of sustaining thousands of people in comfort. The second both foreshadows, and provides context to, a contemporaneous news story: the proposed Indo-Bangladesh land-swap agreement, which includes figuring out ways of sharing the waters of the Teesta in a way beneficial to both countries. Scroll further down and you find more themes, more narrative skeins.
All are open-ended stories; while each individual story is complete in itself, Arati will return to each of these geographies to report on stories that both deepen and widen the particular narratives; simultaneously, she will open up new narrative strands in other parts of the country, all plugging into the central theme of Freshwater.
This, hopefully, gives you a sense of the underlying architecture of each of the three projects.
We have plans to expand into more projects, rope in more storytellers — but for now it is all pro bono, and expansion is for V2.
It likely raises more questions — in which case, please find us through our Twitter handles:
The Peepli Project (the collective handle for all four of us)
Kalyan Varma , and his Nature Without Borders project
Rahul Bhatia , and the Noble Mansion project
Arati Kumar-Rao, and the Freshwater Trail project
Besides the questions, we are also looking to you for suggestions, for ideas, for contacts in the fields we are exploring, for insight, for information. Reach out to us, please, and help?
Again, thank you all for the generous reception. See you on the story page.
The post Anatomy of a Peepli Project appeared first on Smoke Signals.