Celebrating Golconda's glory

The first edition of The Golconda Collective, brought together artists, cultural curators, archivers and art enthusiasts from all over the city, on Friday. The brain child of artist Swapna Mehta and writer Shalini Sharma, TGC is a private art trust. 

With the goal to rejuvenate the city’s archiving methods of its history and culture, organisers Swapna and Shalini aim for the collective to bring together like-minded people to start a dialogue about heritage and its conservation, engage pro-actively with the government for the city’s beautification, and organise and curate contemporary art exhibitions, among other efforts. 

The evening event saw the who’s who of the city trickle in to hear Pramod Kumar K.G., the managing director of Eka Archiving Service Ltd, along with founding director of Eka and Fulbright scholar Deepthi Sasidharan speak about Hyderabad’s rich, ornamental history. 

While Pramod kept the audience intrigued with his talk on the sovereignty of the Golconda diamonds, their mining and what it meant for a Golconda diamond to have travelled across the seas, Deepthi awed everyone with a never-before-seen collection of photographs and portraits of the erstwhile royal women of India and their lives. 

As Pramod’s talk, Sovereign Golconda in Thought and Imagination, progressed the audience were stunned by the magnitude of power a Golconda-mined diamond held. Deepthi followed suit, giving everyone a closer and more detailed look at how royal women across princely states rebelled and revelled under the veil that was imposed on them, with her discourse Glitter under the Veil. The evening ended with high tea and people making their way to the speakers to engage in further dialog.