In the introduction to Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India, academic Sunil Khilnani compares the time the politician spent in his Ahmednagar jail cell to a line from TS Eliot's Little Gidding — the kind of existence, at the "point of intersection of the timeless with time." An exhibition that opens next week at Gallery Chemould plays on the same intersection with stories from India's first citizens. Titled Life As They Knew It, the two-day showcase put together by The Citizen's Archive of India (CAI), an oral and material memory project, will take the viewer through the ordinary lives of citizens who have seen this country before and after Independence.'

With a curatorial team of three people and over 350 hours of information via audio-video recordings from citizens across the subcontinent, the planning for the exhibition began three months ago. The show stems from two of CAI's undertakings — The 1947 Project and Dilli Ki Khirki (centred around the village in South Delhi). A relatively new archive, CAI wanted to make themselves known since oral history is a niche field and not many people know about it. "Even when we interview people, they ask us if we're making a movie or writing a book. So, we put together this exhibition to explain what oral history is. We want to preserve the link between generations. We now have the technology and the ability, and I think it's important," archive director Malvika Bhatia says.