SUBTERRANEAN WATERS:

on the visceral architecture of stepwells and cisterns

Rita Mendes-Flohr

I wander through the winding alleys of Jodhpur’s Blue City and suddenly, I find myself standing at the edge of a deep pit. Below me is an upside-down ziggurat that is dug into the earth instead of reaching up toward the heavens. Sets of seven steps go down, one on the right, one on the left, descending to the next platform, where the next set of stairs start to go down. The pattern is mirrored on three sides of the structure, forming a hypnotic rhythm - so that you are not certain whether you are descending or ascending, as in an etching by Escher.

The water in the pool looks remarkably clean, in fact, I can see, even from afar, that it is teeming with fish, small and very large ones. An old man with a shiny metal bucket goes down slowly towards the water that is spurting out, from a corner of the stepwell, near the bottom - pure water, that he carries back up to a puja ceremony in one of the pavilions above.

I stand there in silence, then walk down a few steps at a time. The water, a luscious blue, at the very bottom of the last steps, mesmerizes me. It is the focal point of the entire structure. It calls me to follow the rhythm of the steps – as if playing the keys of a piano with my feet.

Yet I do not dare go all the way down. Closer to the water, the steps look slippery, covered with wet, green algae, and I feel vulnerable to be down there alone, a foreign woman in a strange land. On the other hand, to come so close to the water, so near its sources, and not to go all the way, leaves me with a sense of missing out on a singular experience.

And so I pull myself together and descend, trying hard to avoid the slippery green algae on the lower steps, till I finally reach the surface. A sense of quiet, mingled with the coolness of being so close to the water, so deep into the ground overtakes me. I peer into the blue pool with the large fish and notice that the steps go down even further, into the water, to another submerged level, and perhaps to yet another one, even deeper down. What if I continued to descend, stepping into the water, going down and down and down, deeper into my subconscious.

*

This is Toor ki Baori, the first of the Indian stepwells I found on my travels in India. My fascination with Indian stepwells started when a captivating slideshow about India’s stepwells landed on my computer screen some time ago, and I was entranced by these stunning architectural masterpieces. In 2016, while planning a trip to Gujarat and Rajasthan with my friend Doreen Bahiri, in search of traditional textiles for her ethnic arts shop in Tel Aviv, I realized that stepwells abound in these desert regions. They were built hundreds of years ago in the loose, sandy soil, to reach the water table that is very low in periods of severe drought but can rise significantly with the summer monsoons.

Finding and photographing stepwells became a second, compelling, mission of our trip. In the end, we managed to find nine stepwells, plus several more reservoirs and tanks that technically are not stepwells, even if they might have steps, since they are not fed by groundwater wells. On our second trip to Rajasthan and Delhi, two years later, we were found twelve more. It turned out most of the stepwells required quite a lot of detective work to locate - they are indeed, forgotten.

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As an erstwhile student of architecture, I have always been less interested in the visual qualities of a building, than in its visceral and kinesthetic dimensions – how you experience it with all your senses, not only your eyes. I ask how a built environment invites you to move; what subtle sensations it arouses as you walk through it; the archetypal images it awakens; how it transforms you, like an initiation rite or a pilgrimage would.

It was important to me to physically go down into the stepwells, to experience the architectural space from within, as it was meant to be experienced. This proved not always possible, sometimes because of my own fears of slipping down from the narrow steps into the depths, in in an attack of vertigo. Or because the wells were so neglected that the amount of refuse lying on the steps and at its bottom in the fetid water, was so unappealing that I only ventured down a few steps. Or they were in such deserted areas, that I feared being accosted by men who might be hiding out there.

But most of the time the obstacle was that the wells were locked up, fenced in.  The reasons – or rationalizations – for their being off limits to visitors played on the primal fears of these holes into the earth: two illicit couples committed suicide by jumping to their deaths in one; children were said to have drowned in others; or the place was “infested with snakes and scorpions”. The British, in their long rule of India, sealed many of the stepwells for supposed hygienic reasons, allowing these magnificent structures to fall into disuse and disrepair. 

On the other end of Jodhpur, a stepwell known as Tapi ki Baori is locked behind a gate, the key is with the next-door shopkeeper. The place feels old and abandoned, from another era, its red sandstone blocks worn and wrinkled. A huge tree had fallen across the steps that take up the entire breadth of the narrow space, enclosed on two sides by high walls of the adjacent buildings. You have to bend down under the bare trunk to reach a covered landing. Here, the roots of another tree scale the walls, growing into the stones, like the trees in Angor Wat, Cambodia, that smother hidden temples in the jungle.

Past the landing, the broad steps continue down, drowning into the blue-green waters of the first pool. On each side of the pool, the narrow ledges lead you to a second covered pavilion, where another pool confronts you. At its far end, it is closed off by a wall, mirrored in the water, with pitch-dark openings on each of its two stories. The third appears to be submerged.

The architectural thrust of this stepwell is less to go down into the water – the steps are slow and low - than to penetrate deeper into the structure, to find out what lies behind that wall with the dark openings. But the ledges along this second pool are crumbling, it is no longer possible to walk on them. I cannot reach the heart of the stepwell. Its mysteries remain unsolved, its fluttering ghosts are not disturbed. Only the pigeons know what lies there.

I send photos of the Indian stepwells to my brother in Curaçao, joking that these architectural wonders were essentially ‘pos di pia’ (foot wells) as found on the arid Caribbean island where we grew up and where he still lives.

The groundwater level on the island was always low. Wind-driven pumps over wells were common, and every drop of rain had to be preserved by dams, tanks and cisterns. There were also pos di pia – “foot wells” - sometimes just a slanted surface to walk down to the water, but at times also built with steps. Except that the elaborate Indian constructions far surpass these humble, utilitarian walk-down wells of Curaçao.

On my first return visit to Curaçao after my two trips to India, I set myself the project of photographing the island’s stepwells. Despite their more functional architecture and the fact that, in this dry season, there is not a drop of water in these wells, they do not fail to hold their secrets. Here, the mysteries delve deep into the soil of the island’s dark past of slavery in the old plantations in the island’s thorny countryside - at Kenepa, Santa Barbara, Jan Thiel, Rif St. Marie and Santa Cruz. Who went down those steps, into the ground, to bring back water?

The stepwell below Fort Nassau is more accessible to visitors, being near the center of town and on the access road to the fort turned into a restaurant. Though deeper than all the others, it is perhaps less mysterious, as there is a plaque that tells its story of providing water for the fort that commandeered the harbor, but also giving water to thirsty local residents in times of severe drought.

*

What is this fascination I have with enclosed spaces that hold water, especially when they are underground? What do I seek there, in the under-earth?

The archetypal images aroused by the stepwells - whether I actually went down or contemplated the well from above – speak of the journey deep into the subconscious, images studied by Jung and that the philosopher Gaston Bachelard takes to architectural settings in The Poetics of Space.

Bachelard writes:

“Great images have both a history and a prehistory; they are always a blend of memory and legend, with the result that we never experience an image directly. Indeed, every great image has an unfathomable oneiric depth to which the personal past adds special color. Consequently, it is not until late in life that we really revere an image, when we discover that its roots plunge well beyond the history that is fixed in our memories. “ (1)

In all my underground adventures, there is a tremendous sense of inner peace and utter serenity, finding myself at home where time ceases to exist. I write about a fantasy of subterranean waters in my book House without Doors based on my childhood in Curaçao (2). Its young protagonist, eager to explore the secrets of the island, goes into the old house’s dark cellar that has always intrigued her, and suddenly that dark space turns into a cave, with stalactites and stalagmites, and a deep hole in the ground. Driven by her curiosity, battling with her fears, she musters the courage to go down and creep, sometimes on her belly like a snake, through the long, endless passages of the cave:

As I emerge from the sandy hollow, I find myself at the shore of an immense sea, below the glowing red dome of the under‑earth sky. The waves ripple gently, shimmering on the velvety surface of the pitch-black water. I take a deep breath. There are birds in the sky, strange prehistoric birds, flying away, disappearing behind the horizon.

I sit down on a rock on the shore and let the surf play with my feet. The waves move back and forth, back and forth, like the palm-tree in front of the window of the house where I was born. I sit here for hours. Perhaps for years. 

I have always had a love for caves and never suffer from claustrophobia when I am under-earth. There is a wisdom in those caves, deep into Mother earth I feel safe, enveloped, embraced. And then the bats, are they messengers from another world? They know all the secrets hidden in those caves, I want to follow them, deep inside, to know.

My brother and I have explored tens of caves in Curaçao, especially those that are off-trail and not popularly known, the ones that require creeping on your belly, to be rewarded by magnificent rooms opening up, with glistening stalactites and stalagmites and wondrous formations – sculptures by an unknown creator.

The darkness of the cave does not frighten me. I am not afraid to walk in the dark, when I am hiking, in fact I love hiking after dark – I have a kind of night vision, a good kinesthetic sense, to feel my way around, to sense the presence of obstacles. Our Aunt Sara, who lived next door to us, became blind when she was thirty, long before we were born. As a child, I was amazed at how she knew her way around the house just like the bats in the cave, without ever bumping any chairs or tables, as long as everything was in its place. She would ‘read’ books, by having friends come and read to her, or by listening to her records for the blind. Or I would read to her, when I learned to read in school. Often, she would run her fingers along my face, in order to ‘see’ me. And she had to ‘see’ all the friends I introduced her to. I always thought she was the wisest woman I ever knew. Despite, or more likely because of her blindness. Like the blind seer Tiresias, who knew it was Oedipus, who had killed his own father.

*

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The Indian stepwell is very much a women’s place – for women are the ones who fetch water, traditionally. What an effort it must be, to carry heavy buckets of water all the way up those stairs I think as I contemplate the architecture – but the shaded pavilions provide a welcome opportunity to rest and socialize, breaking up the women’s often arduous daily routine. And if Biblical narratives carry a wider truth, perhaps these wells too are where the Indian Rachels might meet their Jacobs, the Rebeccas their Isaacs.

Traditionally, it would be a pious act to make water available to the community in India’s dry regions, earning the initiators merit - both on the social and spiritual level. Rani ki Vav, the Queen’s Well in Patan, Gujarat, was built by queen Udayamati, in memory of her husband, King Bhimadeva I of the Solanki dynasty, who died in 1064. It is interesting to note that twenty-five percent of the benefactors who commissioned stepwells for the public good were women.

Beyond this more literal level, the stepwell is a woman’s place in terms of its imagery - with their going deep down into the earth mother, and the stairs, often in a narrow passage, letting you re-emerge into the world, as if reborn. Moreover, the stepwells are in essence a void. The stepwell can perhaps be described an upside-down step-pyramid, except that its bulk, or volume, consists of air – emptiness, a void that cannot be seen. They are not visible from afar, projecting into the air – unlike phallic towers pyramids and other edifices erected by mostly male rulers. They are not ‘something to be seen’. They do not take up space - instead they make space.

In a brilliant essay entitled “Georgia O’Keeffe and the Masculine Gaze”, that inspired my own visual art, Anna Chave notes that O’Keeffe was more interested in the hole within the pelvis bone, than in the object itself. That she was drawn to the interstices, to what is not seen with the eye.

Chave writes: “O’Keeffe portrayed abstractly, but unmistakably, her experience of her own body, not what it looked like to others. The parts of the body she engaged were mainly invisible (and unrepresented) due to their interiority, but she offered viewers an ever-expanding catalogue of visual metaphors for those areas, for the experience of space” (3). She goes on to argue, even stronger, that O’Keeffe articulates “the sensation of crevices and spaces not as an experience of lack and absence, but as one of plenitude and gratification. “ (4 )

*

There are one hundred and three steps going down between two long walls made of hewn stone at Ugrasen ki Boali, in Delhi, the last of the nine wells I find on this trip. At the far end, the structure is closed off by a narrow tower housing the well, five or six stories tall, with large openings, one on top of the other.

Here, the pull of the visceral architecture is down, into the earth. There is nothing to stop me, to divert my attention, to slow my descent. There are no shaded pavilions and covered landings inviting me to stop and rest. My eyes remain focused on the well below, my body keeps moving down, down – with the walls on each side of the stairs towering above me.

But the pool at the bottom of the stairs is empty. Through the bars of the locked gate in the well-tower, I can see that the well is completely dry, silted. Then I look above and see the sky through a grate that prevents people from falling into this deep pit. I photograph, finally getting a view of a cylindrical well from below.

I sit at the lowest step, under the arch of the tower opening and look up the long staircase. I imagine the women who must carry their buckets up these steps, with no pavilions where they can sit and rest on the way. A large, old tree at the very top provides shade to those who finally make it up.

Even though there is no clean, blue water in this pool, a peaceful calm prevails. The handful of other visitors do not seem to come all the way down, they stop halfway - perhaps they are concerned about having to climb up again.

I am alone here, with the cooing doves. Deep into the earth. Perhaps it is a descent into the realm of the underground, the way Orpheus went down into the netherworld to find his beloved. But those same stone steps allow you to return safely from the depths, unlike Eurydice who fell back to Hades, when Orpheus broke his promise and looked back.

When you return, slowly climbing back those steps, it is perhaps with renewed strength, or with the knowledge you gain from that under-earth perspective, from coming out of that womb-like space, reconnecting to water, the source of life, the creative force, the source of inspiration, of understanding, of wisdom.

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References:

1.      Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

1. My book, House without Doors – was published in Hebrew translation in Tel Aviv, in 2012 by Sifriyat Iton 77.  See: http://housewithoutdoors.blogspot.co.il/

2. Anna C. Chave, “O’Keeffe and the Masculine Gaze” in Art in America, January 1990, p.119

3. Anna C. Chave, “O’Keeffe and the Masculine Gaze” in Art in America, January 1990, p. 124