Objects of Endurance (Session IV in Series- Fragments of Labor and Endurance)

On May 24, 2026, the Adhyayan Writing Community hosted its 31st Session 'Objects of Endurance' an intimate, reflective and curated session at Conflictorium, Raipur.

Name- Satpriya Kaur Mudhar

Role- Facilitator

Email Id- satpriyakaurmudhar@gmail.com

Note in contribution: Created the poster, other digital assets and ideation.

Objects of Endurance was conceived as an exploration of the relationships we form with everyday objects and the ways in which they become repositories of memory, emotion, and lived experience. While objects are often perceived as functional or ordinary, they frequently outlast moments, relationships, and phases of life, quietly carrying traces of the people and stories attached to them.

The session invited participants to reflect on an object they have held onto, returned to, or found difficult to part with. Through conversation and writing, participants explored how certain objects come to embody grief, comfort, resilience, belonging, nostalgia, or transformation.

Rather than focusing on the material object itself, Objects of Endurance sought to examine what these objects reveal about the human experience: how memory is preserved, how meaning is assigned, and how personal histories continue to live within seemingly ordinary things.

At its core, the session was an inquiry into endurance itself: not only the endurance of objects through time, but also the endurance of emotions, relationships, and memories that remain embedded within them.

Objects of Endurance was conceived as an invitation to think about labor and endurance through the material things that accompany our lives. Rather than beginning with theory or text, the session asked participants to bring an object carrying a story of persistence, care, memory, survival, inheritance, or routine.

The objects brought into the room ranged from old phones, newspaper cuttings, and stamp collections to bangles, love letters, spectacles, bottles, family keepsakes, and seemingly insignificant fragments preserved over years. Through these objects emerged stories of parents and grandparents, changing lifestyles, aspirations, grief, affection, migration, and everyday endurance.

What became evident through the session was that endurance rarely exists as an abstract concept. It becomes visible through the things people choose to keep, repair, carry, inherit, and return to. Objects often outlive moments, yet continue to hold traces of the lives that passed through them.

More than a discussion about material possessions, the session evolved into a collective reflection on memory, labor, care, family histories, and the quiet acts of persistence that shape ordinary lives.

The session reaffirmed the belief that stories do not only exist in books and archives. They also exist in drawers, cupboards, wallets, shelves, and pockets, waiting for someone to ask why they were kept.