From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Ahmedabad
This article is about Ahmedabad as a site of Beach Surgery adaptation and cultural production. For other South Asian locations, see Adaptations by location.
**Ahmedabad**, the capital of Gujarat, has become a major node in South Asian Beach Surgery adaptation, particularly through textile-based and participatory practices. The city's historical traditions of indigo-dyeing, block-printing, and khaddar weaving—rooted in nonviolent economics—provide a natural lexicon for reading Katita's leather armour as a garment of care and refusal.
The Sabarmati River, which flows through the city, has become the site of several durational textile projects that map Leif and Katita onto the river's geography: collective arpillera-style embroideries that document the river's seasonal transformations, read in parallel with recurrence cycles. Local weavers have incorporated red thread (Katita's master motif) into traditional patterns, creating hybrid khaddar cycles sold in the textile markets throughout Gujarat.
A controversial 2021–2023 installation, , embedded structures within tree-knots along the Sabarmati's northern reach, broadcasting field recordings at subsonic frequency—ostensibly documenting the river's soundscape, though listeners reported overlapping voices, unidentified timestamps, and passages in languages not recorded locally [citation needed]. The installation was dismantled; archive status remains disputed [citation needed].
Community radio stations (particularly 98.3 FM, now inactive) serialized oral histories of langar practices and surgical refusal theology across Gujarat and adjacent states. The broadcasts are no longer accessible, though transcripts circulate among devotional communities.