Into The Well

Into The Well is a short narrative pixel game made using Bitsy, centred around the violence inflicted on women during the partition of India, based on the research of Indian academic, Ritu Menon.  You play as Geeta, a young girl being forced to jump into a well by her family during partition riots. My first attempt at making a video game, ever!

• Instructions: Use the arrow keys to walk around and interact. Try talking to all the characters!
• Playtime: 8-12 minutes

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This game was made for a visual arts course at Ashoka University titled 'Visualising the Archive' taught by Vishwajyoti Ghosh. Find a longer description for the game, that I wrote for the course, below.

“When vials of poison or kirpans are handed to you; or quilts piled up, doused with kerosene and ignited so that you can jump into the fire; or wells and rivers pointed out so that you can drown in them, can there be anything  “voluntary” about such a death?” -Ritu Menon

Violence of all kinds was rampant during India’s partition in 1947. In many areas it continued for years and we still feel its communal ripples throughout the nation today. In all this violence, that committed against women occupies a weird space; between horrific and honoured. The image of women ‘bravely’ jumping into wells or walking onto pyres to protect their honour during partition is a motif etched firmly into our public consciousness. But were these ‘suicides’ ever a matter of choice?

I first encountered Ritu Menon’s work through her book ‘Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition.’ This semester, through this course and the archive, I found several of the original interviews used in the book. Menon studied and documented the stories of many women who witnessed or survived the horrors of partition. These interviews serve as the base inspiration for my project. 

Into The Well is a short narrative pixel game created using Bitsy that attempts to represent the accounts of violence faced against women in the name of honour. You play as Geeta, a 15 year old girl being coerced to jump into a well by her family during the partition riots. You enter a sort of afterlife, interacting with other victims of partition violence, whose stories and dialogues are directly inspired by Ritu Menon’s interviews. By the end of the game, you manage to escape the well and go back to your parents, only to find out the brutal truth; your honourable choice was never a choice at all.

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