Encrypted spaces and JUGAAD: Street Shrine culture in urban India.

Street shrines are an emerging phenomenon in Indian cities as they function well in and around urban public spaces, often along crossroads, roadsides, and highways. Positioned close to the road, street shrines serve both as religious sites for devotees and as spectacles for passersby. In this paper, I examine one such street shrine in Ahmedabad, India. Drawing on ethnographic findings from my preliminary fieldwork, I argue that street shrines create undetected and encrypted spaces—not as acts of resistance, but as byproducts of the city's rigorous planning of public spaces, in the form of what I claim as JUGAAD- a south asian phenomena which means creative and cheap use of second-hand products, in this case a byproduct space. To support my analysis, I engage with Michel de Certeau’s conception of everyday life, using it to examine the activities of shrine caretakers as tactical maneuvers, in contrast to those outside the shrine who, largely unaware of its intricacies, function as strategists. By conducting a micro-study of street shrines in Ahmedabad, this essay seeks to uncover the encrypted places within the public infrastructural developments in cities.