Art and History

When I had visited Agra two months back, I had lamented the fact that we Indians have no respect for our national heritage and have no qualms about desecrating historical monuments. After visiting Italy this week, I'm wondering if I can generalize this to the whole world. That may be a bit too much, but I witnessed exactly the same thing in Italy as I did at Agra. Whether they were the 2000 year old ruins at Rome, or the precariously tilting walls of the Leaning Tower of Pisa - all bore witness to the regrettable proclamation of love by irresponsible lovers.

Anyway, I had a great time at Italy. I have always been fascinated by history, and what better place to witness history than Rome. I can't think of any other city with such a rich treasure of history - from ancient to medieval to modern. Every street corner, every piazza is so steeped in history that you really need a lifetime to see everything that Rome has to offer. Given the fact that I had less then 3 days to explore the Eternal City, I'm sure there was a lot more I didn't see. However, I still managed to see the usual touristy stuff - Piazza del Popolo, Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi, Colosseum, Vatican city....

If I were to pick up a few of my favourite places in Rome, they would certainly be Fontana di Trevi and St. Peter's Basilica at Vatican. It was quite an experience to behold Michelangelo's Pieta at the church. The figure of Mary cradling the dead body of Christ is so real and lifelike, that it is sure to evoke the emotion of compassion even in a non-Christian.

It was a coincidence and my good luck that I was in Rome during one of the biggest events in Rome - Notte Bianca (White Night). On September 9th, the city refused to sleep. Shops were open all through the night, there were concerts at the major piazzas, and almost the entire population of Rome was on the streets. Nobody seemed to have any idea what they were doing on the streets....On Via Corsa (the main street in Rome) all you could see was a huge ocean of people just walking aimlessly from one end to the other. You had to be there to experience it.

I know for sure that I will visit Rome again (and that has nothing to do with the fact that I threw a coin at the Fontana di Trevi). And then I will hopefully get to see the one place I regret missing this time - The Sistine Chapel.

My next stop after Rome was Florence. Florence is very different from Rome. If Rome is all about history, Florence is nothing short of a huge art gallery. There are very few cities that can match Florence in terms of its art collection. Michelangelo's awe inspiring statue of David and Doni Madonna, Botticelli's colourful and allegorical Birth of Venus, Calumny and Primavera, Leonardo's incomplete The Adoration of Magi and visually deceptive Annunciation, Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch, Titian's erotic Venus of Urbino (which incidentally was dubbed by Mark Twain as 'the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses')....the list is endless. I'm not much of an Arts person, but this visit to Florence has fuelled my interest in Art

Speaking of David, it's called the most perfect representation of human form on stone. And rightly so. You have to see to believe it. Every muscle, every nerve, every body part is so painstakingly and realistically sculpted on marble that you can't help but marvel at Michelangelo's brilliance. Actually, as I later found out, David is not really perfect in that it is not proportionate. The top half of the body is disproportionately larger than the bottom half. But there's a reason to it. It was sculpted with the intention of being placed on a high pedestal, so in order for it to appear perfectly proportionate to a person viewing it from the ground level, the top half of the statue had to be larger. Similar visual deception was also used by Da Vinci in his Annunciation. When seen from the front, it appears truly disproportionate. But then this painting is meant to be seen from the right at an angle because of the position it was to occupy on the wall when it was painted.

Apart from art, Florence seems to be a shopper's paradise. You can get everything from from inexpensive trinkets on the streets to unaffordable designer wear in swanky designer outlets. We visited the shops of all the major designers....I can't forgive Armani for burning a huge hole in my pocket :)

From Florence, we took an excursion to Pisa. To climb up the Leaning Tower and get a panoramic view of the city was an exhilarating experience, and to climb down the slippery and tilting marble steps was scary!

This trip to Italy is certainly one of my most memorable trips. How I wish I had more time!!

Weekend at Agra

I love to travel. And I love history. So when I got a night's stay at a hotel in Agra as the prize for winning a quiz, I was ecstatic. While I had been to Agra before, this would be my wife's first visit. Obviously then, she was as excited as I was. For me it was an opportunity to get a 'refresher course' in Mughal history, while for her it was the excitement to finally get to see the Taj.

Anyhow, we went to Agra over the weekend. Needless to say, we had a great time. My intent here is not to give a description of our itinerary or to go gaga over the beauty of Mughal architecture. There are two things that I want to write about - one quite serious, and the other quite funny actually.

Let me start with the funny bit. I found the tourist guides in Agra quite amusing. Forget the fact that they try to impose themselves upon you (they're notorious for that anyway). What is truly amusing is their twisted version of history, which they narrate with truly remarkable conviction. In their accounts, history seamlessly integrates with folklore, myth, and even outright lie. This can be a cause of concern when they dish this khichdi out to unsuspecting foreigners, but I take great delight in it. When we visited any of the historical places at Agra, I made it a point to hire a guide just to get a thrill out of it - to compare my version of history with theirs, and at the same time have a good laugh!

Somehow these guides have the uncanny knack of getting into the minds of their 'preys' and presenting a version that would be most appealing to them. If you appear to be someone who loves drama, you will get just that. If you want straightforward facts, you'll get them plain and dry. Only, the facts, in most cases, can hardly be called facts. Sometimes, two guides can present the same fact in diametrically opposite contexts.

Sample this - it's a fact that Akbar had a wife called Mariam. Now let's see how this was told to us by two guides. Guide-1 - Akbar respected all religions; he had a Hindu wife, a Muslim wife and a Christian wife (Mariam). Great...the guide was talking about Din-i-Ilahi, the religion propounded by Akbar, and this fact perfectly exemplified his secular beliefs. Now let's see what Guide-2 tells us - Akbar didn't have a Christian wife; Mariam was another name given to his Hindu wife - Jodha Bai, Jahangir's mother. The point here being that Akbar's Rajput wife also embraced Islam. It's interesting to note that whether 'Jodha Bai' was indeed Jahangir's mother has always been a point of dispute among historians, but that Jahangir's mother was a Rajput (possibly given the name of Mariam-uz-Zamani) and a practicing Hindu is a well accepted fact.

At the Taj, the guide 'informed' us that the Koh-i-noor was broken by the British - one piece adorning the queen's crown, and the other kept in a museum. Again, a preposterously twisted fact. Actually, it is the queen mother's crown, adorned by the Koh-i-noor, that is on display at the museum at the Tower of London - there simply aren't two separate pieces, the original stone was 'cut' to increase its brilliance.

Interacting with these guides also reinforced my belief that history is all about interpretation. We've had enormous debates about how historians have tried to promote their own ideologies through their versions of history. To a certain extent it is plausible, it just depends on how you portray a particular fact.

The Mughal history I know portrays Aurangzeb as a tyrant, anti-Hindu, and a plunderer. My guide at the Taj 'enlightened' me to the fact that Aurangzeb actually cared a lot for his people and didn't want to waste money on expensive monuments. Facts can be emphasized or underplayed to present any of these two contrasting pictures. I don't think it's ever possible for historians to completely divorce their personal biases and ideologies while interpreting history. A good historian, in my opinion, is one who does not let personal agenda hijack the interpretation.

Abraham Eraly, in the preface to his book Emperors of the Peacock Throne - The Saga of the Great Mughals, observes:

"Every retelling of history, if it is anything more than a banal catalogue of events, involves ideation, if only because, even at the primary level, a process of selection and evealuation of data, a pattern-making, is invloved. The historian might not be overtly judgmental, but judgement is implicit in the very telling of the story."

Now let me come to the more serious observation. Looking at these priceless gems of our heritage, I felt quite sorry at the state of the various monuments. All the monuments in Agra are either World Heritage Sites or come under the aegis of the Archeological Survey of India. Yet, their maintenance and upkeep is seriously sub-standard. I wonder where all the money pumped in by the government goes! I was particularly saddened by state of affairs at Akbar's tomb at Sikandra and Itimad-ud-daulah's tomb. These monuments have been around for almost 400 years, but if the current sorry state of maintenance (rather the lack of it) continues, I seriously doubt if they will survive another 100 years. The blame for this lies not only with the authorities, but also with us, the common people.

When will we learn to respect our heritage and stop defacing our monuments? Missing stones, graffiti on the walls and everywhere else, pollution everywhere, trash all over the place - I find all this quite revolting. The signage on the Taj lawns say "Walking and photography on grass prohibited", yet that's exactly what I found people doing there. And there was no one around to stop them. I even saw a family enjoying a min-picnic, with food stuff and all, on the lawns. The waterways of the garden had mineral water bottles and polythene bags floating all over And there was no one to stop the people from doing that. Agreed that the Taj is the 'monument of love', but why do people have to use the walls and benches to profess their love in the form of graffiti?

Pathetic!

Barcelona - Una Ciudad Interesante

Estaba en Barcelona la semana pasada. Había ido allí para trabajo, pero tuve algún tiempo libre en mano para explorar la ciudad. Yo me enamoré de la ciudad, especialmente su arquitectura.

Well, enough Spanish! Let me continue in a language I know…

I was in Barcelona last week. I had gone there on work, but had some spare time on hand to explore the city. I fell in love with the city, particularly its architecture.

At one level, the architecture of the city is so diverse that it almost gives it a confused character. That's what my first impression also was. But as I explored the city more, I realized that it is the diversity of its architecture that gives the city its unique character. From Medieval to Renaissance to Modernisme/Art Nouveau to contemporary – the city has it all.

I was particularly impressed by Antoni Gaudi's work. Whether it was the surrealistic and seemingly 'deformed' Casa Mila or the extremely ornate and colorful Casa Batllo, or his magnum opus – La Sagrada Familia, one couldn’t help but get awestruck by the magnificence and brilliance of his work. His style is very different from anything I’ve ever seen. It breaks every single convention of architecture that I know of. What you finally get is not a building but a piece of Art. The two facades of Sagrada Familia are a study in contrast. While the Passion façade is characterized by strong angular images (very uncharacteristic of Gaudi's style), the Nativity façade is very typical of Gaudi – heavily inspired by nature and its undefined forms.

I find it strange that the Sagrada Familia has been under construction since 1884 and is not expected to be completed before Gaudi's death centenary in 2026. Now that's one helluva slow work! I'm sure there is a strong reason for this delay, but I fail to comprehend it.

The other thing I loved about Barcelona was the food. From usual stuff like prawns and fish to more exotic octopus and mussels, and even rabbit – I tried everything I got there. And of course, how could I forget the sea food Paella? No Spanish meal is complete without the paella. I loved it but after having paella for six consecutive meals, it just about started getting on my nerves.

I was in Barcelona during the world cup fever, and it was unfortunate that the match I saw in a pub with the Spanish people was the one where Spain lost. But the excitement in the air got me hooked on to the match, even though I know very little about football.