Books: Designer Essays

PARADIGMS OF INDIAN ARCHTECTURE
ED BY G TILLOTSON
OXFORD
PAGE: 199 PRICE: Rs 695

When I use a pen to write, it fulfils the function for which it is made, but the pen by itself also promotes the idea of writing. It communicates the intention for which it exists. A building too, in the way it looks and is made and occupied, communicates a way of being. Like a pen, architecture signifies its existence.

This is the premise behind Paradigms of Indian Architecture, a collection of essays by architects, curators and historians that traverses territories as apart as Vijayanagara sculpture, colonial aesthetics and modern residences. Editor G.H.R. Tillotson cannot be faulted in presenting this wide diversity. It is his methods that make the book an inconsistent and confounding read.

Written by specialists, the vastly different subjects only qualify the extremely insular nature of each essay. Take Thomas Metcalf's analysis of the Taj Mahal as a building that represented to European visitors an idealised Orient, detached from India. He expresses aesthetic notions far removed from Kulbhushan Jain's on the domestic buildings of Rajasthan. Jain tackles expressions "independent of the basic logic of form making", those that "do not conform to pre-determined architectural attitudes". One approach is romantic and sentimental. The other is prosaic and urban. Where is the comparison?

How themes on art history, mythology and archaeology made it to the book presents another awkward dimension. In his introduction, Tillotson argues that scholarly studies of Indian architecture began with the British. The inclusion therefore of widely disparate themes and data is meant to highlight changing attitudes, from the colonial gaze down to today's design interpretation by practising Indian architects. Perhaps. If that is so, a more appropriate title for the book would have been Attitudes to Indian Art.

AUTHORSPEAK: BENOY K BEHL
Ajanta's Dark Knight
Throwing light on ancient art's hidden colours

Some people have a sense of history. Benoy K. Behl goes a step further; he has a sense of heritage. Photographer, writer and conservationist rolled into one, Behl has just published his first book -- Ajanta Caves: Ancient Paintings of Buddhist India (Thames and Hudson). Before you dismiss it as just another coffee-table publication, consider this: Behl is the first photographer to capture Ajanta in its true hues. Hitherto, the paintings were considered to be a uniformly-dull "reddish-brown in colour". Behl's camera reveals Ajanta's artists were capable of "bright greens, blues, oranges".

Working in dimly lit caves "in conditions where it was difficult to see your hand", Behl used a technique which may even be described as elementary "but which I suppose requires much patience". Flashbulbs are not allowed inside the caves for fear they may damage the paintings. So Behl had to make do with "quantifying even tiny amounts of light" and resort to long exposures: many murals were shot with "15-20 minute exposures". The photographs are of both aesthetic and historical value. At one level, they bear testimony to the original artists' eye for detail. As Sangitika Nigam, who collaborated with Behl in writing the book's text, says, "You can see ants climbing up a tree in the corner of a mural maybe 14 ft by 12 ft." Behl points to a photograph depicting chillies: "The chilli was thought to have come to India only with the Portuguese in the 16th century." The Ajanta paintings, however, date back to between 200 b.c. and a.d. 600. Similarly, another mural shows a stringed instrument, complete with keys: "These were meant to have been brought to India only by the Muslims."

Strangely, Behl specialised in moving pictures before he did in still ones. He made his first film, Delhi: The Disappearing City, in 1976, just after he graduated. Partly shot "from the back seat of a motorcycle", it explored hoary structures in the midst of modern residential colonies. Behl's current hobby horse is the "300 odd Buddhist monasteries of Ladakh" -- the bulk belonging to the 11th and 12th centuries but some even older -- which lie fragile. Behl has documented 52 monasteries and also conducted a preservation recce. This August, with help from the Indian Army, he carried out "a fire-fighting exercise at the Guru Lakhang monastery, a third of whose paintings had been destroyed by rain". Now Behl hopes to commence "phase two, and work on the other shrines". In more ways than one, that'll be a Himalayan task.

-Ashok Malik