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Imperial
Icon A peek at restored paintings at
the Victoria Memorial.
By Nandita Choudhury
THE VICTORIA MEMORIAL HALL CALCUTTA
ED BY PHILIPPA VAUGHAN
PRICE: RS 1,850
An imperial monument to the majesty of the Empress-Queen and
the splendour of the Raj, the Victoria Memorial it may be argued, bears testimony to what
Lord Curzon wanted it to be, " a building stately, spacious ... to which every
newcomer in Calcutta will turn ..."
This lavishly produced volume encapsulates the architecture
and collections of the great edifice and the conservation process that was begun in
Calcutta in 1990 with the help of Calcutta Tercentenary Trust. The memorial or The
Victoria, as it is fondly called by Calcuttans, is arguably one of the most important
representatives of colonial architecture in India, housing British memorabilia and an art
collection from some of the finest European artists working in India between 1780 and
1830.
Editor Vaughan also places the reign of Lord Curzon, viceroy
and governor-general of India (1899-1905), in the context of the architectural policies in
19th century India. For instance, by the time Curzon left India, he had achieved
legislation to protect historic monuments, and to an extent, assumed the role of a
guardian and conservator of heritage monuments. Curzon took upon himself the task of
visiting sites, to direct repair and restoration, till the Archeological Survey of India
was founded.
The original collection at the memorial, portraits of the
Queen and the Prince Consort, of Lord Clive and Dwarakanath Tagore, sculptures of Lord
Dalhousie, Warren Hastings and Cornwallis, among others, was persuasively acquired by
Curzon from various sources like the Town Hall, the high court and the Asiatic Society.
When it opened in 1921, despite the shift of capital to Delhi, the memorial managed to
retain its position as the showcase of the British Raj in India.
AUTHORSPEAK:
BILL AITKEN
The Mountain Man
The Scot-turned-Indian writer has a junkshop mind |
| The Scotsman shed his skin when he set
eyes on Nanda Devi. Like most love affairs, it was a matter of life and death for the
comparative literature student who had hitch-hiked to India in 1959. Aitken, then a
Gandhian devotee living in the Himalayas, had contracted acute typhoid. And he recovered
gazing at the Nanda Devi from his bedroom window for hours on end. "It was a
mind-blowing experience," I fell head over heels in love with this beautiful mountain
and the mythology surrounding her." Aitken's
fascination for the mountain found expression in the first of his three books, The Nanda
Devi Affair, in which he recounts his passionate courtship of the Goddess who "exuded
the luscious come-hitherish qualities of a male fantasy figure". His next two books
Seven Sacred Rivers in which he explores the country's unsung rivers like the Cauvery, and
Travels by a Lesser Line -- a travelogue on metre-gauge trains -- were also inspired by
Nanda Devi. "I had the distinct feeling of the Goddess saying 'Write!'" says the
author. His latest work Riding The Ranges, (Penguin, 1997), is a rollicking description of
a motorcycle journey across the Himalayas and Sahyadri, packed with typical Aitken humour.
He was fifty-years-old -- and it was his first time on a motorbike! "I just took off
and next thing I knew, I had collided with a Nepali porter. I had to pay him Rs 500
compensation," he says, laughing. After that experience Aitken figured it couldn't
get any worse and spurred by determination, rather than driving expertise, he ended up
riding the ranges. If only he had known that his "buttocks would feel like
refrigerated meat" and he would be chased by wild dogs, the travel writer might have
thought of another book idea.
A frequent criticism of Aitken's travelogues is their crazy
randomness. "But how do you get a skeleton to pin all these random observations, a
glittering array of disconnected things?" he asks, his hands in the air. "I have
a junkshop mind. I never find a word in the dictionary, there are so many others in
between that catch my attention." But this quality of disarray fascinates Aitken.
"India is marvellously free," he says. "When you see a 'No Admission' sign
in Europe, you won't think of going in. In India, it means, well maybe yes, maybe no,
let's try it." It is his free-flowing spirit, the ability to go ahead without map or
direction, his unpredictable, quirky sense of humour that makes Aitken such a delight.
-Devika Mehra |
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