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Book Review
A date with the past
Kausalya Santhanam
ROYAL RAJASTHAN — With Rare Aerial and Archival Photographs: Pramod Kapoor, Kishore Singh; Roli Books, M-75, Greater Kailash-II Market, New Delhi-110048. Rs. 2975.
Rajasthan, with its magnificent forts, palaces and legends, is an endless source of fascination for the tourist, and the lover of history. It is rewarding to read of the treasures that lie amidst the sweeping dunes, the wonderful structures that seem to have almost magically sprung up in the arid spread. The contrast between unfruitful Nature and creative man is perhaps nowhere as startling and rewarding as here. The tales of valour, and the beautiful textiles and ornaments that deck the people enhance the spell.
Royal Rajasthan, by Pramod Kumar and Kishore Singh with a foreword by Maharawal Brijraj Singh of Jaisalmer, a book that like many others, focuses on the land of the kings, a place where the past is a continual presence. The special feature of this work is that it stuns the senses for the photographs are breathtaking in their sweep and splendour.
Forts and palaces
The book looks at the region in its totality. It covers each of the major erstwhile princely states — Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaisalmer — as well as the smaller ones, with photographs of its former princely families and its important forts and palaces. In addition there are brief chapters on the special highlights such as art and craft, polo, heritage hotels, the Pushkar camel fair, and shikar.
The chapter on Shekhawati fresco painting is a welcome addition. Created in the 18th and 19th centuries, these beautiful paintings adorn the havelis or homes of the rich businessmen of Shekhawati. They portray gods and goddesses as well as secular scenes and European figures, juxtaposed in a quaint and unique way. Though some of these havelis have been turned into hotels, many we are told are abandoned as the owners have left to seek their fortunes elsewhere. The chapter on shikar with the gun-toting royals posing with their kill, the majestic big cat, arouses outrage in the animal lover and environmentalist. The mild argument in their defence is unconvincing and unpalatable.
History
A brief history of Rajasthan is provided in the book — the way the kingdoms sprang up on the ancient trade route, the rulers’ conflicts and alliances with the Mughals (there is a reference to Akbar and Jodha Bai!) and later their support of the British. There is emphasis on the strict rules of chivalry and honour that governed the behaviour of the Rajputs, as also their valour. Some of the tales are especially interesting. One of them tells us how an entire village near Jaisalmer was vacated overnight following the prime minister’s desire to marry one of the beautiful girls belonging to it; blood curdling is the legend of how perhaps as many as four men were buried alive so that the site chosen for the Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur would be “propitious.”
The photographs are from Pramod Kumar’s “archive of superb images of Rajasthan.” There are many unusual aerial view pictures. All the mandatory images are featured including the oft-seen one of Princess Gayatri Devi of Jaipur in all her bewitching youth and beauty (there is no mention of her contribution to girls’ education), the Mehrangarh Fort, the Hawa Mahal in Jaipur (in an unusually flat but fairytale view) and the astronomical laboratory, the Jantar Mantar. A family retainer tying the nine-metre-long safa (turban), which denotes “chivalry, pride and honour”, on a thakur, succinctly captures both the culture and the feudal set-up of the region.
Royal heritage
After the loss of privy purses, many of the major houses turned their palaces into assets by setting up world class hotels that attract the who’s who of the world. This is covered through quite a few photographs. The form of presenting the chapters with brief summaries is a good device and the captions are crammed with information.
But the book’s cover is bare and disappointing hardly doing justice to the wealth and colour of the content. The captions, more often than not, are inconveniently placed on the next page forcing one to flip back the leaves to take in the beauty of the palace or fort. The book could have been more neatly structured for photographs often intrude into text continuity; the prose too could have been tighter. Sentences are often very long winding.
Much of what is portrayed seems feudal and anachronistic in a 21st century globalised India. You have almost all of royal Rajasthan displayed here. The book is a pictorial feast that promises to be irresistible to the Rajasthan-phile and the connoisseur of all things beautiful.
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