At lost city, saving a craft

From The New York Times:

When Afshan Durrani and her husband, Nusrat, left India in 1990, they set their sights on a modern future: he would pursue a career in music at MTV in New York, where they settled in 1995, while she attended the Fashion Institute of Technology, designing dresses with a dash of punk. But Ms. Durrani, above, who grew up in Kashmir, found that India’s traditions held sway over her imagination. During a trip home for a wedding, she was astounded anew by the embroidery on the wedding regalia and aghast at the working conditions of the craftsmen who made it. So in 2002, she founded Lost City Products, a company that now employs 125 artisans making fabrics using centuries-old techniques in Lucknow, the center of the Indian crafts industry.

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http://www.lostcityproducts.com/

Oil painting ‘invented in Asia, not Europe’

Roger Highfield in The Telegraph, UK:

In 2001 the Taliban destroyed two ancient colossal Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan, around 140 miles northwest of Kabul, which were hewn out of sandstone cliffs in the sixth century and, measuring up to 55 metres, were the biggest of their kind.

Although caves decorated with precious murals from 5th to 9th century A.D. also suffered from Taliban attacks on this World Heritage Site, they have since become the focus of a major discovery, revealing Buddhist oil paintings that predate those in Renaissance Europe by hundreds of years.

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An Arabian passage to India

From The National, Abu Dhabi:

Faithful tides and trade winds carried Arabian sailors to India each summer and brought them home every winter. For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, these sailors returned from their journeys bearing spices, wood and with newly charted routes for others to follow.

The town of Julfar, north of modern-day Ras Al Khaimah, was testament to this flourishing trade between the 13th and 16th centuries. Several dhows tied to one another would return each year to Julfar, one of the main trading towns in the lower part of the Arabian Gulf.

“It was like Dubai today. It dominated the area,” said Christian Velde, a resident archeologist at the National Museum of Ras Al Khaimah. “In their heyday, they traded with everyone.”

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The case of the Nizam’s millions

(Updated on April 13)

From The Telegraph, UK:

The case is further complicated by the late Nizam having sired over 100 illegitimate children from 86 mistresses who may lay claim to the fortune as rightful beneficiaries. But the Nizam’s grandson, now living in Istanbul in a small apartment after having lost most of his family fortune in India and Australia, is likely to be one of the main parties in the negotiations.

The Nizam’s surviving 173-piece jewel collection, that is periodically displayed at various museums across India includes the legendary 187.75 carat Jacob diamond, the world’s fifth-largest diamond which is valued at over £100 million.

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Finally, India settles the one million pound Nizam dispute. Rahul Bedi in The Telegraph has that report.

India has opted for an out-of-court settlement with Pakistan and the heirs of the Nizam or ruler of Hyderabad State, once the world’s richest man, to resolve a piquant six-decade old dispute over a million pounds.

The money, which has lay in a London bank account since 1948, has since grown to around £30 million. Known as the ‘Hyderabad Funds Case’, the dispute centres around £1,007,940 and nine shillings that were transferred in 1948 from the Nizam of Hyderabad to Habib Ibrahim Rahimtoola, the high commissioner to London of the newly-formed Pakistan.

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The aesthete’s dagger

A gold encrusted dagger that was once owned by Shah Jahan (1628-1658), the builder of the Taj Mahal and an aesthete whose love for beauty is well known, goes under the hammer on April 10. Inscriptions on the back of the blade include the Mughal emperor’s official titles, date and place of birth, and an “honorific parasol” — an ancient pan-Asian symbol of divinity of royalty, according to Bonhams auction house.

[Pic: Reuters]

How Agra got the Taj Mahal

From The Times of India:

Not many would have heard of Burhanpur today, but it occupied a prominent place in the empire during Mughal times, since it was a strategic point from which to control the Deccan region. It was here that Shah Jahan spent a considerable number of years as governor of the Deccan region, before his ascension to the throne. And it was in Burhanpur, two years after he became the emperor - on June 17, 1631, to be precise - that his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal passed away, while giving birth to their 14th child.

A grief-stricken emperor had her laid to rest near the banks of the Tapti river and a monument was built, where her remains were kept. Simultaneously, work also started on a grand mausoleum near the kabr (grave). Shah Jahan wanted it to be a monument of unparalleled beauty, conceptualised in white marble, whose reflection in the Tapti river would increase its beauty manifold. Yes, the Taj Mahal was initially planned to be built at Burhanpur. However, destiny had other plans.

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A Brazilian in Goa

In openDemocracy, Arthur Ituassu’s has an internal dialogue with Amartya Sen as he travels through Goa:

“Our food is Goan. It is not Indian, nor Portuguese. It is Goan. We are not Portuguese. We are Indian for sure, but we are also Goan.”

The speaker is Jeanette Afonso, a middle-aged Portuguese teacher in Panaji, the small, historic capital city of the Indian state of Goa. As well as teaching, Jeanette runs a small guest-house at her Cantinho dos Afonsos, a double-yellow house in Panaji’s beautiful Old Quarter. At the end of the street, the little white church of São Francisco de Assis bathes in the light, blessing the neighbourhood and enshrining its history - there is even a crucifix that had given authority to the trials of the Goan inquisition (1560-1774).

For a Brazilian, this is a very interesting place to be. It is so clear that both former colonies of Portugal (Brazil 1500-1882, Goa 1510-1961) are products of a shared history.

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[via 3quarksdaily]

An India city loses overlooked treasure

Amelia Gentleman in International Herald Tribune on why the world’s antique dealers love the avant-garde city of Chandigarh in India:

Every working day for the past 20 years, Suresh Kanwar, a civil engineer in Chandigarh’s forestry department, has been sitting on the same battered wooden chair, an object which he said had “no beauty,” even if it was, “for office use, very comfortable.”

Hazarding a guess as to its value, he suggested 400 rupees, or $10, “perhaps, at a junkyard.” A pair of identical chairs, instantly recognizable to collectors as Pierre Jeanneret teak “V-chairs,” will go on sale at the auction house Christie’s in New York this month with a reserve of $8,000 to $12,000.(Photo: Discarded teak chairs designed by Pierre Jeanneret)

A handful of antique dealers from around the world have become regular visitors to government junkyards in Chandigarh, the experimental modernist city 250 kilometers, or 155 miles, north of New Delhi, conceived by the architect Le Corbusier in the 1950s. They buy up disused stocks of furniture that was specially created by Corbusier’s colleagues to fit out the new city.

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What lies beneath

In Hindustan Times, Nayanjot Lahiri, author of Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization was discovered, profiles K.M. Panikkar, scholar, administrator, historian, ambassador, and his contribution to archaeology in India.

Archaeology is as much about the thrill of discoveries as it is about the exploits of discoverers. Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey who made our ancestors older by several million years, the geologist, Arun Sonakia, who uncovered a hominid skull cap in the Narmada valley, the archaeologist John Marshall who unearthed the splendour of Taxila - these names evoke the harvest of riches to be had in pursuing a study of the past. Such explorers and excavators certainly deserve the credit that is accorded to them. But their claim to fame is frequently anchored by people who remain unknown to most of us. One such story revolves around India’s successful recovery of her Indus past in the first five years of independence.

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The vandalism of heritage

Murals from the 14th to 17th centuries in temples across Tamil Nadu, India, are being painted over or ‘restored’ gaudily (right) by unqualified personnel. David Shulman, renowned Indologist, says in The Hindu that if action is not taken soon, these treasures will disappear. Dr Shulman is currently Professor, Department of Indian, Iranian and Armenian Studies, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

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Faces of the Divine

Fifth-century painters created stunning murals in dim man-made caves in India. Benoy K. Behl, a gifted photographer, brings them to light in National Geographic.

Behl visited the Ajanta caves 15 years ago with the challenge of photographing the murals inside using only natural light. After studying every crevice of the caves, he photographed several hundred other sites in India, focusing on rarely documented early murals.

Click here to see his images of paintings and murals and hear him describe his long journey.