Did you know that the Raj Bhavan in Calcutta is one of the largest state residences in the world? In India it is second is size and scope only to the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. The interiors of the Raj Bhavan are rarely photographed so when we got recently a chance to visit West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan, we jumped at the opportunity to click a few pictures. Hope you like them!

Built between 1799 to 1803 under then Governor General Marquis Wellesley at a staggering cost of of 63,291 pounds (about 3.8 million pounds today), the Government House served as the official residence of the Governor General of India. After India gained independence in 1947, it was renamed the Raj Bhavan and became the official residence of the Governor of West Bengal.

The building was designed on the lines of Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, a beautiful building that, coincidentally, was the ancestral house of Lord Curzon who later lived here as the Viceroy exactly 100 years after Wellesley! Talk about a homecoming, eh?!

Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire, UK

Layout of the Raj Bhavan

The Raj Bhavan is two-storeyed, covers a floor area of 84,000 sq ft and sits in the middle of a colossal 27-acre campus. It consists of four large wings radiating out of a large central area.

The first floor has a number of historically-significant rooms. Chief among these are the Throne Room, Banquet Hall and the Blue Drawing and Brown Dining Rooms in the centre. In its North-West corner is the Prince of Wales suite that is used by visiting dignitaries, including the Indian President, Vice-President and Prime Minister. The north-east corner of the first floor includes the Council Chamber in which major Government decisions were made during British rule.

The ground floor features a large central area called the Marble Hall. The second floor has the Governor’s apartments, other residential suites and a huge Ball Room.

Raj Bhavan Photo Gallery

Join noted art historian and film-maker, Benoy Behl, at the screening of his film The Dance of Shiva. The film is about the early Chola Temples of Tamil Nadu and you can expect some interaction after the show as the film-maker himself will be present.

Venue: India Habitat Centre, Gulmohar Hall, NEW DELHI
Date: Sunday, 27th November at 6:30pm (guests are requested to be seated by 6.20 pm)

Shiva dances on the demon of ignorance at Mooverkoil, Kodambulur

In the words of the film-maker:

The purpose was not to inspire awe through size and grandeur. It was to take us to the world of gentleness which can be found within us. The grace of the figures and their profoundly peaceful expressions, awaken a sense of the sublime. The figures are fully occupied with the miracle of creation and the sense of stillness which comes from this absorption.

In the garbha griha or womb chamber, we are born again in knowledge of the formless eternal. Through niches in the walls of the temple, the deity is made visible in different forms to the devotee. Through these images, the divine is given a personality which the worshipper can relate to. The deity is made human, yet always filled with a luminosity which awakens the finest qualities in us.

Like Romeo & Juliet and Laila-Majnu, the story of Roopmati and Baz Bahadur is one of those grand romantic sagas of history, filled with beauty and emotion, yet ending with tragedy, loss and separation.

The Story of Roopmati and Baz Bahadur

Baz Bahadur was the last Sultan of the state of Malwa. He ruled from 1555 to 1562. One day while out hunting, Sultan Baz Bahadur spotted a Hindu girl, Roopmati, singing as she bathed in the Narmada river. Bewitched by her beauty and her voice, Baz Bahadur persuaded her to live with him in Mandu, the capital of Malwa.

Thereafter, he spent his time in the pursuit of love and music, leaving his kingdom vulnerable to attack. So when Akbar’s general, Adham Khan, attacked Mandu in 1561, the kingdom was his for the taking. Baz Bahadur fled the battlefield, deserting Roopmati, who was captured. But the courtesan proved more courageous than the king. Even as the Mughal general waited outside her room to claim her, she committed suicide by swallowing poison.

Adaptations

In 1599, Ahmad-ul-Umri Turkoman, who was in the service of Sharaf-ud-Din Mirza wrote the story of Rani Roopmati in Persian. He collected 26 poems about her and included them in his work. The original manuscript passed to his grandson Fulad Khan and his friend Mir Jafar Ali made a copy of the manuscript in 1653. This copy passed through several hands before it reached a gentleman named C.E. Luard. In 1926 it was translated into English by L.M. Crump under the title, The Lady of the Lotus: Rupmati, Queen of Mandu, A Strange Tale of Faithfulness. This version features a collection of twelve dohas, ten kavitas and three sawaiyas of Roopmati.

In 1957, the story was adapted into a Hindi movie directed by S.N.Tripathi. It was titled Rani Roopmati and it contained some exceptional songs such as Laut ke Aaja Mere Meet by Lata Mangeshkar.

What Happened to Baz Bahadur?

After his defeat, Baz Bahadur fled to Khandesh, where he was confronted by another of Akbar’s generals, Pir Muhammad. Pir Muhammad attacked Khandesh and proceeded up to Burhanpur but he was defeated by a coalition of three powers: Miran Mubarak Shah II of Khandesh, Tufal Khan of Berar and Baz Bahadur. Pir Muhammad died while retreating.

The coalition army pursued the Mughals and drove them out of Malwa and Baz Bahadur was even able to regain his kingdom. However, his victory was short-lived. In 1562, Akbar sent another army under Abdullah Khan, who finally defeated Baz Bahadur.

Baz Bahadur once again fled, this time to Chittor and then one by one to a number of courts till was forced to surrender in November, 1570 to Akbar at Nagaur. His life was spared and he ended up joining Akbar’s service.

Thus, Baz Bahadur hit the final nail in the coffin of his love by joining the service of the very person who was responsible for his wife’s death!

Following on the heels of our Hyderabad Pictoguides, we’ve just completed the first print run of our 3-in-1 Pictoguide to Delhi’s World Heritage Sites. And it looks beautiful!

Priced at just Rs. 200, this 40-page guide covers the three main attractions of Delhi – the Red Fort, Qutub Minar and Humayun’s Tomb. Well-researched and presented in our trademark comic book style, it also includes maps of the monuments as well as a summary of other tourist attractions in Delhi.

How Are Pictoguides The Best Guides to Delhi?

1. Go!Places is not just a business; it is a platform for history enthusiasts to channel their knowledge, creativity and passion into promoting Indian heritage. As such, our guides aren’t just a bunch of pages printed and stapled together - each guide is a labour of love
2. Our Pictoguides are extensively researched and provide documented references, unlike any other guide in the market. You can be sure you are getting authentic information
3. The comic-style format gives facts at a glance so you spend your time looking at the monument rather than the guidebook
4. Our guidebooks don’t rush you about like human guides; you can enjoy the monument at your leisure, taking photos and exploring to your heart’s content
5. You can share one guide among your group, unlike individual-oriented audio guides; after all, the shared experience is most of the fun!

Where Can I Buy Them?

The guides will be available in bookstores in a matter of weeks. Or look for them on Flipkart, where you’ll probably get a discount, free shipping and even pay cash on delivery!

Go!Places was recently invited to participate in a Museum Masterclass organized by the British Council and conducted by senior staff of London’s Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum. The objective of the 2-day workshop was to facilitate networking and knowledge-sharing between V&A and Indian museums, especially in the areas of museum management and presentation. All in all, there were about 40 attendees representing a dozen Indian museums – and us, Go!Places, the people who will revolutionize their world (though they don’t know it yet!)

What follows are some of the insights and a few depressing truths we learnt at the seminar.

Attendees from V&A and Indian Museums

The team from the V&A Museum were of diverse expertise, comprising the Head of International Strategy, Head of Documentation and Collections Management Services, Design Director, Head of Communities and Audience Development and the Director of the Museum. The specialized division of labour at V&A was in itself – to us and we suspect to a large number of other attendees – a lesson in how a modern museum is structured.

From across India representatives came from Government Museums (Indian Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Crafts Museum etc), autonomous museums (Bhau Daji Lad Museum), private museums (Don Bosco Centre for Indigenous Cultures), an exhibition design specialist (National Institute of Design) and a Heritage Content specialist company (Go!Places).

The Masterclass

Objectives

In the minds of the organisers the Museum Masterclass had a clear objective: get people from different museums together in one place and let them talk shop. In itself an event like this is nothing special, as those of you in the corporate world will attest. However, it seems such interactions are rare in the world of Indian museums and one cannot help but wonder why it is so! Do our museums feel their policies must be as antiquated as their exhibits?

The sessions themselves were structured so experts from the V&A Museum could share their experience in executing decade-long projects addressing three major issues that most museums face:

• upgrading physical space
• digitization of collection records
• attracting a wider audience

Introductory Panel Discussion

From Left to Right: Tasneem Mehta, Martin Roth, Sujata Sen, Jawahar Sircar

The proceedings began with a panel discussion chaired by Sujata Sen (Director, British Council, Eastern India) that set the foundation for discussing the overarching goals of a museum. The speakers were:

• Martin Roth (Director of V&A Museum): Roth re-emphasised the role of a museum in modern society by stating that it helped preserve a sense of identity for the public that is always crucial
• Tasneem Mehta (Director of Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai): Mehta made a presentation of her museum’s massive efforts towards upgrading and utilizing exhibition space to draw visitors
• Jawahar Sircar (Secretary, Ministry of Culture): Sircar spoke of the role of the government in creating the opportunities for museums to grow by ensuring financial and directive support. This was a topic that, for obvious reasons, kept arising during subsequent sessions.

Presentations and Case Studies

The sessions were structured as a combination of presentations and case studies to allow significant interaction between participants. Breaks, too, were thoughtfully provided to allow the audience ample opportunity to interact with speakers as well as peers and discuss issues of pride as well as concern in an informal setting. People exchanged business cards busily and one hopes all the interaction translates into tangible progress in future.

Four Concerns That Keep Museum Directors Awake At Night

There are a set of four constraints within which every museum has to operate. A couple, like budget and manpower, are concerns common to all enterprises but the other two are interesting aspects specific to museums and galleries.

• Maintaining the premises, the collection and adequate staff within a tight budget
• Ensuring staff and contractors are sufficient in number and adequately trained, especially in the areas of of infrastructure, records management and marketing: Indian museums circumvent the problem by maintaining a staff of generalists rather than creating specialist departments. Thus most people can do everything, but nobody does any one thing particularly well. If you have been to an Indian museum recently, you will have figured out that this approach does not work very well. That is why leading international museums opt to hire and develop specialists
• Managing available space so as to handle increasing numbers of visitors and exhibits in the same building. This is especially relevant for museums housed in heritage structures that cannot be easily modified
• Managing the collection so items remain in regular circulation when space only allows a maximum of 30-40% to be on display at a time. Large parts of Indian collections languish in basements and warehouses because collections management has never been priority at the museums – at least the representatives present were unaware of it! That’s a shame…

… And Some Stuff That Happens Only in India

Indian museums of course face an additional set of issues, most of which seem to be due to a spate of misguided government policies combined with a total lack of motivation on the part of museum personnel:

• Budget to government museums are allotted under specified activities and cannot be reassigned to other areas. So more money does not necessarily lead to additional facilities. Museums across the country are returning crores of rupees to the government because they have no use for it under the specified activities – yet each museum has a list of priorities that are simply begging for funding that never comes!
• In fact, as per regulations, one of the museums at least was not allowed to even maintain a bank account in the name of the museum! All payments are disbursed by the Ministry directly! How can a museum even dream of trying something new under these circumstances?
• Other equally un-enlightened regulations do not allow museums to officially use volunteers eg as docents or by establishing a Friends of the Museum program, both of which are an excellent source of free, qualified, motivated manpower for museums in many countries outside India
• During the sessions, it became apparent to us that Indian Museums don’t understand the concept of a target audience. When prompted, one workgroup listed children, youth, seniors, disabled and scholars as their target audience (incidentally, leaving out families, which in our experience make up a significant chunk of museum and monument visitors)! We feel that in trying to meet the common minimum needs of all, they are eventually interesting to none. The V&A, on the other hand, has spent years understanding their audience and adapting to their special needs.
• We also felt they are content to pay lip service to trends without putting thought or effort behind any of them. As an example, one museum director indicated they plan to cater to the needs of the ‘non-literate’. But she had not considered providing content delivery systems like audio guides! Many attendees professed to focusing on the ‘differently-abled’ but you will find hardly a museum in India that offers facilities catering to their needs.

Our Own Observations

While the burden of massive collections and limited resources seems to be a crushing one, we felt there are three areas that, if addressed, could lead to dramatic improvements:

1. Larger museums could take a cue from the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, which turned its small size and geriatric old age (even among museums!) into advantages through renovations and constantly-changing exhibits. Perhaps museums could plan to refresh individual sections one at a time, rather than taking on the complexity of doing everything together.
2. We also learnt, to our surprise, that Science museums are largely self-sufficient as they are able to generate substantial revenues through ticket sales and other public activities. History and Art museums, on the other hand, are unable to do so. Clearly Science museums have been able to establish a value proposition and a fresh approach may allow others to generate the same level of interest.
3. Policy changes would of course be possibly the biggest help. Bringing in fresh ideas is very important through volunteers, contracted professionals, international ideas exchange and maybe even experienced directors from other countries. And why not allow museum directors to spend their allotted funds in ways they deem fit? Can things really get any worse by giving them the freedom to administer their museums they way they want to?

Bottom line: Money is not the issue. Creativity and a fresh approach to Government Policy may be just what Indian Museums need to make a giant leap into the 21st century and rejuvenate public interest in its own culture.

Sumit Ray of Go!Places Receiving Certificate of Completion from the staff of V&A Museum

Indians who travel abroad comment on the marked lack of innovation at home. That is pretty much why we started Go!Places in the first place!

With a wealth of history, abundant natural beauty and a level of diversity that would put entire continents to shame, how is it that we are 68th in the World Tourism Rankings and not in the top 10?! One of the reasons may be a lack of vision or a sense of larger purpose within Indian tourism departments who are content to push the 9-year old Incredible India campaign rather than working to make ground realities match the promise shown in the ads.

West Bengal’s Bold Tourism Agenda

Blessed with great scenic beauty and with its share of historic monuments (some up to 1,500 years old), West Bengal does not lack in terms of tourist attractions. It even has India’s fourth busiest airport and is reasonably connected with international destinations. And yet it hardly brings in the tourists.

As a hopeful new startup (and proud natives of the state), we watched with great interest as the new government of West Bengal declared its intention of transforming it’s most tourist-friendly destination, Darjeeling, to Switzerland, the beaches of Digha to Goa and the capital, Kolkata, into London! With bold statements like these we expected the West Bengal Tourism Ministry to be humming with activity and just raring to seek out new ideas in their quest to transform the state’s rather moribund tourism industry.

So were were rather excited when we got an appointment to meet Shri Rachhpal Singh, the Tourism Minister for West Bengal, who has been in the news with a slew of promises for the sector.

Our Proposal to West Bengal Tourism

We plan to develop and distribute a series of Pictoguides to monuments of West Bengal. For that we wanted:

• letters from the government to help us in researching our shortlist of monuments, some of which may not be open for public photography
• support in distributing our Pictoguides at tourism offices, monument entrances etc

We were not looking for funding or even government purchase of our guides, though of course a bulk order would really help.

Eyes Wide Shut

Based on our successful meetings with Andhra Pradesh Tourism, we hoped the Minister would express interest and direct us to people who could help us take things forward. We could not have been more wrong. Reproduced below are snippets of the conversation along with some of our thoughts on the subject in italics. We welcome you to share yours in the comments.

The Honorable Minister: Nobody will pay so much for a book

The price we estimated is about Rs. 100 for a guide to Kolkata’s heritage buildings that will be better-researched and presented than anything else out there that we know of. We feel there is a place for quality at a reasonable price. And in any case, we are not asking for the government to pay for it.

The Honorable Minister: Monuments already have all the information available on information boards

So there should be no need for tour guides, Lonely Planet, heritage walks, audio tours or the internet but people are using them the world over anyway. Boards provide limited information and are expensive to erect, maintain and update. The world has moved on, so should we.

The Honorable Minister: For example, we spent Rs 11 lakh to get one article printed on the cover of Travel News Digest, but who will read it?

You spent – what? To do… what?! Next time give us the money and instead of a two-bit article we’ll give you thousands of quality guides that you can hand over to tourists all over the place. And they will read them!

The Honorable Minister: Such things will only be needed by foreigners, and they don’t come to West Bengal much

Why are we ignoring the millions of Indian tourists? Bengalis especially are known to be avid travellers, to the extent that many government tenders in other parts of India require audio guides and other such material to be made available in Bengali as well! And who is stopping West Bengal Tourism from attracting foreigners? Won’t such facilities help the cause?

The Honorable Minister: If you can provide us with human guides who can speak 3-4 languages, we would be interested.

If West Bengal doesn’t attract foreigners why do you need tour guides who speak their language? Also, will a trained, multi-lingual guide charge less than the Rs. 100 we proposed? Oh, and isn’t all the information already on the boards?

The Honorable Minister: People like picture postcards with information, why don’t you make those?

!!!

Final Thoughts

We respect that it is the Minister and the government’s prerogative to decide which projects to consider or support. We just feel decisions should be based on aggressive, innovative plans with potential to transform the state in line with the bold promises that have been made. Instead of shooting down new ideas why not look ahead and support those that can make a difference in future? Unfortunately our conversation just served to highlight outmoded thinking and striking lack of vision in this sector.

Tourism is an income generator, a job creator and a great source of national pride for the countries and cities that cultivate it. It has potential to stimulate economic growth beyond the government’s dreams. And yet our governments allow it to atrophy.