Latecomer

When an auto drops you off at the mouth of the mohalla of the Rampuria havelis of Bikaner, which of the many gems catches your eye first? Location is what matters. Right at the mouth of the lanes, on a slight rise is the haveli which faces you. That’s the one you notice first. It’s not a bad choice. A couple in motorbiking gear and a tripod and camera had set themselves up bang in front of it. I took the featured photo, carefully leaving them out of the frame.

The couple was as fussy as the crew in a fashion shoot. I gave them a wide berth as I walked around the building. The north-west facade had the most even light at this time, catching the reflection off the next building. This wasn’t one of the older, more intricately carved, buildings. I thought the design looked like late nineteenth century CE. The woodwork is more modern, the metal fixtures in them are perhaps still available in some shops, the simple flat faces of the stonework imitates British colonial work, the brackets are simpler, and the white and green ceramic tiles under the brackets became widely available after the China trade brought artisans from Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

The couple was still fussing with the camera. I took a closer look at the paintings on the facade. They had the usual mythological themes in a kitschy modern style adopted by Raja Ravi Varma and his ilk. This remains popular even today, as you can tell by the declaration in his Wikipedia entry that he is the greatest Indian painter ever. The style, iconography, and modeling may be imitations of western art, but they are executed well. The saffron dhoti of Krishna is not the industrial orange that it is today, so the paintings predate Amar Chitra Katha comics. The paintings alone date the building to the late 19th or early 20th century CE.

The couple had given up on the tripod. The man approached me and asked me to take the shots. The two of them posed on the motorbike in helmets and goggles and directed the shots. Satisfied, they left. I was finally free to take a photo of the front door. Not terribly imposing, but interestingly different from the rest of the buildings. Every other haveli had a statue of Ganesha above the main entrance. This one had Krishna. I think I’d nailed it. This was a late addition to the havelis of Bikaner.