Afternoon brilliance

Gasps were natural. When the guard unlocked a side door near the queen’s bedchamber, we stepped into a narrow gallery, and a bright jewel-like light hit us. Surely this was the most breathtaking part of Bikaner’s Junagadh, the old fort. The raja’s private apartment was the palace called Phool Mahal, reputedly the oldest part of the complex. It was simpler than I’d expected. But here was the remnant of the opulence that Bikaner’s wealth would have bought. Situated on a branch of the old silk route, this little kingdom had grown wealthy. This wealth had bought, among other things, the beautiful painstaking work that we saw here: both the coloured glass inlay in the jharokha, and the Sonakin style frescoes on the walls and ceilings. These frescoes were much more elaborate than even the ones I’d seen in the private court room downstairs. The narrow corridor ran along the outer perimeter of the queen’s chamber and was absolutely breathtaking. A single door led out to a narrow balcony outside. I suppose the queen would want to see the sky now and then.

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After the death of emperor Alamgir in 1707 CE, feudalism had begun to collapse, and Bikaner’s merchants had already begun to rise to the dominating position such families still continue to have in India’s economy. Comparing the cost of the work in front of us to that in the merchants’ havelis made it clear that the raja’s wealth would have been overwhelmingly more if the later British Crown rule had not taken it over. Some part of it made its way into the British crown’s coffers, of course. But British India was notorious for private corruption; it wasn’t only Robert Clive and Warren Hastings who skirted British law. Much of the disappeared wealth found its way into private hands, and thereby into the general economy of the “home islands”. I guess it took two world wars to drain some of that surplus from Britain.

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We’d happened on this place at the best time of the day. The afternoon sun slanted through the jharokha, setting the corridor ablaze with colours. This palace is from the early 17th century CE, but the style of frescoes developed about a generation later. If the coloured glass is contemporary with the frescoes then it would also come from the late 17th century, in Alamgir’s lifetime. There’s much writing about Rajasthani mirror technology of this period, so it stands to reason that a lot of experimentation with glass went on at that time. Coloured glass is a much older technology in India, and it would have been easily available.. In the brilliant afternoon light it was obvious that restoration work was badly needed. I wondered what it would cost now.