Door after door

Finally, we walked through endless empty corridors in Bikaner’s old fort, Junagarh. We’d seen the royal apartments and audience halls already; they make up the core of the complex. But every king added wings according to the needs of the moment. I suppose bureaucracy always multiplies (until it disappears), so new wings and rooms always come in handy. These empty rooms were beautifully painted over in later developments of the same styles of frescoes that we had seen earlier.

We exited Phool Mahal, and, instead of taking the stairs, took a turn into a narrow corridor overlooking the open courtyard below. That led us into a train of empty, but beautifully decorated, rooms. The frescoes were in good repair here. Probably tourists just take the quickest way out, preferring the outer corridors instead of wandering through the rooms. But we were not disappointed. The sonakin style frescoes in the first few rooms were very similar in style to Phool Mahal: the same golds and greens, for pictures of vases of flowers or bowls of fruit. The doors were painted in the same alternation of dark greens and reds, with gold highlights that we recognized as the Jangali Sunthari style.

But this colour scheme of the Sonakin style changed as we progressed. The golds and green disappeared and reds, yellows and blues took over. The lack of gold perhaps signified that these rooms were given over to officials and courtiers rather than the royal family. The reds and the blues began to look like western influence. The ceiling that you see here was a clear evolution of the Manovat style, looking quite English in its colour scheme.

This adaptation was also visible in the pictures on the walls. The unlabelled portrait is full face, quite unlike the early modern style, in which royal portraits were always in profile. The modelling of the face, the shadows, also shows a western influence. Of course, the appearance of photos mounted on the walls was the best clue to the increasing European influence.

We came to the end of the corridors and had to climb down a flight of stairs. These were more modern than the set we’d taken up from the innermost courtyard: wider and better spaced. Defending the staircase against enemies was not on the mind of the architect. Crossing an inner courtyard, we came to the armoury. I’ve never looked at the evolution of swords, daggers, axes, and various other cutting edge weapon designs from the Mughal era. But this armoury had some fascinating early firearms, mostly unrifled muzzle loaders. There was this fascinating piece, about three meters long. I suppose three men were needed to charge, steady and fire it. Was it ever a decisive piece in battle? But then Bikaner seldom entered battle, preferring to work its diplomatic corps more than its army.

The armoury was part of the Ganga Mahal, completed in 1937 CE by Ganga Singh. This was quite different in style from the remainder of the fort: being built almost entirely from the local red sandtone, and elaborately carved, rather than plastered and painted. The main hall was enormous, and we felt quite dwarfed in there. I walked along it admiring the beautifully reliefs of local fauna, birds as well as deer. This was the beginning of the style of stone-masonry that we saw in the other palaces in Bikaner. We’d reached the end of our walk. It was time for the museums. But that is a story I’ve already told.