Moving Cities: Of Magnolia Gardens and Stone Eyes

Moving to a new city, I imagine, is akin to starting a new relationship: any kind of relationship.  Sometimes, you take to each other instantly; other times, you need to spend quite a lot of time in each other's company before one day- suddenly - you simply get each other...and no further actions or words are needed to make the other explicable. 

I haven't moved much in my life; or rather, more accurately, the few major moves that did occur in my life happened when I was little and therefore, have no memory of. I can count the other occasions on one hand though and having always reluctantly embraced any kind of change, predictably, I did not   much take to uprooting myself from one life to another. My mind nonetheless dealt with the shifts in a curious manner: upon arriving in a new place, I would immediately find myself replicating or rather, re-creating whichever places and people I had left behind and superimposing them upon the place I had shifted to. Whenever I met a new person, they inevitably reminded me of someone I knew in the old place; if I squinted and half-closed my eyes, I could pretend that I was actually seeing a beloved landmark back home, rather than being in this new place. I suppose, it was one way to assuage the sharp homesickness and longing for the place left behind...

It helps though that I have now moved to a country and city dramatically different to the one I have left behind; instead of startling blue skies, bare, minimalist mountains, neutral-hued homes, and of course, the shimmering sea, I have come to land of wintry trees, gray skies, sloping, snow-blanketed roofs, and the river, a platinum band wristing the city. Yet, I remind myself, I have also come to a land of seasons; already, the trees are budding and one particular species is bedecked in crimson red. Winter may reign supreme for the moment...but these buds remind me that spring is not faraway.   

Meanwhile, I have only begun to explore Pittsburgh and a recent errand took me to its downtown; either being perpetually too early or tad late for appointments, it was the former this time and I amused myself by exploring the adjacent area. To my surprise and delight, I encountered this garden across the street:

It in fact was an example of an award-winning landscape design exhibit, Tony Tasset's Magnolias for Pittsburgh, consisting of two bronze magnolia trees and five lives ones set in an aesthetically designed garden; as this description conveys, the artist intended it to create a little magic, fairy-tale moment in the daily hustle and bustle of down-town Pittsburgh...and I can utterly agree! Even though the exhibit was presently closed, it was enough to stumble upon this enchanting little garden amidst the forest of tall, dreary buildings. Gardens occupy a special place for me and furthermore, I have always been drawn towards magnolias...so discovering this garden was indeed a matter of joy.

Having admired the beauty of magnolias in their winter bloom, I looked the other way only to find a pair of eyes staring back at me; and not just any ordinary, human eyes...but rather, these:

Containing the art-work of Louis Bourgeois, who is renowned for her eye-sculptures, many of which are dotted all across the United States, this particular square is Katz Plaza, a collaboration between artist, Bourgeois, landscape architect, Daniel Urban Kiley and architect, Michael Graves; these eyes are actually benches and the stone fountain beyond too is designed by Bourgeois and happens to be the largest fountain that she has designed in the States.

All in all, it was a pleasantly relevatory afternoon, enlivening what was otherwise admittedly an icy, dark day: a magnolia garden tucked inside the gray undersides of Pittsburgh downtown, like a hidden chocolate within a pocket...and encountering a seemingly impenetrable, stone gaze, which in fact, was not. 

I look forward to returning here in spring; meanwhile, let's see where my explorations take me next...

Fatehpur Sikri: City of Ghosts

There are some places which truly enchant you. When I use the word, 'enchant', I am referring to a process by which one becomes completely immersed in the place's atmosphere, beauty, and spirit, making it difficult to part ways from. For me, Fatehpur Sikri has been one of those places.

The first time I happened to discover the Mughal emperor, Akbar's abandoned  capital-city, Fatehpur Sikri was in the film, Pardes (1997), starring Shah Rukh Khan, Mahima Chaudhary, and Apurva Agnihotri. In the film, it is referred as to the 'kila' or the fort and as you can see in the clip below, it functions as a backdrop for a budding romance (save for the rather filmi bit shot in the studio at the end!):

 

After watching the film, Fatehpur Sikri somehow remained with me for a long time although I could not quite pinpoint what it was that so intrigued me about the place.

Upon further researching, I learnt that Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri 39 km from Agra  in 1570  as the new capital for the Mughal empire in honor of the Sufi saint, Salim Chisti; it was the first planned city of the Mughal Empire and entirely built in the Mughal architechural fashion. However, due to water shortages which were unable to sustain the population, it was abandoned a mere 14 years later and now remains a perfectly preserved ghost city, bearing witness to magnificent examples of hybrid Mughal architechure. 

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I spent a few weeks in Delhi for an artists' residency; during my time there, a couple of the resident artists made a plan to visit Taj Mahal one day and I decided to accompany them, more excited about the prospect of finally visiting Fatehpur Sikri, which had dominated my imagination for long, than the Taj Mahal. Indeed, upon reaching and wandering around Taj Mahal, I could not help but think that its beauty was too obvious, too expected, perhaps due to the virtue of  it being so recognisable. However, I must admit that I saw it by noon and Taj Mahal is a hydra-headed beauty, metamorphosing into different creatures at different times of the day. Perhaps, I may feel differently were I to see it during dawn or dusk or as my mother once had the opportunity to do so, by moonlight!

Fatehpur Sikri

We left Agra sometime after lunch and arrived at Fatehpur Sikri a couple of hours before dusk. I personally feel that it was the most beautiful time to visit the place for the dusk lent the place an extraordinary beauty that perhaps other times of the day could not do so; the roseate sandstone gleamed and glowed in the diminishing light and this nebulous junction between day and night suspended the place in another realm together. As I meandered through the arches, courtyards, passages, and rooms that I had long wished to encounter, I thought of ghost towns that I had visited in the United States. I was not sure whether 'ghost town' was an apt epithet for them for they did not appear to be haunt of ghosts even so dead and static did they seem. In Fatehpur Sikri, though, it struck me the place was not as much a fossil as a city simply waiting for all of us to leave to become alive again: a veritable city of ghosts, indeed.**

I also recollect that Jodha Akbar (2008), starring Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai, was being shot then and it was a curious intermingling of history, imagination, and cinematic anticipation as I peeped into the courtyard complex of Jodha-bai, reputedly Akbar's favorite queen.

Jodha-bai's courtyard complex

I could not visit the white marble filigree-screened tomb of Salim Chishti that day and while it was disappointing, I consoled myself with the thought that it only meant that I would have reason to return to Fatehpur Sikri to tie a sacred thread in the dargah and partake of a city ensnared in time....once again.

The tomb of Salim Chisti

Is there a place that has enchanted you and which you would like to keep continually returning to?

** Interestingly enough, Fatehpur Sikri features in the Hindi film, Lal Patthar (1971) where it plays an elemental role in the plot and has a ghost story attached to it; Lal Patthar, or Red Stones, is in reference to the red sandstone that Fatehpur Sikri is abstracted from

Spirituality in Structure: Aadab Hyderabad

Sometime back, while participating in a group discussion about art's role in driving communities forward, the topic arose of art and spirituality. Personally speaking, for me, spirituality and the definition and significance it holds in my life is something that I find difficult to deconstruct for myself, let alone describing it to others. For a long time, I always used to consider spirituality and religion as being similar, if not virtually synonymous with one another. Yet, as time has passed by, I have begun to perceive spirituality as an awareness of the sense of the higher powers surrounding us, a mysterious, unseen Universe which contributes to the way we locate and understand our place in the world. Nonetheless, for me, I have always perceived writing as an almost spiritual process in itself: a form of meditation, a single-minded focus, leading into an alternate universe of thoughts and ideas.

However, as mentioned in a previous post, old buildings hold great appeal for me and being in presence of historical spaces, especially those in a state of ruin, often invites intense, deep reflection and introspection. There is a heightened feeling of awareness of the stories reverberating within those spaces; the architecture, the design, the shape,and the overall look of the building all contribute towards the effort to imagine what it must have been once upon a time. Beauty, romanticism, and history intermingle with one another to produce a profoundly, what I may say, spiritual experience for me.

While browsing through the vivid, beautiful images at Madhumita Gopalan's blog, Aadab Hyderabad, glimpsing the structures that she has photographed in Hyderabad, I found myself sensing the pathos of the buildings and spaces just from the deeply evocative images themselves; it was as if you had literally been transplanted into the history-laden atmosphere. Given the varied scope of Hyderabad's history, there are various historical mansions, public buildings, and tombs to be found in the city and which Madhumita so carefully records for posterity through the medium of her photography and blog. I had visited Hyderabad years ago but I look forward to discovering these places on a future visit.

Incidentally, I was charmed to learn about Madhumita's The Arch Project, where she takes special interest in photographing Islamic arches; it reminded me of my own Wall Project and the way I gravitate towards walls.

Here are some pictures from her blog:

Mishk Mahal

Shaikpet Sarai

The rust-speckled surface speaks so much: Qutub Shahi tomb

Gorgeous arches: Paigah tomb

Photographs included here with the kind permission of Madhumita Gopalan and her blog, Aadab Hyderabad, which is truly a love-letter to the city, revealing its rich historical and cultural facets.

Camille Zakharia: Preserving Vanishing Cities within Cities

I have always nurtured a keen interest in architecture of the past; what essentially intrigues me is the fact that their inhabitants have long come and gone and yet, the buildings still continue to exist, a visual testament to the aesthetic trends and beliefs of the time and containing myriad unheard narratives within them. Even then, it is not as much as the painstakingly restored heritage buildings that catch my attention as ones in a state of ruin, their decaying appearance further contributing towards the drama of age and history that envelops them.

Given my abiding love for the old, my inclination towards urban architecture and photography may be surprising given that urban spaces are synonymous with modernity. Yet, even there, I gravitate towards older, static areas still existing within the dynamic city: apartment blocks in decline, anachronistic corner shops in times of glossy malls, and walls which have seen many a poster, graffiti scribble, and paint dribble upon their surface in their time. There is a particular atmosphere to such areas that individuates them from the rest in the city: the many cities within a city.

A year ago, when covering the exhibition, Kan Ya Ma Kan (Once Upon a Time) for Gulf News, I was able to meet the acclaimed Bahrain-based Lebanese photographer, Camille Zakharia, who has exhibited at Victoria and Albert Museum, London and participated in the Venice Biennial,to cite a few of his accomplishments. His website will reveal his impressive body of work and his multiple areas of interest; however, in context to Kan Ya Ma Kan and his urban photography displayed there, what interested me was the way he perceived and navigated the urban landscapes surrounding him (I must say here that I was fortunate enough to hear him share the back-stories behind the photographs). A city is undoubtedly an evolving being and he exactingly pinpoints the intersection of the old and new through searing images such as the one of newly razed buildings: the rooms were nonetheless still present with intact jarringly pastel-hued walls. The ceilings were long gone though, the sky having become their substitute instead.

I also admired the meticulous detail with which he photographed the interiors of this particular landscape, almost akin to the diligence that of an anthropologist documenting a culture that is in danger of extinction along with its habitat; like poetry seeks to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and illumine its many facets, I believe that Mr. Zakharia does just the same with his photography narratives of Gulf urbanscapes.

Take this image, Interior of Shop - Qatar, above, which is verily a portrait of the shop inhabitant's head-space: the black and white portrait (the added interest of the photographer photographing a photograph),the presence of calendars, and objects of religious significance. The cracks in the wall, the wires, and the pipes further contribute towards us imagining as to what the entire shop looks like. In this day of plastic-perfect,assembly-line and therefore, anonymous mall shops, shops such as these are as much retail as personal spaces, thus becoming valuable repositories of personal stories. What will happen to those stories if the shops disappear?

Mr Zakharia's photography of Gulf urbanscapes thus functions as a means to preserve these personal spaces and stories in a time when those landscapes rapidly changing. The sights surrounding us that we take for granted are in danger of disappearance; there is no permanent reality anymore, it seems, everything existing in a state of improvisation. In fact, our own memories are nebulous, quickly accepting the new status quo: it's up to technology such as photography to prove even our own memories correct.

Image provided with the kind permission of Mr Camille Zakharia

Inside the Haveli

I can’t remember when I first began photographing my ancestral haveli in Rajasthan, India. Before I continue, I would like to say that I was contemplating how exactly to explain what a haveli represents; definitions such as a many-roomed, courtyarded mansion do not exactly conjure up the particular atmosphere and personality of a haveli though. I can try to do so, though, in the lines below.

I must say at this point that the haveli is one of my most favorite places in the world. I can speak at length about its historical and family significance yet what essentially remains with me about the haveli are its details: the shuttered and filigreed windows, the whitewashed walls splattered with spider-webs of hair-line cracks, the narrow, low-ceilinged passages, the courtyards, the scallop-edged arches, the time-worn steps, arched alcoves, the stained-glass squares, and the numerous rooms, stories locked within each of them.

I visit it each year and always end up taking identical photographs of the same places inside the haveli; yet, a ritual has emerged from that process, of constancy and familiarity and comfort. When I was at university, I would hang photo prints of the haveli on my dorm room walls; nowadays, the photographs constitute my laptop wallpaper. And, if I am not photographing it, I am writing about it.

I would be hard-pressed to define as to what exactly the haveli means to me beyond the platitudes of beauty, home, and history; yet, what I do know is that it is a world in itself, as it was meant to be and still is, to a certain extent. Once I am inside the haveli, I am at a remove from the happenings that swirl outside it and it is often quite possible to freeze time and even make it redundant in its silent, slumbering interiors.

My favorite time of the day at the haveli is undeniably early in the morning; the new sunbeams gradually climb their way up the walls and stream through the stained glass windows, flooding the room with juice-like light. When you open the larger windows, you can contemplate the vista undisturbed in the cool dawn air while sparrows furiously converse with one another in the massive peepal tree behind the haveli, whose leaves’ shifting shadows dapple the walls throughout the day.

A version of this post also appeared here