Day 159: Premier Inn (06/07/2011)

Another Brahmin town in Rajasthan, Bundi, like Pushkar, is equally picturesque but more of a lake of blue rather than a pond.

Between 1870 and 1930 the family Mukesh held the reins of power in this once important place, providing four prime ministers to the court of the Maharaja, controlling, if not the power of the state, then certainly its day to day exercise.

Haveli Braj Bujanjhee was the home of those premiers and was built in the 1750’s in a strangely Jacobean style with roughly hewn stone arches and a pleasant courtyard. The walls are festooned with memorabilia from the family’s illustrious history, with intimate portraits of the ruling Maharajas at play, intermingling with business-like formals of the family forebears. We stayed for three nights and the grandson of the last prime minister hosted us impeccably but with a diffidence that suggests the family has lost the cut throat skills required to weather palace intrigue.

Built in a valley, Bundi is a fairy-tale town where the dawn and dusk are heralded by the lilac hues of the blue buildings. The mountain air wraps the whole scene in a haze that is thankfully as a result of a heat inversion rather than pollution. But not enough modernity has seeped passed the topographical barriers to obscure the way things were. Throw up a few canvas awnings and banish the internal combustion engine and Bundi would more than resemble the monochrome pictures of its late 19^th century forebear hanging on the walls of the PM’s vestibule.

Rising above the east of the town is the imposing face of the City Palace. Implacable, even after all these years, the royal living quarters perch ten stories above the town atop a monolithic slab of sandstone. Behind this, the palace cascades down the steep hillside in a riot of cupolas, pavilions and balconies. In the shadow of the retreat, the original houses are constructed like offcuts from the main, exhibiting their own exquisite detail of elaborate palisades, windows and balustrades. The prime minister’s house is the closest to the wall, hinting at its power by mere proximity to the throne.

Inside the palace which has been abandoned by the royal family and leased to a private company, the bare grandeur of 500 years of opulence remains. The Elephant Gate arches majestically under the tusks of two enormous, carved pachyderms. But the decay is symbolised by the giant bee hive, at least 5 feet long, that hangs menacingly from the underside of the arch. The man on the gate says that they swarm occasionally at which time he has to retreat to a safe distance. From time to time, someone comes to harvest the honey but otherwise the bees are left to their own devices.

Inside the courtyard is neat but worn. Grass grows through the brick flooring and unsurprisingly the fountain no longer works. In the upper balconies is the Hall of Audience is the Maharaja’s Marble seat. It was a gift from Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal and illustrates the incestuous nature of the relationships and alliances that bound the Raj together in the face of successive invaders, both foreign and domestic. A lone macaque sat on the throne gazing down into the courtyard below. As I approached he leapt at me and I retreated hastily.

This was his territory and visitors were not welcome.

To the right of the Elephant Gate lay a mysterious doorway from which heavily turbaned men bustled in and out. Venturing through it, I was hit by the ammonia stench of bat guano. The corridor widened into a hallway with rooms to the right and left. The bats had taken up residence on the right. To the left was the Maharaja’s records store. Stretching back over 600 years were the bundled sheaves of papers recording taxes, property ownership, administration of civil and criminal justice and countless other aspects of Bundi’s day to day fief.

The men I had seen were town’s folk seeking details of a boundary from the 1930’s. A man on a precarious homemade ladder was dropping great tomes of papers from the bowing shelves. They struck the stone floor with a resounding thump, releasing clouds of dust into the shafts of light entering by the single window high on the far wall.

We inspected the papers together, which were perfectly written in close columns and tabulation. Sadly, the conditions were destroying them slowly and the paper was fragile and did not take kindly to its rough treatment. One day, enterprising anthropologists will index and collate this gold mine of information.

Until then the bats would probably look after them better than the records clerk.