The Lost Frescoes of Rajasthan

The pale hard land surrounding Delhi runs west into the Rajasthani desert. In the bottom corner of that desert is Marwar. If in that name you can hear the echo of words such as mortuary and murder, words of death, it is because it is there: The Sanskrit word for desert — maru, which gives us Marwar — is probably derived from an old Indo-European root for death. Death and the desert: The image is old, but the desert never did the Marwari traders, in southwest Rajasthan, any harm. In fact, it nourished them. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the fame of those traders had grown so wide that eventually, all the mercantile communities of Rajasthan came to be known as Marwaris. Like La Mancha of Cervantes, Rajasthan was possessed of the elements of an arid feudal culture. It was a land of war and wander, of heroism and gypsies, of strong winds and trade. The law of the desert, based always on scarcity, enforced a fragile equilibrium, easily disturbed: now by drought, now by the closing of a trade route. By the mid-19th century, the spread of British rule and the advent of the modern economy had forced the Marwaris to the cities of the coast (Calcutta, in particular), where their names — Birla, Goenka, Poddar and Singhania — became signifiers of monstrous wealth.

Success in faraway places did not make the Marwaris turn their back on their desert homeland. They sought instead to most impress those they had left behind. With the pride of native sons who’ve made it big abroad, a pride tinged with guilt, they lavished money on their old homes — havelis, as they are known locally.

The finest are in Shekhawati, a region of about 5,000 square miles in eastern Rajasthan, where there remains town upon town of these exquisite painted houses, Ozymandian in their hubris and decay. There are over 2,000 buildings, most of them havelis, covered inside and out with frescoes that depict scenes from battle, myth, the ancestries of their owners and the coming of the Europeans. The havelis are mostly empty now, and their desolation, combined with their scale and opulence, produces a feeling of wonder. The painter Francesco Clemente, who visited Shekhawati a couple of years ago, described the houses as being in “a fantastic state of disrepair.” He wondered if the havelis of Shekhawati had not always been “ornamental houses,” whose true purpose was to showcase the wealth and prestige of their owners. The thought is a nice one, because whatever the truth may have been, most of the houses are now empty; and, as such, they represent the triumph of the artist over the patron: They are once again 3D canvases on which a rural imagination has left its imprint. That imagination is not the work of a single individual, but rather one in which the genius of the collective has coalesced. That is why the houses capture the soul of the place. “Generations upon generations,” the Swiss artist Alice Boner once wrote of a pair of vessels that she felt embodied the spirit of Indian craftsmanship, “of artists and users must have pooled their experience to achieve objects of this kind. An analysis of the parts which compose them does not solve the mystery of their being.”

The havelis represent the triumph of the artist over the patron: They are three-dimensional canvases on which a rural imagination has left its imprint.

 

This is true of the havelis, too. The artists — artisans, really — who created them took as their subjects everything from the lives of the gods to the arrival of the Europeans. As with everywhere in Rajasthan, there is that extraordinary use of color — blue, especially, as in the case of the Nadine Le Prince Haveli in Fatehpur, a recently restored haveli with a deep central courtyard and walls frescoed with great smiling elephants caparisoned red — which, when seen against the bleaching blankness of the desert, can come almost to be a form of clemency. There is the familial love with which India treats its gods, always making sure that they are human before they’re divine: Krishna dancing with his milkmaids, Vishnu reposing in creative sleep on the primal waters as Lakshmi massages his feet. But, for me, the most interesting aspect of these paintings, the most mysterious, is the humor. It is so particular to India. It is never cruel, never malicious, not Rabelesian, but sly and suppressed, deeply knowing. I have heard that laughter all my life in India, but never been able to say what lies behind it. It is there in the havelis of Shekhawati; there in the scene of two Europeans courting each other under a parasol; there in a man being fitted for a suit; or there in a woman in a pale blue dress scowling at a gramophone. It is playful, innocent, full of wonder; it delights in the advent of air and rail travel. It is always on the verge of giving the joke away, but never quite does, such as in the depiction of the Wright brothers’ plane. The two brothers look very pleased with themselves; the painting is an austere blue and white; the caption dryly reads, “the ship that flies.”

Clemente’s work is full of this humor, and since he is obviously in on the joke — and I’m not — I ask him about this particular brand of laughter. What is behind it?

He looks narrowly at me, then says: “Humor is the highest form of mysticism. As far as spirituality goes, it is the top.”

Humor of this kind abounds in the havelis of Shekhawati. And, with decay and ruin closing in, a rich trade in antiquities now underway, that laughter acquires an extra poignancy, a touch of cruelty — it is the laughter of Don Quixote, the laughter of the desert

The havelis are mostly empty now, and their desolation, combined with their scale and opulence, produces a feeling of wonder.

 

Share this: