Portals at Hauz Khas

People, they say, like to live in large cities but want it to feel like a small village. Surprisingly, this optimum arrangement is possible even in an ugly crowded polluted sprawling foul megatropolis like modern Delhi. There, right amidst the mess, is the village enclave of Hauz Khas – a small cul de sac closed off from the insane traffic, a place that houses artists, poets, nightclubs and fashionable eateries. It is a remarkable thing to discover in such a city. Unfortunately, it is no longer a secret and so Delhi’s rising middle class are moving in rapidly and will, inevitably, ruin the village ambience within a few short years.

Originally Hauz Khas was a former incarnation of Delhi itself. It was once the centre of the city under the pre-Moghul Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth century. The ruins of the city are the structural basis of the modern “village” which hugs the stone walls of the old city. The Sultan, Firoz Shah, had constructed a “tank” – in fact a sizeable lake – at the site, along with mosques and a large madrassa. When the Mongols sacked Bagdhad, this place – the Hauz Khas madrassa – became for a while the premier learning centre of the entire Mahometan world. It is built in the rough-hewn style of the Delhi sultans, that is, quite distinct and noticeably more unadorned and more primitive than the later Moghuls who brought a more sophisticated Persian influence to northern Hindustan, but this roughness – virile, solid - has a beauty and charm of its own.

The present author spent a pleasant afternoon exploring the ruins of the madrassa and the tombs of the sultan and his sons, along with the modern village, several weeks ago.

For photographic purposes the outstanding feature of the ruins are the extant portals and gateways – something that always attracts this author in any case. Portals – doorways, gateways, passageways – are always of interest because, of all architectural features they tend to last longer than roofs and walls and windows, and, of course, they have an enduring symbolic significance. A portal is a mystery. What lies beyond? Spatially it signifies the passage from one world to another. Temporally it signifies the passage from one phase or condition to another. It is a place that inherently signifies transition, transformation, initiation. Its celestial archetype is the portal of the sun, the gates of the solstices and equinoxes – with the ‘watchtowers’ either side - through which the sun (along with the planets) passes on its journey. 

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Below are some of the portals to be found in the ruins of Hauz Khas:

The tomb of Sultan Firoz Shah

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Edwin Landseer Lutyen

A painting depicting the collected works of Sir Edwin Lutyen, by Carl Lauben. It features all of Lutyen's major works, including, prominent in the centre, the unbuilt masterpiece the Liverpool Cathedral. 

There is possibly no other city on earth that can be said to be the product of a single creative mind to the same extent as New Delhi - the creation of Edwin Landseer Lutyen. He is often described as the greatest British architect of the modern era by those not infected by the democratic evils of modernism; he had a profound impact upon the building of the new capital of British India, New Delhi, throughout an extended period in the 1920s and 30s.

For a range of reasons, the British had found it prudent to move the capital of the Raj from Calcutta in 1911. They then set about constructing an entire new city among the previous six incarnations of the city of Delhi on the Jamuna River, and the task of designing it along with its grand imperial architecture fell to Lutyen. New Delhi today - where this author has recently arrived, his third visit - is still often referred to as "Lutyen's Delhi" and - leaving aside the appalling pollution and the even more appalling degradations of commerce, visual pollution on an epic scale - still largely conforms to Lutyen's grand vision. There is a large area of wide avenues and colonial buildings - deliberately contrasting to the tangled laneways of the old city - where nearly everything, from the broad sweep of the urban plan to the street lights, were designed by Sir Edwin "Ned" Lutyen. 

It is unfortunate that most of his grandest buildings in Delhi are now occupied by the various arms of the government of the Indian Republic, and so for security reasons are closed to the public. The great Viceroy's Residence, the 'Rashtrapati Bhavan' - now the residence of the President of India - and its vast formal gardens (designed by Lutyen), are only open to the public for several days in a year. Other nearby structures are occupied by the Indian Ministry of Defense and are permanently out of reach. When the author visited this area in recent days even the famous India Gate - a memorial the Britishers constructed to honour the Indian soldiers who had fought and died for the Empire in the Great War - was closed to public access with all approach roads manned by teams of heavily armed soldiers at road blocks. (You can stop and take photographs for two minutes and are then moved along.) 

It is difficult, therefore, to obtain a full appreciation of Sir Edwin's vision of the city in its totality, and especially difficult to obtain a proper sense of his genius for interior design. For, as well as grand architecture, Lutyen also designed furnishings, lighting and the other trappings of interiors, all the way down to the vegetable racks in the kitchens. His art and his vision was comprehensive and marked by a complete attention to detail. He was a style in and of himself. 

Happily, Lutyen's work is characterised by his rejection of modernism and his embrace of the classical. He is a shining light of sobriety and mathematical integrity in an age of dreadful buildings. His later buildings have a strongly neo-Romanesque solidity - a heaviness of the walls, small windows, domes, round arches. His work falls into two phases, the second of them entailing a detailed exploration of classical (Graceo-Roman, and especially Roman) themes. He devoted his life to the rediscovery of the classic. He loved the purity of the classical order and classical proportions. "When they are right," he wrote, "they are curiously lovely and unalterable like a plant form." Accordingly, modernist critics hated him. He defied the age of the "masses and the machine." Many older books on modern architecture routinely sneer at his work and wrongly dismiss it as "historical pastiche". 

It is an undeniably Imperial architecture that we find in Lutyen's Delhi. In the main structures he chose to build in the local red sandstone, the same stone from which the earlier monuments of the city, especially in its Moghul incarnation, are built - the Jama Masjid, the Red Fort, and so on - and this provides a strong sense of continuity and belonging - and yet in other respects his buildings speak of the British Empire's conscious sense of a reprise of Roman Imperial strength. Lutyen avoids the pointed arch and most other oriental motifs; his buildings are strongly and adamantly occidental: austerity, power, solidity, weight, permanence, endurance, immovability, masculinity. There is some irony in this. His buildings are about the eternal British Empire and of India's enduring place in the British dominions, the jewel in the British crown. 

Some of the author's photographs (on a day of heavy pollution):

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LUTYEN & HEMINGWAY

Lutyen was a great punster with a warm wit. There are many wonderful stories about him. One of the best is as follows:

He was once employed by Ernest Hemingway to build a house in Hemingway's ancestral home of Ilkley, Yorkshire. When accompanying Hemingway around the unfinished building, Lutyen gestured to the place where a black marble staircase would be. Hemingway protested. "I don't want a black marble staircase!" he said. "I want an oak staircase!" Lutyen looked over his round eyeglasses and said, "What a pity." When the house was completed, however, there - sure enough - was a black marble staircase. Hemingway protested again. "I said I didn't want a black marble staircase!" he said. "I know," said Lutyen,"and I said, 'What a pity.'" 

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Below is a representative selection of some of the furniture designed by Lutyen. We can see, especially, his love of the circle (along with, by extension, the octagon) as the basic unit of classical (especially Roman) forms. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Kavanagh of Lucknow

Mr. Kavanagh, a clerk, volunteered last night to go out to Alum Bagh with plans and despatches from Sir James Outram; he disguised himself as a native, and reached the place safely. It was a splendid feat of gallantry and a most invaluable service. All the garrison were much delighted to hear that a flag had been hoisted at Alum Bagh, the signal of his having arrived.

- from The Seige of Lucknow, the diaries of Lady Julia Inglis

There were many instances of gallantry and heroics during the siege of Lucknow in 1857. The context, as is well-known, was the mutiny of Indian – largely Mahometan, but also Hindoo – troops against the Britishers, which led to a widespread uprising during which a compound of British citizens – soldiers, their wives and children - in the so-called ‘Residency’ in Lucknow were stranded and held under siege by a murderous mob for over eighteen months. Their situation was harrowing. Large numbers were killed, either by gunfire and artillery or by hunger and disease. They were surrounded on all sides and their enemy was literally tunneling underneath them. If the walls of the compound had been breached, everyone would certainly have been slaughtered. During this terrible ordeal many of the British, but also those Indian troops (Sepoys) who had remained staunch, and especially the Sikhs who stayed loyal throughout, displayed extraordinary bravery, as did those who endeavored to rescue them.

There are numerous accounts of the siege – it is one of the great dramas of British India. The best account by far is found in the diaries of Lady Julia Inglis, the wife of the officer Brigadier Inglis. She was present in the Residency compound, survived the ordeal and lived to publish her story in England many years later. The present writer was in Lucknow recently and visited the ruins of the Residency and read the diaries of Lady Inglis – vivid and detailed – during his visit. 

Modern Indian mythology knows the mutiny as the ‘First War of Independence’, but it was hardly that. The mutineers were unorganized. The rebellion descended into chaos. Mobs ransacked and looted throughout Lucknow and other cities, and there was no nationalist element to the violence – the rebels in Delhi were intent on re-establishing the Mughul Sultanate, not founding an independent Indian state. Certainly, the uprising was provoked by the gross mismanagement of the East India Company – although the spark that ignited it, as Lady Inglis notes, was a rumor that the British had laced the artillery of the new Enfield rifles with pig fat in order to deliberately offend and violate the Mahometans. 

It is clear, though, that the heroes of the day were the stoic British who displayed remarkable courage, nobility and chivalry in the face of swarming barbarity. The siege and the relief of Lucknow are great moments of British civilization. The British, let it be said (contrary to the popular post-colonial narratives of our benighted times), were one of the last people to maintain a cultivated chivalry, and the siege and relief of Lucknow represent compelling instances of it. If anyone doubts this, they should read the diaries of Lady Inglis, which can be found here. Dignity, nobility, courage, honesty, magnanimity, honour, integrity, virtue, decency, fearlessness, patience, valour, hardihood, strength, good humour - in the most appallingly dire and hopeless circumstances. 

The Relief of Lucknow

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The most unlikely hero of the siege was a wild Irishman by the name of Thomas Kavanagh. His exact origins are uncertain. He was possibly born in India, but in any case he certainly grew up there and so was fluent in Hindi and well-acquainted with local customs. He was one of that wayward class of British citizens who were not connected to the East India Company or the British government and so had no legitimate place in India – “uncovenented” as such people were called. He was a malcontent with a dull job in a clerical office and, by his own account, a wife and family that gave him no satisfaction in life. He was, in truth, an undistinguished character, a ratbag. When the Mutiny broke out in early 1857 he made his way to the Residency compound for shelter, as did other British citizens in fear of their lives (it being unclear what fate befell his family.) It was during the most desperate days of the siege, however, that he rose to the occasion and won himself a place in history.

At a certain point during the darkest days of the siege information reached the Residency that a relief force had managed to force its way to the outskirts of Lucknow, but there was no way to confirm this. Kavanagh then approached Major Outram, the officer in charge, and volunteered to attempt to reach the relief party, if indeed there was one. His proposal was that he disguise himself as a native and, along with his fluency in Hindi and knowledge of Hindoo and Mahometan ways, pass through the enemy lines. It was a mad plan. But it was the only plan they had. In a famous scene, therefore, Major Outram himself – much to the mirth of the other officers present - applied black boot polish to Mr. Kavanagh and helped him wrap a turban about his head. Kavanagh, readers must appreciate, was over six foot tall and had a shock of ginger Irish hair. He made a very unconvincing Indian. 

Nevertheless, he set off in the middle of the night, accompanied by a loyal Sepoy, and armed only with a pistol and two bullets. His journey that night is the stuff of legend. He was stopped several times by hostile forces and even, at one juncture, taken captive and interrogated. Remarkably, he convinced his captors that he was a Hindoo man returning to Lucknow from far away. Then, he became lost, had to swim across the Goomptee River holding his clothes above his head, ended in a swamp where he nearly drowned, until finally, by sheer accident, he stumbled into a camp of British soldiers under the leadership of Sir Colin Campbell at a place called Alum Bagh. This was the relief party of which Major Outram had received unconfirmed information. Kavanagh had managed to get through. It was a decisive moment. He carried dispatches from Major Outram and with these the relief party was able to assess the situation and plan a rescue for those stranded in the Residency. Kavanagh saved the day. 

Kavanagh of Lucknow

Later, Thomas Kavanagh was given a Victoria Cross for bravery – the first non-military person to ever receive that honor. But this honor aside, in the years that followed he returned to his clerical job and undistinguished life, finally leaving India and travelling to Gibraltar where he died and is buried.

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The author had the good fortune to spend a long warm morning exploring the ruins of the Residency in Lucknow recently. As Indian historical ruins are concerned, they are very well preserved - haunted by the ghosts of those who died during or endured the horrors of the Mutiny. Indeed, it should be said that the Residency is very tastefully presented with due respect to those who died there and without the imposition of Indian nationalist sentiment upon events. The Residency covers many acres and includes numerous buildings, most of them exactly as they were after the Mutiny. The church of St. Mary has been reduced to its foundations, but the cemetery at its side is well cared for. The mosque which was on the grounds of the Residency and which the British respected throughout the seige is not only still standing but is still occupied and in use. Some photographs follow:

Yours truly,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Labyrinth in Lucknow

While Benares, where the author has been for the last month, is a resoundingly Hindoo city, Lucknow, further to the north, is the premiere city of Shia Mahometans in India. The author journeyed there over the New Year. It was once the capital of the great fiefdom of the Nawab of Ood and has a distinctive culture celebrated for its fine manners and genteel ambience. Today, of course, it is a sprawling Indian mess but much of the old city, marked by various medieval gates, is still intact. In particular, the central mosques and the great centre of Shi'ite learning - the Imambara (theological college) - is especially well-preserved and an inspiring complex of architecture that is quite different to that of the (Sunni) Moghuls. The Nawabs of Ood were cultured and benevolent, if indulgent, men and embarked upon vast building projects, reputedly as a means of providing work for their hungry citizens during lean times. 

View from the roof of the Imambara

The truly unique feature of the Imambara (the big one, not the smaller complex further down the road, also called 'Imambara'), and reason enough to visit there, is in the ceiling of its main hall. The architect, Khifayatullah, has seen fit to build an elborate labyrinth (more correctly, it's a maze) into the upper levels of the building, supposedly to thwart would-be intruders. It is said that only he and the Nawab knew the path through it. Today it is open to the public, and the author spent several hours of a warm winter afternoon - New Year's Day - stumbling around in the tangle of halls and corridors and stairways that constitute the 'Bhul Bhulaiya' as it is known. 

During the daytime it is not impossibly difficult to navigate, since one can follow the light and keep taking paths back to the outside of the building, but during the night it would be diabolical. Many corridors lead to dead ends, but others lead to precipitous drops. As it is, the author found himself completely lost within a few turns and on several occasions had to return to the roof of the building to re-orient himself. As a labyrinth it is certainly effective and mysterious, even if on Friday afternoons - after the communal prayer, which is when the author was there - it is crowded with groups of teenagers squealing and giggling at the thrill of being lost. 

The following are some of the author's pictures of the labyrinth and should give readers a sense of the structure. There are, they say, some 500 doorways in the complex. The labyrinth works by offering stairwells up or down at strategic places. If you take the stairs up when you should have taken them down, you're lost.