Something about a friend's status on Facebook this morning made me look up forts in Maharashtra on google. I looked at a picture of Pratap-gadh, built by Shivaji in the sixteenth C. As I was reading about it, I wandered back into the recesses of memory quarter of a century back, when I had visited a couple of these forts in Marathwada area of Maharashtra.
What is it about theses places, these hills upon which rulers of yesteryear built almost impregnable castles? Tough rock is cut by dedicated hands of the mason and arranged one upon another to form a high wall, rising from the foot of the hillock almost touching its summit. Within, there are little shrines and rooms, halls and courtyards and an array of cells - some for horses, others for elephants -, sometimes motes designed to confuse a malicious intruder. Ruins of gardens, now abandoned but once abundant perhaps with fruit orchards and fauna where ladies and dames and other women of the harem frolicked. You listen into the air for a lingering note of a playful, princely giggle reverberating through time. But you hear only silence - a thick block of quiet and noon light prod you on to day dream compellingly.
You go closer to these massive slabs wondering what magical glue binds them to each other and history, challenging the years and seasons and a constant sun and heavy rains of the Western Ghats? Why does it all come alive, almost invariably, to a point where you begin to reconstruct imaginary scenes and suddenly a delicate zephyr brings a note of some princess's perfume: you almost stop breathing, wanting it again even if as a ghost...
Then there is the summit which beckons so you start to climb.
The most important looking building is always right on top, often domed and with carved window awnings. I am never quite sure whether those decorative frames around window opening are 'awnings' or they were just an element of decor justifying the status of the man and his many women in charge who looked through them over vast vistas of the green country. Whatever they may be, the windows open over stretches of a great land: there are hills and hillocks and dotted towns through huge forest stretches and a hilly country. That surely must give the ruler a sense of contentment upon the high regard over his territory and, desire to conquer more of what was not already his. The walls of such rooms are fine lime and stucco contrasting with the ruggedness all around.
Who wouldn't like to be King? A thought forms in the mind as you caress the cast iron of a weather-bitten, solid cannon. You feel guilty for entertaining the thought briefly, guiltier still to think that you had to maintain that prestige by using many of those cannons, but then you get over it as quickly before beginning your climb down the hill. The room where you live is down below, in a moderately priced hotel within the bowels of the burgeoning town. You must go there for that is where your present dwelling is.
What is it about theses places, these hills upon which rulers of yesteryear built almost impregnable castles? Tough rock is cut by dedicated hands of the mason and arranged one upon another to form a high wall, rising from the foot of the hillock almost touching its summit. Within, there are little shrines and rooms, halls and courtyards and an array of cells - some for horses, others for elephants -, sometimes motes designed to confuse a malicious intruder. Ruins of gardens, now abandoned but once abundant perhaps with fruit orchards and fauna where ladies and dames and other women of the harem frolicked. You listen into the air for a lingering note of a playful, princely giggle reverberating through time. But you hear only silence - a thick block of quiet and noon light prod you on to day dream compellingly.
You go closer to these massive slabs wondering what magical glue binds them to each other and history, challenging the years and seasons and a constant sun and heavy rains of the Western Ghats? Why does it all come alive, almost invariably, to a point where you begin to reconstruct imaginary scenes and suddenly a delicate zephyr brings a note of some princess's perfume: you almost stop breathing, wanting it again even if as a ghost...
Then there is the summit which beckons so you start to climb.
The most important looking building is always right on top, often domed and with carved window awnings. I am never quite sure whether those decorative frames around window opening are 'awnings' or they were just an element of decor justifying the status of the man and his many women in charge who looked through them over vast vistas of the green country. Whatever they may be, the windows open over stretches of a great land: there are hills and hillocks and dotted towns through huge forest stretches and a hilly country. That surely must give the ruler a sense of contentment upon the high regard over his territory and, desire to conquer more of what was not already his. The walls of such rooms are fine lime and stucco contrasting with the ruggedness all around.
Who wouldn't like to be King? A thought forms in the mind as you caress the cast iron of a weather-bitten, solid cannon. You feel guilty for entertaining the thought briefly, guiltier still to think that you had to maintain that prestige by using many of those cannons, but then you get over it as quickly before beginning your climb down the hill. The room where you live is down below, in a moderately priced hotel within the bowels of the burgeoning town. You must go there for that is where your present dwelling is.
