THE STORIES OF AN INDIAN MUSEUM
THE KHANDALAWALA RELIC
After
spending three hours on documentation of all the artefacts, I took one long
breath and sat down gazing at the street through my window. Meanwhile Amrita
got me a cup of tea which completed the missing component of the situation. Looking down at the heavy downpour and water
logging on the street, I became a little nostalgic. Now, when I say nostalgic,
it acts as a professional retirement disorder endemic only to journalists. After 20 years of your passive journalism
practice with many famous lawyers, freedom fighters, private detectives and
underground cops when you sit as a museum curator, it rejuvenates nostalgia in
you. One man, in these eminent
personalities, whom I was seriously missing at this point was professor Karl.
It would not be inappropriate if I say that for
professor Karl Khandalawala, being a Supreme Court lawyer was just a hobby, but
his actual passion and dedicated profession was of an ‘art collector’, a
passion which was not adopted for money but was more like his life line. My consultation with professor took place
when he was council member and consultant lawyer in the famous Sylvia Nanavati
case. I remember visiting his study
quiet often, where I almost suffered heart attacks looking at his wonderful
collections, philanthropy, collections of rare coins, miniature arts and much
more and since then I never missed an opportunity to be with him on his
artifact hunts. Over a decade he almost
dug up whole India searching for precious artifacts in the distinct types of
soil but he always remained unsatisfied.
Out
of all our missions till date, there is this one mission which always builds up
in my mind as an implausible mix-up. A tragedy which I can never forget. This
dates to the year of 1940. I guess, out of all his discoveries, the most
significant ones took place at Madhya Pradesh. Early morning, we landed at
Bhopal hoping for some secret discoveries.
Karl was such an absent-minded person, he had forgotten his hat in the
chopper itself and was not even bothered until I placed it on his head. Mrs Khandalavala, on the other side just
couldn’t stop appreciating the atmosphere which constantly reminded her of
monsoons in Bombay. Hari, our friend in ‘archaeology’ was kind
enough to give us two rooms in his house to stay. Karl had this moral practice of sending
telegraphs to the office and informing them about his whereabouts.
"REACHED.
BHOPAL. EIGHT.”
And
this telegraph was couriered to his secretory in Bombay. On contrary I never informed anybody about my
whereabouts which was often the theme of my fights with my spouse. Our upcoming
project was to venture into a speculated tribal area to retrieve certain lost
cultural artifacts. The tribal groups
such as Bhils, Gonds, Bhariya, Dhars
were culturally were dynamic groups, with an estimation of a treasure including
terracotta idols, red sandstone artifacts, feldspar ornaments, ivory objects,
bronze vessels and a lot more to be included in the list. Karl wanted to dig up that area which was
speculated to be abandoned. Heavy rains, cup of coffee and candle lights, this
was our working pitch for the impending treasure expedition. I could see the obsession in Karl`s planning,
a stunning enthusiasm towards the new discoveries which would be the actual treasures
for a man with a desire. That night Karl
could not sleep, every two hours he would get up, check the hooks in the plan
and pretend to be satisfied. For
security purposes, I had requested the archaeological department to provide us
with bodyguards to defend us in rare cases of tribal attacks. These were the locals who could speak their
languages. The British Government also
sent two armed sepoys to escort us to
the villages. The roads being mud pots and slippery, Karl and I decided not to
use the government jeeps, we hired two Tongas
instead, to travel through the villages of Bhillasi.
That afternoon as the skies were
turning dark, it was also difficult for the horses to speed up with the muddy
roads. The atmosphere appeared as if it
was warning about something bad. I can
now relate with the similar signs when the Egyptian mummies were being dug
up. Karl and I both believed that
certain places have blasphemies attached based on the background incident and
for the same reason we always believed in a background check. But this time trouble greeted us like an old
friend in mid-way itself.
The tongas suddenly stopped as the wheel went into a muddy ditch, so
Karl had to get down until the tongawala
struggled to take the wheel out, while wandering near the tonga and impatiently waiting for the wheel to come out, Karl
sprawled upon a hard stone injuring his toe, but then instead of getting up, he
tried clearing sum mud around the stone, by this time I could see some shine in
the eyes of this archaeologist.
“get
me the shovel and digger” shouted Karl in the
topmost voice and immediately Shiva came running with his lucky digger.
“Karl!!
Would you excuse me!” I said in a husky voice expecting a
clarification on the whole situation. I
wanted to take some shelter as I could smell the earth indicating immediate
rains anytime.
“You
see this curl? This is not normal!! It
is an Anglo-Indian architecture usually observed in the artifact of Gupta
Period!! We have something here”
blabbered Karl in a very enthusiastic tone.
Surprised!
That was Karl Khandalawala, who could guess the whole horoscope of an artifact
with just the texture of the item.
Anyways, like you, even I did not believe at this hidden talent.
“Lord
Christ!! Karl, you might be digging a tree root!! It’s getting dark, let’s go!”
I
requested him.
But
Karl dug, he dug the ground and we got something which revealed a new chapter
all together. The stone which Karl had
tipped on was an artifact. The eyes of
an archaeologist can never have an accident, he was right! The artifact was still covered with mud when
Karl showed it to the tongawala.
“yeh
dekho!! Jaante hoy eh kya hai?” questioned Karl in an
achieving tone.
“saab!!
Yeh thik nahi hua!! Aap isse wapas rakh dijiye!” said
the shivering thongawala.
“kyun?
Will anyone object? Hum usse baat karega!”
Karl changed his Parsi tone to convincing manner.
“shab!
Idhar koi kuch nahi bolega! Koi bura nahi manega! Par agar bhagwaan bura maan gaya toh aap kuch
nahi kar paoge! Hum kehte hain kuch cheeze jidhar hain, udhar hi thik hain”
said the tongawala.
Sometimes it is very annoying to see people such
superstitious. I got really irritated
with this conversation. Karl and this
man were like Nehru and Bose, arguing about the similar things but without any
conclusion. Finally, we reached our marked
site. The excavation started and went on
for two days, but on the same night Karl sat down to clean few artifacts and
the first one that he picked up was that stone which he had tipped on. After one hour of removing mud from
everywhere, Karl showed me the polished artifact. A chill ran down my body when I saw that, the
excavated artifact was damaged from left shoulder to the right axial of
body. But the face was evident, A 5th
century sculpture from Maurya
period. The piece which we accidentally
discovered was an idol of a Naga
women. The women had curly hairs and
instead of crown, five snakes were on her head defining their prominent stature
of attack. The locals referred her as
the snake goddess but the manuscripts provide a description of these women
being trained assassins.
It is said that the Naga women were so beautiful that their victims never refused to
spend nights with them, but then their weapon of assassination were those
snakes on their head. Karl was very
excited at this discovery and he wanted to search more of these idols but out
of all our excavated exhibits, this idol was only one unique and we never found
any other.
After
two days of excavation I returned to Bombay
to sort out some editing disagreements regarding a new interview of Gandhiji.
Under the tremendous arguments in the newspaper office, I received a telegraph
from Karl. But the sender this time was
Mrs. Khandalawala. I opened it and my
eyes expanded out after reading those words. The Most expensive telegraph that I
had ever received in my life was this telegraph which made me hire a chopper
the very next hour and rush to Madhya Pradesh. With that telegraph in my hand,
the words of that local tongawala started
echoing in my ears:
“few
things better be kept wherever they are!”
It
is difficult to call this as a co incidence and will not be correct to call it
an after effects of a jinx either but to me it is a confusion between my
physical and spiritual realm. The telegraph read
“KARL. HOSPITALIZED. LEFT. SHOULDER. INJURED. NEED. HELP.”
While
researching at Khajuraho, Karl had
smashed his shoulder. If you think this
ended here, you are wrong, he smashed the same shoulder four times again within
next 5 years. Now is it co-incidence? Or
wrath of the Naga God? Well I think few questions should remain
unanswered.
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