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 5^th 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.