Public Spaces. Private Spaces.

It was late in the evening by the time I reached Gwalior. The station is under construction and I have trouble finding the retiring room that I had booked in advance. The rain and the dug-up streets do not help. Like many other retiring rooms I have used at railway stations, it is clean and roomy, just a little less conveniently located. Perhaps when the construction is done, this will be better integrated with the rest of the station complex.
I leave early the next morning, armed with Google Maps. I take a share auto to Phoolbagh from which I intend to take the ride to the fort. The fare quoted is outrageous for the short distance that Google Maps says it is, and I walk off in a huff, with Google Maps as my guide (turns out Google Maps was showing me the directions to something that was at the top of the hill, but not the way to get to the top).
I turn into a by-lane and then into another and come upon a Jain monastery cum temple. I know now that Google Maps has somehow misled me, but curious, and since I have made it this far anyway, I take off my shoes and trek up the broad and gently rising steps where I come upon a fascinating set of statues cut into the rock-face. This is the Gopachal ek-shila colossi, a set of large statues of Jain Tirthankaras, some seated, some standing, with beautiful relief work depicting various themes from Jain iconology.
It has been raining all night and off-and-on this morning as well. My feet are a mess and there is no water to wash my feet after I get back down from the Gopachal colossi. I shove my socks into my pockets and slip into my shoes. More on the shoes later.
I make my way back down to the main road, and suitably chastised, take an auto to the Fort Gate which is a little farther than Google Maps had me believe.
The auto leaves me at the foot of the hill on top of which the fort stands, at Badal Gate. To its right is the entrance of Gujari Mahal, which is not yet open to visitors at this early hour. There is a music school on the left from which I can hear a less-than-euphonious chorus of students practicing their scales and notes.
The fort sits atop the northern end of the 2.8km long rocky outcrop of the Vindhya mountains, with a width of about 900m, and a maximum height of 104m. The fort measures nearly 2.5km in length and varies between 200m and 725m in width.
The climb up from Badal Gate to the fort is not very long, but is steep enough to make for a brisk morning’s exercise. I go past the Ganesh gate (with the dove cote next to it), and the Laxman Gate before getting to the Hathi Pol at the top of the hill.
There is the small Chaturbhuj temple just before one gets to the Lakshman gate. There are signs pointing to “ZERO” along the path. That is a reference to the inscription in the temple which is one of the earliest known depictions of the number “0”.
As I pass through the Hathi Pol gate, I see the open space on the left and the ramparts of the fort overlooking the town below. There are a number of people here, some using the space and time to exercise. There is a group who are practicing wrestling moves. Some here just to spend time with friends (the trek up to the gate was probably their morning walk). I suspect I would see chess players too if I were to come here on a finer day. I am reminded of Anisha’s writings and speeches on public spaces in heritage structures and how restoring that status is critical for ensuring continuing health of these heritage structures.
I was advised by my cab driver in Khajuraho to explore the Man Mandir palace where sunlight pierces the building to ensure that even rooms two floors below the ground receive natural light.
Man Mandir palace is hard to miss. It is the most visible, and by far the most beautiful structure in the fort. It is also the only one that is open this early in the day. I take my ticket and go into it. I have to climb two sets of stairs to get to the entrance.
I am greeted by two finely decorated courtyards surrounded by lavishly decorated residential quarters. The stairs to the upper floor are locked out to visitors. But there are stairs which we can descend to the two lower floors, on each of which there are large circular rooms. The windows of these rooms open on to the cliff-face on one side, and on to the open space adjoining the Hathi Pol gate on the other.
So, that is the secret of the “sunlight under the ground”. The entrance on the second floor creates the illusion that these floors are below the ground.
It is not yet time for the rest of the fort to be opened to the public (there is a separate ticket for that), so I have to hang around a little while longer, watching the people gathered there for their morning routine.
Eventually, the ticket window opens and the gates to the other part of the fort open. My canvas shoes, otherwise comfortable for walking, are drenched by now, and in the absence of socks, chafing against my feet.
This, the northern section of the fort, has further palaces — in various states of decay and disrepair — the Jahangir Palace and Shah Jahan Palace, the Vikram Mahal, and the Karn Mahal. There is a reservoir with the macabre name Johar Kund, and to its north, the Cenotaph of Bhimsingh Rana. The armory building on the west of Johar Kund is a British area structure, with a distinctively colonial design.
Thus, within a few hundred yards of each other, one finds evidence of the evolving architectural styles and motifs from the simple porch of the Chaturbhuj temple, to the Gurjara-Pratihara style of the Man Mandir palace, with the segue into Mughal style palaces, and eventually, the colonial style armory.
The rain has been relentless, and I duck into the ASI museum (which has a separate ticket) partly to escape the rain (despite being armed with an umbrella).
Once the rain relents, I move south, past the Man Mandir palace and the assi khamba ki baodi, a circular step-well with an elegant eighty pillared pavilion.
The ticket for the rest of Gwalior fort, covers the Saas-Bahu temple and the Teli mandir as well, which are half-a-mile further to the south. That short walk aggravates the callouses on my feet significantly, and walking is getting to be bit of a punishment by now.
The next stop is the Saas-Bahu Temple. This is the colloquial name assigned to the twin buildings on the south-eastern side of the fort. The original name of the temple was almost certainly Sahasra-baahu temple (the temple of the thousand-armed one), which has been corrupted to Saas-Bahu temple (meaning mother-in-law and daughter-in-law temple), which conveniently denotes the larger and smaller of the two structures. Unusually, the temple plan is on a north-south axis with its entrance on the north.
There are few visitors here at this time — attributable in part to the weather and a still-early time of the day. I run into Charu Govil, who is here from Gurgaon, exploring Gwalior and other tourist destinations in the vicinity. A school teacher by profession, she organizes heritage walks in Gurgaon. We chat, and oblige each other by taking photos.
I walk on to the Teli temple. It is the tallest structure in Gwalior fort, at about 25m. The spire ends in a wagon-vaulted shape, unusual for a shrine in northern India (this is more prevalent in temples and gopurams in southern India). This adds one more ingredient to the potpourri of architectural styles in the fort.
I pass the Scindia School on the way here — a large gated, manicured, and restricted property — sterile and forbidding in comparison to the friendly and open yards at the Hathi Pol, and I am reminded once more of Anisha’s thoughts on public spaces.
A small group of tourists shows up at Teli Mandir. The guard refuses to allow them entry until they have tickets — which are being sold at the main fort 800m away. The absurdity of the arrangement does not appear to have crossed the minds of the officials who designed it. I persuade the guard to allow the visitors to roam around — it is raining heavily again now, they have no other place to shelter, and it is impractical for them to go to the fort, get tickets, and come back here. The guard relents.
I continue, with my feet hurting with every step I take.
Fortunately for me, I come across a group of Sikhs who have come to the Data Bandi Chhod Sahib Gurdwara, who agree to take me down the hill in their jeep.
We speed down the cliff and I see the Jain statues once more — this time on my left. I suspect it is not the same statues that I saw in the morning, and I discover regretfully that that was indeed the case. These are the Siddhanchal group, the largest of five groups of statues surrounding the hill on which the fort is built.
Dropped off at the Koteshwar Mandir road, I hire an auto to take me to Ghous Baba’s tomb, and Tansen’s tomb. There are vendors selling teasel gourd (Kantola) on their carts and by the roadside. This is a vegetable that is somewhat rare and pricey in Hyderabad and I consider taking back some on my train back in the night, but I eventually give it a pass.
The Koteshwar mandir is another example of a temple with a domed spire, matching the Pratapeshwar that I had seen in Khajuraho just the day before.
My next stop is the Jay Vilas palace, a nineteenth century palace built in European style by Jayajirao Scindia and designed by Lt. Col. Sir Michael Filose. The major part of the palace is now the “Jiwajirao Scindia Museum” which opened to the public in 1964. The public access to the palace is through twisting by-lanes with the last stretch limited to pedestrian access or paid golf carts only.
There is a small café at the gate of the palace where I have my first meal of the day, after a vexingly long wait. The palace features a resplendent array of artefacts, lavishly fitted rooms, and the dining room with the famous food train. It leaves me rather cold.
I make my way back out and see that the palace gates which open on to the broad Moti Mahal Road being opened to let in an official vehicle. I ask to be allowed to leave from that gate, while it is still open, but I am brusquely shooed off and forced to make my way back through the same back-lanes I had come through.
My feet are killing me and I am all set to go back to my room at the station, but I let myself be talked into a visit to the Sun Temple, by my auto-driver.
The temple is an attempt to make a replica of the Sun Temple of Konark. The scale is much smaller, of course, and the external walls a gross oversimplification of the ornate original. The Birlas have built beautiful temples in Delhi and Hyderabad. I am saddened that they chose this ersatz representation in Gwalior.
But now, it is time to put my blistered feet up, and catch the train back to Hyderabad.