Painting picture courtesy Christie's Auction House Sometimes, a painting begins to ask more questions than it answers. A late eighteenth-century painting, attributed to the Mandi school and catalogued as showing Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra with a courtier, has intrigued me for some time. At first glance, the identification appears straightforward enough. Two men sit opposite each other, smoking hookahs, while attendants stand behind them holding fly-whisks. One figure is dressed in red, the other in white. The scene is informal, almost intimate, and yet unmistakably courtly. But the more I looked at the painting, the less convinced I became that the red-clad figure was Sansar Chand. The reason came from looking at other portraits. Among the surviving paintings associated with the Mandi court are several portraits of Raja Surma Sen, who ruled Mandi from 1781 until his death in 1788. One such portrait shows him seated smoking a hookah, attended by a fly-whisk bearer. Another depicts ...
कांगड़े दा टीला ओ माता, गर्वे सिंघे घेरिया। अकबर कांगड़े चढ़ आया ओ मेरी माँ। सुत्ती ऐ की जाग दी तू, जाग अम्बे रानिये। गर्वे ने पाई लिया घेरा ओ मेरी माँ। A very famous bhajan from Kangra of Mata Bajreshwari Devi, remembered often across north-west India today, talks of the Kangre da Tilla or the Mound of Kangra, referring to the place where Bajreswari Devi is present. She is popularly also know as Kangra Mata, and the legend is that the place was set up by burying the kaan or ear of an asura who was killed by the Pandavas on the orders of the Devi. There are such bhajans for other major temples in the region as well, but as a history enthusiast, this one often draws my attention. The story of Kangra is as much the story of the civilizational wounds that the plains experienced; or perhaps it was worse, given how many times temple desecrations were made a conscious strategy. This song, at some level, seems to pass on the memory of one such gory experience that was witnessed by the peopl...