Chapter 3 — Inside the Mysore Palace

The lifeless eyes of two elephant heads gazed out into the open garden. The two heads were mounted on either side of the main entrance leading us into the palace. The trunks of the beasts were upright as if they were about to trumpet. Cracks had formed on their dusty white tusks.

“Is that ivory? They look quite original!” I said to Suresh.

“It is because they are!” Suresh said.

“What!”

“The 25th king — Jayachamaraja was fond of hunting. In fact, all kings of Wodeyar dynasty relished hunting. These two elephants were shot down by him in 1955 in the jungles of Kodagu, and their heads were severed, mummified, and after treating with chemicals, they were mounted on these walls for display. These are the original heads of those unfortunate elephants.”

‘Now, we are talking!’ I thought, remarking Suresh’s ability to tell me stories I would not find on Google. Suresh’s stories about this palace and its distant rulers were to determine if I would walk delighted out of Mysore. So far, he was doing good. Taking one more look at the dead mounted heads, we entered inside the palace.

The three-storeyed Durbar Hall, even after a century of construction, looked alive, as if just yesterday the first king of Mysore Dynasty had been crowned here. Only now, the pigeons had made home in the chajjas outside the grand windows, tourists with straw-hats had replaced the king’s subjects, and the Golden Throne that sat in the middle of the hall awaited its ruler.

“That jhumar you see above the throne”, Suresh said, escorting me to a corner of the Durbar Hall to make way for other tourists, “was ordered from Persia. Much of the architecture you see in this palace is a mix of Persian, Gothic, Mughal and Hindu styles of those days.

“For instance, the grill of the windows belong to the Mughal-style architecture,” he said leading my attention to the glass panels on the third-floor roof, presently dispersing the evening light of the sun into every corner of the Durbar. “This is a three-storied hall, atypical to Hindu architecture. But the blue pillars you see, are Hindu in style. The same pillars you will find in the description given of grand palaces in our epics like Mahabharatha and Ramayana.” The pillars coupled with bright light casting from the roof, and a red carpet laid on the floor, all acted together, providing the regality to this Durbar.

“And the carpet, is this Persian?”

“Exactly, sir. And chandeliers, lamps, and statues are Gothic in style, mostly European.”

“So everything was done by Lord Irwin?” I asked him, testing my own knowledge about the palace’s chief architect. Like always, before arriving here, I had gone through the Wikipedia page of the palace.

“Not everything sir. Yes, he was the chief architect, but Krishnaraja IV, the king who founded this palace in 1897, had great respect and admiration for local arts. Hence the skeletal design of the palace was done by Lord Irwin, as you rightly said, but the interiors: the false ceilings, carvings on the wall, and the paintings hung in the corridors were all commissioned to local artists of the kingdom. Few statues were brought from Europe or gifted by British emissaries in the early twentieth century, but the interior art was the work of Indian men.”

Suresh escorted me to the stairs that lead us to the second floor of the palace. The wide staircase wounded around a shaft where an old iron elevator sat lifeless. “When the elevators were first introduced to India,” Suresh said, “Mysore Palace was one of the first buildings to have them installed. In those days, it was a pride for people of Mysore to talk about the elevator outside Mysore.” Arriving upon the second floor, I saw a long corridor that branched out into several rooms on either side. Suresh lead me into one of the rooms. This was full of paintings and portraits hung on the wall. The overhead lamps flushed rich light on the portraits, mostly belonging to the people from the royal family, photographs of family gatherings — celebrating festivals with their subjects, and the young princes playing cricket with the grand palace in the backdrop. However, an odd pencil-sketch stood out from the rest. It was a sketch of a vast wooden-mansion that looked haunted, devoid of any human presence or trees, and stood under a clear yet dark and cloudless sky.

“What is this!”

“Mysore Palace inside which we are standing,” Suresh said, “was not the first building at this location. The wooden mansion in this painting was the former residence of the Mysore family.”

“And what happened to it?”

“Sir, it was the Dasserah of 1897. Dasserah has been the state festival of Mysore Kingdom since the 13th century. Nowhere it is celebrated with more grandeur and pomp! But in the Dasserah celebrations of 1897, this wooden palace caught fire. Before anything could be done, the walls of the palace tumbled down; the furniture burnt, and the paintings and artworks turned to ashes. Nothing from that era had remained.

“Before his own eyes, the King saw the palace burn. When the new palace was constructed, Krishnaraja commissioned this painting and asked it to be painted in a Gothic style, something that induces horror and disgust, to show the palace in its worst form, such that it would keep reminding the new generation about the disaster that the old times brought.

“People say everything burnt, but this painting of Lord Ganesha survived.” My eyes followed his direction, and bathed in powerful halogen lights, behind a glass panel, I saw a dusty half-burnt painting of the Elephant-God. Its colours had faded, but it had sustained much of its outlines. “The painting was recovered from the ruins and reinstalled in this new palace. The present descendants of the family worship it till today.”

“And who are the present descendants?”

“They don’t live in this palace anymore. They have another palace in Mysore, and their main residence is in Bangalore. They only come here during festivals and formal events.”

“Formal events like?”

“Coronation ceremony of a new king!”

“And who is the current king?”

“I will come to that soon, Sir. The lineage of Wodeyar dynasty has an interesting story. Their bloodline carries a curse, which is true till today. Some people say it’s a myth. I love to believe otherwise.”

“What is that curse?” I asked, my curiosity now building. Suresh never revealed to me everything at once.

“I will tell you all in good time Sir! The palaces will fall and rise, but the kings will continue.” I loved his choice of words. He told me his stories the way I liked. Today morning, I had walked into the Tourism Office, asked for the best tour guide they have, who can speak English, and they assigned me to Suresh. But they charged me a lot, they said he is the finest they have, and mostly booked with foreign guests. I paid them the amount what a foreign tourist would be asked to do, and so far Suresh was going a great job.

It was dark outside the palace windows. People had started to exit, as policemen whistled to draw the crowd out of the palace. The palace-time was over.

Was it time to go? Suresh studied the gloom on my face.

“Sir, though the palace is nearing the closing-time, anyone accompanied with a premium government-guide has permissions to stay back until 10 PM. So you take your time, and study these paintings; they have a history of Mysore within them, they will intrigue you. You never know what you find in them. See if you can notice what’s the curse.”

I was actually loving this. Suresh was eloquent, well studied and his speech, I thought, was academic, his tone always serious like a robot. . . until he said, “I will come back from a loo break, sir. My bladder is about to burst, and these are royal carpets! Please excuse me.”

He left me alone in that deserted gallery of paintings. Hundreds of dead royal people stared at me from their portraits on the walls as I felt being watched.

Dead kings sitting on their thrones, turbans on their heads, and their hand resting on the hilts of their swords. Their respective wives stood behind them, draped in sarees, and a few of them hidden behind a ghoonghat.

‘Come on folks’, I wondered looking at their blank faces, ‘tell me your curse?’