Travel: The keeper of Chanderi’s lost Cave Paintings

Our vacation in Madhya Pradesh included the usual stops at Bhopal, Bhimbetka, Khajuraho, Sanchi, Vidisha, Orchha, Pench and so on. The stop at Chanderi on our last lap was unplanned and due entirely to some logistical caprice. Having seen the magnificent cave paintings, temples, stupas and murals all over MP, Chanderi, when we arrived, seemed like an anti-climax.

Chanderi had conjured up the image of a sleepy town from the movie Stree or at best its more famous produce, the Chanderi silk; and the little of the town that I saw while we searched for our hotel (a beautiful hilltop palace turned MP tourist lodge known as Kila Kothi) was far from impressive –it was one of the dusty and ramshackle mofussil towns that comprise vast parts of India.

Some quick googling revealed that the town boasted medieval India’s standard quartet of the palace (Koshak Mahal), the fort (Chanderi Fort), the gateway (Khooni Darwaza) and the temple (Chaubisi Digambar Jain Temple). I sighed and resigned myself to end the tour with a whimper. I was reading the newspaper in the hotel lobby when the miracle happened. A short, dark complexioned man with henna-dyed hair and in a checkered suit walked in with a curious notebook in his hands. Somehow, we struck up a conversation and the more he spoke, the more unreal he seemed.

He introduced himself as Muzaffar Ansari but quickly added with a grin, “But people call me Kaaley Bhai, for obvious reasons, you see”. He was the only registered tour guide of the town. He had to leave school at standard six because he had no money and started pursuing odd jobs. Eventually, a love for the town, an avid interest in history and a chance to make some quick buck made him a tour guide.

From these humble beginnings, he became a self-taught polyglot, acquiring fluency in six languages and knowledge of more than six scripts (including ancient scripts such as Brahmi and Kharosthi). He became so well versed in Indian history and the history of Chanderi (erstwhile Mahajanapada – Chedi) that he ended up collaborating with several national and international academicians’ doctoral and post-doctoral theses.

Even doyens like William Dalrymple, he revealed, met him when they chanced upon Chanderi. Having collected coins, stone tools and fossils ever since he was a child, he had created a small museum of such artefacts at his home. I would have scarcely believed him, until he flipped his phone open and started showing off photos.

Our conversation meandered through different phases of Indian history which I had seen in MP – Mauryan Stupas, Gupta temples and murals, Chandela architecture and Mughal vassal states of Chanderi, Orchha and Mandu.

When I casually mentioned how impressed I was with the petroglyphs of Bhimbetka and how I felt they were no less iconic than the cave paintings in Altamira, Kaaley Bhai said, “So, you liked Bhimbetka? Do you know we have similar cave paintings in Chanderi as well?”

I was flabbergasted. A middle school dropout, who was also a TEDx speaker and an internationally renowned scholar was claiming there were undiscovered cave paintings right there in the somnolent town! The accidental visit was turning out to be far from drab.

We made an immediate plan to visit the nearest of these sites, Nanon.

Kaaley Bhai arrived early, on a 4X4 jeep! While there are many nice things about Madhya Pradesh, good roads are not one of them. The road we took that morning justified a four-wheel drive and a visit to a chiropractor over the weekend! The limits of the city ended within a kilometer or two, then the car rattled along state highways, narrower roads, still narrower lanes connecting hamlets and finally, after a sharp turn to the right, roads gave way to dusty unmetalled tracks. “You should be happy this is autumn, nothing remains of this track during the monsoons, it’s all slush then” chuckled Kaaley Bhai, almost relishing my obvious discomfort.

We were driving towards the Urr (Urvashi) river. Kaaley Bhai was in a good mood, regaling us with stories of chalcolithic civilization in Madhya Pradesh and the number of stone tools he had collected over the years. “Make no mistake, what you are about to see is in no way inferior to Bhimbetka!”, he reassured triumphantly.

By this time, we would have travelled about 20 km from Chanderi and our surroundings had completely changed from the dusty cow-belt town to that of a bush forest covering a river bank. Two jackals fought over a strip of carrion. We also saw a mongoose, a few wild hares and an Indian crested porcupine bobbing its head from its burrow. This was fast becoming a day safari as well, I thought!

The jeep suddenly came to a halt on a swath of dry land and Kaaley Bhai jumped off the car and said, “Follow me”. There were no people around, no villages, no farm land as we walked through a dry wasteland of thickets and shrubs to finally reach the Nanon site.

After the curated marvel of Bhimbetka, I was sullen with disappointment. The dry patch of land where the jeep was parked gave way to an uphill trek which finally ended on a steep rocky river bank.

Urr meandered below us, hemmed in by lush green banks. One could see crocodiles basking in the sun, a herd of water buffaloes crossing the river, an occasional boat somewhere far away. After some deft trekking we finally reached the caves. It was as if some divine force had scooped out parts of the hillside to create perfect sanctuaries for our earliest ancestors. There were five such shelters. But one had completely collapsed, all its art buried under a pile of rubble.

Initially, I couldn’t decipher any painting, when like a magician Kaaley Bhai sprinkled some water from our water bottle on the walls. Instantly images magically started appearing in front of our eyes!

I was inside the dwelling of an ancient ancestor of ours who would have caught fish from the Urr river, hunted hare in the thickets we had left behind us and painted the story of his life in red ochre to decorate his living room!

There were scenes of dancing, hunting, a plethora of recognizable animals like elephants, tigers, deer, snakes, birds and armies on the march, shamanic elders of an animist past, gladiatorial fights and joyous feasts. There were also depictions of unknown animals from myths and legends that no one remembered anymore!

There was a striking resemblance in form, size and colour between the paintings in Bhimbetka and Nanon. The hands which had painted these walls would have belonged to cousins of people who made Bhimbetka their Sistine Chapel. Some of the paintings were exquisite and well preserved, others defaced by the elements; there was a layer of black soot which covered still others and yet I found myself crawling deeper and deeper into the caves to look at more and more art as they revealed themselves.

Of the five shelters, four were accessible. We could crawl beneath each, and in torchlight see layers upon layers of paintings, which suggested that the site had been inhabited by generations of early humans.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Who are their present progeny? What did they look like? My head was brimming with questions. The age of these paintings was anybody’s guess because no carbon dating had been done. Kaaley Bhai believed the paintings were created between 6000 to 1000 BC. I remember the heady feeling. I was looking at paintings, thousands of years old, older than the city of Harappa perhaps. I was standing there with the guardian of this heritage, a man whose story was as improbable as the paintings themselves.

I felt what a Henri Mouhot would have felt looking at Angkor for the first time in 1860s or Marcelino Sautuola while looking at Altamira for the first time in 1879. Here was something of timeless value, seen only by a handful of people in the world. I was now one of them.

But I soon discovered empty beer cans, shards from broken bottles of Old Monk and the dark soot covering the paintings were from fires lit by people as they enjoyed their drink.

Kaaley Bhai sensed my elation and disappointment. “That’s how it works in our country, we have everything and nothing. People don’t respect all this here. For them it’s just some unknown graffiti, not a piece of our oldest cultural achievement,” he added philosophically.

“But the ASI? Have they not shown any interest in protecting these priceless frescos?” The henna-dyed dark man replied with a sad smile. “ASI is a government department, I am sure they do their best, but conservation needs lots of funds and manpower, not sure that is always available with them,” he said.

I have never been a big fan of ASI’s work. On this tour itself I had seen how pillars in the smaller temples at Khajuraho had been hideously plastered with cement instead of replacing them with carved panels similar to the original. ASI is an institution, much in tune with the present times, which neglects monuments worth conserving and restoring at home; but sends teams of its best conservation experts on vanity projects to faraway lands like Cambodia, where they are helping to restore the Ta Prohm (Old Brahma) Temple today.

On the return journey we were quiet. All of us had the same thought in our minds.How could we let this happen? “There are such sites all over this area, most notably in Mamon, another 40 kms away, but things are no better there. You are educated people, with lots of connections, help us in getting the information out to the people who matter and people who might care. Maybe even private donors can help in conserving some of this through charitable projects. We should still have these paintings preserved when our children and grandchildren come to visit Chanderi,” said Kaaley Bhai as a parting shot.

As we took a sharp left turn, Nanon disappeared behind us in a cloud of dust, with its silent panorama of painted rocks, possibly forever!

(The writer is a Human Resource manager by profession, with interests in history, culture and travel)