When the King of Nonsense visited Lalbagh

Lalbagh is called by many names and one among them is Kew of India.

This name was given by Edward Lear (1812-1888) in 1874. Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author and poet. Today, he is known mostly for his “literary nonsense”  in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.

He came to India in 1874 during which he visited Bangalore. He came to Lalbagh in a dog cart and was stunned by its beauty, variety of  plants and shrubs.

By then, the management of Lalbagh had passed from the hands of the British to the Mysore Maharaja or the Wodeyars. While the British kept Cantonment, they handed over the botanical garden laid out by Hyder and Tipu to the Wodeyars.  

The Garden of Waugh, as it was known a few decades earlier and the Cypress and Rose Gardens much earlier, had acquired the name of Lalbagh.

Lear had a particular reason for visiting Lalbagh. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and thirdly as a illustrator of English poet Alfred Tennyson’s poems.

As an author, Lear is known principally for his popular nonsense works, which use real and invented English words.  He wrote his nonsense song, “The Cummerbund”,  while sheltering from the monsoon in India.

However, his description of Lalbagh as Kew was more real than imagined and definitely not “nonsense” he wrote about the delightful time he spent in the gardens.

Lear was born into a middle-class family in Holloway, a small village near London. He was the 20^th of the 21st children of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear.

Lear began drawing by the time he was 16 and he soon developed into a serious “ornithological draughtsman” employed by the  Zoological Society.

He arrived in Bombay on November 22, 1873 after a 27-day voyage from Naples. It was his first in India and it would be the last expedition of his life.

This was between 1873 and 1875 and while travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings.

He had come to India as a guest of Evelyn Baring, the Personal Secretary, of the Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook.

He came to Bangalore in mid August of 1874 by rail and was stunned on seeing the Lalbagh. “Never saw a more beautiful place”, he wrote and called it the “Kew of India”.

Since Lalbagh had always been a repository of exotic plants and shrubs from the times of Hyder and Tipu, the epithet by Lear appears to be more than appropriate. He himself acknowledges that he  “went in a dog cart to Lalbagh ….never saw a more beautiful place, terraces, trellises.”

Lear found “a sort of homely quiet pervades everything” in Bangalore.  

 Lear was one of the first English writers to use Limericks and literary nonsense and helped to make them popular. He travelled in Italy for three years and published two books of illustrations. At one point, Lear taught Queen Victoria how to draw. He, however, had to bow out of Victoria’s presence as he did not know the proper way to behave with her and this led to awkward incidents. Lear painted all his life upto his death.

His writing and sketches of India reflect his nature and his amazement at the variety that India was. But even then, the rigors of Indian roads or rather the lack of it left him exhausted, leaving him to lament,  “O! Hateful Indian travel.”

It was Bangalore and Lalbagh that gave him back his spirit and made his day. This is how the “King of Nonsense” viewed Lalbagh.

Reviving the Srirangapatna Dasara

The Festival of Lights or Deepavali is on and Dassara or Dasara, the State festival, has just ended.

Lakhs of people have gone back with fond memories of the Dasara at Mysore. The many literary, cultural, religious and sporting events held at Mysore as part of the Dasara drew fairly large crowds.

Events such as wrestling or Kusti, the Jumboo Savari or procession drew large crowds. However, the Dasara at Mysore definitely overshadowed and overwhelmed a similar event at Srirangapatna where the event began.

It was in this fort town in the midst of the Cauvery that Raja Wodeyar commenced the tradition of Dasara. When Abhimanyu, the 47 year-old-tusker carried the idol of Goddess Chamundi during the Dasara procession in Srirangapatna, the event triggered  memories when the festival was held here till it was shifted to Mysore in 1800.
The origin of the present Dasara goes back to the Vijayanagars and after the fall of Hampi in 1565, Dasara all but disappeared as a public function. When Raja Wodeyar, the King of Mysore, defeated Sriranaga Raya, the Viceroy of Srirangapatna and a representative of the Vijayanagar Empire in 1610, he captured the town of  Srirangapatna.

Realising the strategic importance of locating a capital in an island, Raja Wodeyar shifted his capital from Mysore to Srirangapatna. He began ruling from Srirangapatna and he also decided to revive the annual Dasara festivities.

The magnificent Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangapatna was the centre of Dasara activities just as the Vijaya Vittala and Virupaksha Temple were in Hampi. Raja Wodeyar set the ball rolling for the coming centuries when he gave directions on the conduct of the Dasara festivities.

He set rules for the conduct of the festival and ordained that the festival should not stop even if there is a death in the royal family. There was one soon after he framed these rules and the King ordered the festivities to go on.  

Thus, after Hampi, it was Srirangapatna which became the centre of Dasara in Karnataka. Several Wodeyar Kings, including Ranadheera Kanteerava or Kanthirava Narasaraja Wodeyar (1638 -1659 AD) and Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar (1673 -1704 AD) contributed immensely to the growth of the Dasara in Srirangapatna, while subsequent Kings like Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar (III) (1799 - 1868 AD), Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar -IV (1902 -1940 AD) and Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar (1940-1947) did so in Mysore.

For several decades, Srirangapatna Dasara was a forgotten episode. Neither the Government nor the people displayed any interest in reviving an ancient tradition. This was so until a few years back-till 2007- when the Mandya district administration woke up to the tourist and pilgrim potential of the Dasara at Srirangapatna too.   
Since the last four years, the government has been trying to resurrect the glory of Srirangapatna Dasara. It has ensured that a Dasara procession is organized just like the one at Mysore and a caparisoned elephant leads the procession.

The Jamboo Savari of Srirangapatna drew fairly large crowds this October as Abhimanyu carried the idol, placed in a flower decorated mantap.
The Srirangapatna Dasara was inaugurated by G Venkatasubbaiah, lexicographer and Kannada writer, at Bannimanatap. He offered  pooja to Goddess Chamundi. The Mysore Dasara was from the main palace to Banni Mantapa, while its counterpart in Srirangapatna saw the procession from Banni Mantapa near the Kirangur Gate, off the Bangalore-Mysore Highway to Srirangapatna where it ended at the Ranganathaswamy Temple.

There was cultural and musical events during the five day Dasara festival at Srirangapatna.
The Mysore Dasara Committee had lent five elephants, horses and a wooden ‘ambari’ for the procession. This year’s attraction was the spectacular sound and light show (Son et lumiere), about the rise and fall of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore who was killed in battle in 1799.

Forty tableaux by various government departments, organisations and folk art troupes  accompanied the Jamboo Savari procession. The cultural and musical events were organized at Sriranga Vedike, near Sri Ranganatha Swamy temple. Unfortunately, the Srirangapatna Dasara was not as well publicised as the Mysore and Madikeri Dasara. Thousands of visitors to Mysore were unaware of this Dasara.

Dasara in Srirangapatna continued even under Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. Both of them allowed the Wodeyar Kings to participate in the Dasara procession. Thus, Srirangapatna had a history of Dasara from 1610 till 1798 after which it was shifted to Mysore.

There are many accounts of the Dasara held in Srirangapatna by the Wodeyars. The then Wodeyar rulers did their best to revive the glory and pomp of the Vijayanagar Dasara and they succeeded in doing so to a large extent.

One of the best accounts of the Srirangapatna Dasara is in the work of Govinda Vaidya, the court poet of Ranadheera Kanteerava. He gives us a beautiful and evocative account of the Vijayadashami procession in Kantirava Narasaraja Vijayam in 1648 which he calls Jambi Savari, meaning a procession to the Banni tree (Subsequently, Jambi became Jumbo, while Savari remained unchanged. So today, we have Jumboo Savari and not Jambi Savari).

The royal pavilion from where the Wodeyar Kings worshipped the royal cow, royal elephant, royal camel and royal chariot was at the exact place where the Daria Daulat stands today. Lt. Col. Mark Wilks (1760-1831), who was the Resident of Mysore  from 1803 to 1909 and who fought against Tipu Sultan, also locates the royal Dasara pavilion at this place.  

Unfortunately, the glory of Srirangapatna Dasara is gone and it cannot be revived unless and until the State Government makes sincere efforts to revive the rich cultural heritage and legacy of our ancients.