I was on my way back to home for a long leave and had to go via Hydrabad. I reached the city early morning and my next bus was in the night, so I had a humongous day in front of me to spend. There were many options like Ramoji Film City, Nehru Zoological park, Golconda fort and Salar Jung Museum. 90% of the readers would have chosen any location among first three, because going for the museum has least of the fun factor. I chose otherwise, even I was surprised with the choice. All museums I have seen ever have been the part of some one day tour trips of cities or some compulsory college educational tours. I remember, we used to drag our own bodies out of such buildings just like the zombies in horror hollywood movies. But SalarJung museum is the exception. One of my favorite writers Pu. La. Deshpande once wrote that SalarJung is different than any other museum he have ever seen and since then I had a curiosity to see it. I had been in Hyderabad for some 7 months but never had a chance to go there. Today standing on the porch of Hyderabad Central Bus Stand, I had the chance and I took it.
I was accompanied by a close friend on this voyage. We reached the place at 10.30 A.M. The building reflected the prosperity of the Nizam empire. The entry fee was just Rs.10 with free locker. It was the Bazinga moment for both of us, as we were the residents of Bangalore where in Rs.10 no body will even slap you(pun intended/ I know lots of people who would do it for me.) Anyways, when we entered the building with the map in our hands, I never expected that I would be exposed to such a beautiful era of art and antiques. The building had just 2 floors with three blocks, central, eastern and western. On the ground floor, a section is dedicated to introduce SalarJung III, he was the one who preserved the collection of all antiques from his previous generations and created the museum. His real name was Mir Yusuf Ali Khan. Salar Jung is the post of prime minister of Nizam which was given to his ancestors by the then Nizam.
There were number of gallaries from Indian Bronze and printed textiles to sculptures, from mirror art to glass gallary. Each object in the gallary represented the skills of the workers at that time. The fine sculpting on the glasses showed the perfection and carefulness which each artist poured into those objects. Most of the hot blood people of our generation are attracted mainly to the Arms and Armour Gallary. When we went inside, our jaws dropped to see variety of swords, daggers, battle axes, spears, bows. The Jade gallary contains cups, culteries, daggers and arm rests made of fine and exquisite jades. The kashmir gallary contained all shamiyanas and kashmiri cloths/stuffs which reflect the typical kashmir work-designs. The Bidry gallary contains the utensils made by Bidars from different places.(Based on the shapes of the utensils, I believe most of them must have been used to serve liquor). One of the exquisite gallaries that I encountered there was of Persian/Arabic Scripts gallary where many original documents and religious scripts were preserved, written in arabic languages. There is some charisma with urdu words, I may say. They are so heavy and stuffed. I mugged many urdu words to flaunt later in some home-made shayaris. Unfortunately I forgot it now. There were other gallaries like toys, floras and fiona, mainly targeted for the children.
The east wing of the building contains the antiques from China, Japan etc. The chinese art work is extremely magnificent and deeply carved white marbled art works make your jaw drop naturally. The Japanese dragon paintings and dummies are quite appealing. Though the translations on few of the chinese paintings are extremely hilarious, one being 'चांदनी रात में नाचती भजन मंडली ' for the dancing chinese monks made us laugh our asses off. After looking through all of the eastern gallery, I started realizing the prosperity which Salar Jung possesed. The mediocre thoughts like "How did Salarjung managed to keep these many things as collection, where we can not find good place to live in bangalore" came to our minds. That moment I understood one thing, Royalty is what comes automatically, we can't pretend it. Anyways, after conquering eastern wing, we were pretty exhausted and needed some break. There was small canteen, we had some snickers and we started off again
The western gallary is marvellous and just awesome. There are 5 consecutive gallaries, the first one was European paintings. The painting were damn good. Earlier, I always used to think, watching in the movies, how can people keep on staring at the paintings for so long, but now I tell you, some paintings capture your attention so deeply that your eyesight get magnetically fixed on the colors, on the shapes, on the imagination which painter wanted viewer to experience. The painting of psyche, I found extremely artistic. There is a common notion that European paintings take help of nudity to make art more profound, but in those paintings it was art which defined nudity, not vice-versa(Anyways, that's my personal opinion). Yup, and there was one more painting gallary in Indian section which was titled Modern Paintings. The abstract paintings there made no sense to me. I believe, I still dont understand art quite well, because some of the paintings I found quite annoyingly senseless to be put on show. Ok, lets get back to European gallaries. Next was the Porcelain gallary which had some fancy stuffs like mirrors and mazes created using porcelain arts. Later was the glass gallary and I tell you that was just awesome. The glass wares with different shades of colored glasses were looking so exotic that even drinking water in it may tantalize you. The Venice, Istanbul, Belgium glasses were breathtakingly amazing.
Finally I will tell you something like A must do and A must don't in museum. The veiled Rebecca is the best masterpiece in the whole building. Don't miss it. The sculptor G.B.Benzoni created it on the white marbel. The veil and wrinkles on it shows the miraculously divine talent of the artist. When you are wandering in the central block, you will find quite a fudge about some alarm and people will be gathering into the open hall with Alarm clock to see the magic. But there ain't any. We had been sitting there for 15 mins earlier to check what is all that about. In simple words, its extremely lame mechanical alarm rings. P.S.: This whole event could sound quite appealing to children, as we saw many of them gasp in utter bewilderment. When we had finished every gallary, we saw the watch and it was 4.30. The realization hit us like a bombshell, we had been in the museum for 6 straight hours. There must have been something really wrong with us. But we were fully content.
I would recommend everyone to once visit SalarJung once in your lifetime to know how rich was our culture. Mankind needs art because it reflects the cultural evolution which is the soul of Civilization.
I was accompanied by a close friend on this voyage. We reached the place at 10.30 A.M. The building reflected the prosperity of the Nizam empire. The entry fee was just Rs.10 with free locker. It was the Bazinga moment for both of us, as we were the residents of Bangalore where in Rs.10 no body will even slap you(pun intended/ I know lots of people who would do it for me.) Anyways, when we entered the building with the map in our hands, I never expected that I would be exposed to such a beautiful era of art and antiques. The building had just 2 floors with three blocks, central, eastern and western. On the ground floor, a section is dedicated to introduce SalarJung III, he was the one who preserved the collection of all antiques from his previous generations and created the museum. His real name was Mir Yusuf Ali Khan. Salar Jung is the post of prime minister of Nizam which was given to his ancestors by the then Nizam.
There were number of gallaries from Indian Bronze and printed textiles to sculptures, from mirror art to glass gallary. Each object in the gallary represented the skills of the workers at that time. The fine sculpting on the glasses showed the perfection and carefulness which each artist poured into those objects. Most of the hot blood people of our generation are attracted mainly to the Arms and Armour Gallary. When we went inside, our jaws dropped to see variety of swords, daggers, battle axes, spears, bows. The Jade gallary contains cups, culteries, daggers and arm rests made of fine and exquisite jades. The kashmir gallary contained all shamiyanas and kashmiri cloths/stuffs which reflect the typical kashmir work-designs. The Bidry gallary contains the utensils made by Bidars from different places.(Based on the shapes of the utensils, I believe most of them must have been used to serve liquor). One of the exquisite gallaries that I encountered there was of Persian/Arabic Scripts gallary where many original documents and religious scripts were preserved, written in arabic languages. There is some charisma with urdu words, I may say. They are so heavy and stuffed. I mugged many urdu words to flaunt later in some home-made shayaris. Unfortunately I forgot it now. There were other gallaries like toys, floras and fiona, mainly targeted for the children.
The east wing of the building contains the antiques from China, Japan etc. The chinese art work is extremely magnificent and deeply carved white marbled art works make your jaw drop naturally. The Japanese dragon paintings and dummies are quite appealing. Though the translations on few of the chinese paintings are extremely hilarious, one being 'चांदनी रात में नाचती भजन मंडली ' for the dancing chinese monks made us laugh our asses off. After looking through all of the eastern gallery, I started realizing the prosperity which Salar Jung possesed. The mediocre thoughts like "How did Salarjung managed to keep these many things as collection, where we can not find good place to live in bangalore" came to our minds. That moment I understood one thing, Royalty is what comes automatically, we can't pretend it. Anyways, after conquering eastern wing, we were pretty exhausted and needed some break. There was small canteen, we had some snickers and we started off again
The western gallary is marvellous and just awesome. There are 5 consecutive gallaries, the first one was European paintings. The painting were damn good. Earlier, I always used to think, watching in the movies, how can people keep on staring at the paintings for so long, but now I tell you, some paintings capture your attention so deeply that your eyesight get magnetically fixed on the colors, on the shapes, on the imagination which painter wanted viewer to experience. The painting of psyche, I found extremely artistic. There is a common notion that European paintings take help of nudity to make art more profound, but in those paintings it was art which defined nudity, not vice-versa(Anyways, that's my personal opinion). Yup, and there was one more painting gallary in Indian section which was titled Modern Paintings. The abstract paintings there made no sense to me. I believe, I still dont understand art quite well, because some of the paintings I found quite annoyingly senseless to be put on show. Ok, lets get back to European gallaries. Next was the Porcelain gallary which had some fancy stuffs like mirrors and mazes created using porcelain arts. Later was the glass gallary and I tell you that was just awesome. The glass wares with different shades of colored glasses were looking so exotic that even drinking water in it may tantalize you. The Venice, Istanbul, Belgium glasses were breathtakingly amazing.
Finally I will tell you something like A must do and A must don't in museum. The veiled Rebecca is the best masterpiece in the whole building. Don't miss it. The sculptor G.B.Benzoni created it on the white marbel. The veil and wrinkles on it shows the miraculously divine talent of the artist. When you are wandering in the central block, you will find quite a fudge about some alarm and people will be gathering into the open hall with Alarm clock to see the magic. But there ain't any. We had been sitting there for 15 mins earlier to check what is all that about. In simple words, its extremely lame mechanical alarm rings. P.S.: This whole event could sound quite appealing to children, as we saw many of them gasp in utter bewilderment. When we had finished every gallary, we saw the watch and it was 4.30. The realization hit us like a bombshell, we had been in the museum for 6 straight hours. There must have been something really wrong with us. But we were fully content.
I would recommend everyone to once visit SalarJung once in your lifetime to know how rich was our culture. Mankind needs art because it reflects the cultural evolution which is the soul of Civilization.
