The Dome of the Rock, a triumph of architecture
By B.N. Goswami
JERUSALEM would easily count among the most layered, but also the most fiercely contested, cities in the world, what with the roots of early Judaism and Christianity and Islam growing in an inextricable tangle under its soil. And in that hoary, hallowed city the most layered, but also the most fiercely contested, monument is what they call the ‘Dome of the Rock’.

Adept in classical, folk dances
By Jyoti Mahajan
SHE captivated the musical fraternity of Shimla recently by her captivating dance performances during the golden jubilee celebrations of India’s independence organised by the HP Art Language and Culture Department and the HP Tourism Department, at Gaiety Theatre.

Stars are mirasis for them
By U. K. Bhanot
WHY do Bollywood actors, particularly those hailing from Punjab and Haryana, generally not look back to their areas even after winding up their careers?

Finding the ideal catharsis
By Prem Singh
ARADHANA TANDON has had no formal training in art. This mother of two sons and wife of an industrialist, discovered the artist in herself about a decade ago. She began with a few sketches and paintings with an accent on figurative representation touching both the sad and happy side of life.

Painting, his life-long passion
By H. S. Bhanwer
G.S. SOHAN SINGH, the 86-year-old artist, belongs to the generation of S.G. Thakur Singh and Sobha Singh. He inherited art from his father, Bhai Gian Singh Naqaash, who devoted his whole life to doing fresco paintings on the walls of the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple.

Adept in classical, folk dances
By Jyoti Mahajan

SHE captivated the musical fraternity of Shimla recently by her captivating dance performances during the golden jubilee celebrations of India’s independence organised by the HP Art Language and Culture Department and the HP Tourism Department, at Gaiety Theatre.

Endowed with a charming personality and a radiant smile, she is the fair, slim and petite dancer, Vimla Thakur, who has carved a niche for herself in classical as well as folk dances of India. A self-made person, young Vimla is proficient in Kathak, Odissi and Kuchipudi and the folk dances from all over India and has been dedicated to dance for the past decade.

Born as the eldest of three children in a family without any musical background, Vimla has undergone a lot of struggle and climbed the ladder of success through sheer will power and determination.

Originally hailing from Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh, Vimla’s tryst with dance began during her early childhood days when she started participating in school and college dance competitions just for fun. However, she shot into the limelight in the mid-’80s when she got the Best Dancer Award in college and an opportunity to participate in the Festival of India.

So strong was her passion for learning dance that young Vimla shifted to Delhi on a scholarship by the ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations) and learnt the nuances of various classical dances. Vimla trained in Kuchipudi from renowned danseuse Swapansundari, Bharatnatyam from Leela Samson and Kathak under the tutelage of Nandani Singh.

Simultaneously, she performed all over India and abroad in America, Germany, West Indies, Dubai, Muscat, Korea and Japan where her performance was highly appreciated. She also got offers for films and TV serials and has done a dance sequence in the serials “Meghdoot” and “Saubhagya”.

Presently Vimla is heading the Nritya Madhuri dance troupe (comprising 30 dancers) in Delhi which she formed two years ago. Flashing her kajol-filled eyes, Vimla says, “Our dance troupe signifies national integration and I have trained my students in Bengali, Marathi, Harayanvi, Rajasthani and tribal dances of Madhya Pradesh and classical dances.”

Vimla is also very particular about her ‘riyaaz’ and manages to take out four hours for riyaaz despite her hectic schedule. She is thrilled by the adulation showered on her by her fans and attributes her success to the blessings of the Almighty.

She says she gets a tremendous response abroad where the audience quietly watches the performance and appreciates it. But she likes performing in her hometown, Chamba. “I recently performed in Chamba’s Minjar Fair where my performance was highly appreciated”, she recalls.

A few of Vimla’s disciples who have earned a name for themselves are Uma Shankar Khilnani, Padam Gurung and Sunita Pandey. About her marriage plans she says, “I am married to my dance and shall continue with it till I die.”

Stars are mirasis for them
By U. K. Bhanot

WHY do Bollywood actors, particularly those hailing from Punjab and Haryana, generally not look back to their areas even after winding up their careers? And, this despite the fact that during their stay in the film industry in Mumbai or elsewhere they keep harping on the subject of their homeland and continue to act in films connected with their land of birth.

This and a few other questions were agitating the minds of nearly a dozen journalists when they descended on the office of veteran character actor Om Puri in the Seven Bungalows area in Juhu. The area is called as such because there were only seven bungalows initially.

Quite reluctant to answer the question about the post-retirement period, Om Puri, known as one of the few international actors in the country after having acted in more than half a dozen US and UK films, says no one till the last thinks of having finally retired because there always are roles for active people in all age-groups in the industry.

However, the highly interfering nature of the people of Punjab, particularly the politicians and bureaucrats, acts as a strong deterrent for the actors to go back to their home towns in the evening of their lives.

Certain influential people in Punjab still view actors as “mirasis” or objects of entertainment rather than as normal human beings. He even quotes, the example of a police head who wanted India’s top shahnai player to perform on the occasion of his daughter’s marriage for the entertainment of the baratis!

However, if one must think of a place for passing some peaceful years in the latter part of one’s life, it will be in the South, like at Ooty or Kodiakanal, where people around you do not interfere in your way of living.

In fact, Om Puri appreciates the approach adopted by the hitherto less seen Mithun Chakraborty who has made significant investments in the hotel industry in Ooty. His hotels have become popular with artistes from the film industry. He himself prefers to act in a few select, films which have Ooty or the nearby Chennai area as the location for shooting. This neither disturbs his life nor business.

Although Om Puri had earned instant fame with his small screen role in “Kakaji Kahin”, he no longer has a longing for TV serials as, he is still making good on the big screen. “However, in spite of my preferences, I will not reject a good offer,” he adds.

By B.N. Goswami
The Dome of the Rock, a
triumph of architecture

JERUSALEM would easily count among the most layered, but also the most fiercely contested, cities in the world, what with the roots of early Judaism and Christianity and Islam growing in an inextricable tangle under its soil. And in that hoary, hallowed city the most layered, but also the most fiercely contested, monument is what they call the ‘Dome of the Rock’.

I have not seen the Dome, never having travelled to Israel or Palestine. But the history of the monument, and its centuries-old descriptions, fascinate me. In the photographs of the city, one recognises it at once from the incredible glitter of its gold, and in old etchings where the city is seen nestling amidst undulating hills, one can spot it even from afar in the dense jumble of lanes and buildings. The Dome stands out in the city, much as it does in countless minds, mingling there with deep, felt passion.

Built late in the seventh century, it is often called the first work of Islamic architecture, and if it is, “it must be the finest first effort in the history of architecture’’, as a historian puts it. Whoever the architect of it was, he took inspiration from Byzantine and Syrian models, buildings that he must have known well. For so many elements from them he incorporated into his work: beautifully coloured marble columns and piers sheathed in plaques of veined marble; walls covered with mosaics made of thousands of small cubes, or tessarae, of coloured and gilded glass and stone set closely together to form patterns and images that reflect the light; high wooden domes whose lead roof is plated with gold.

As he constructed it, it was turned into an eight-sided building with an enormously tall central space, 20 metres in diameter, encircled by a lower area that was so broad it had to be divided by an arcade into two octagons. Above it all, the resplendent gilded dome sits on a vertical cylindrical wall supported by four masonry piers and 12 stone columns.

One can enter the building through doors on the north, south, east or west although only to see initially what appears to the eyes as a dimly lit interior. It is when the eye gets used to the light that one begins to notice what is the true glory of the building: its interior decoration which consists of the most lavish programme of mosaics to survive from ancient or medieval times.

There are here ornate plants of a naturalistic type, derived from the classical tradition, or conventionalised according to Iranian taste; royal symbols such as crowns and chalices and jewels; but, above all, a band of exquisite calligraphy in Arabic, written in gold on a blue ground, containing passages from the Quran, and running into some 250 meters in length at the top of the arcade.

Perhaps all this is beginning to sound a little too technical, too complicated. But consider the message that this structure was designed to send out. The uneven, layered, Rock inside over which the grand structure was raised had so many early, deeply emotional associations: it was believed to be the site of Adam’s burial; was where the Temple of Solomon had once stood; marked the spot where the prophet Abraham, whom the Muslims too regarded as an ancestor, was asked to sacrifice his son.

This is where ‘the dead centre of the universe’ then known was. Now to build an ‘Islamic’ monument over it was tantamount to making a proclamation that Judaism had been superseded by Islam. More: in the inscription inside, issue was repeatedly, insistently, taken up with Christian doctrine. The Umayyad Caliph, Abd al-Malik, who had this great Dome of the Rock — referred to as Qubbat al-Sakhra in Arabic records — built was thus creating a symbol. Within 60 years of the death of the great prophet, Muhammad, he seemed to say, the power of Islam, his faith, was unstoppable.

Further associations were added to the place in time. This, it was asserted, was the spot from which the Prophet ascended to the heavens in his nightly journey, astride the mythical Buraq. One view that gained ground for some time was that Abd al-Malik had intended the Dome to replace the Kaaba in Mecca as the central shrine to which all Muslims should go on pilgrimage, especially in view of the fact that the territory where Mecca stood had been seized by a rival claimant to the Caliphate and was thus ‘in enemy hands’. But the inscriptions on the building say nothing about it. This controversy is thus more or less laid to rest. Others, however, persist. And contentions abound. Meanwhile, the Dome of the Rock stands to this day, a triumph of architecture, a vehicle of ideas.

Not in a day

The Dome of the Rock was not built in a day, nor was the idea of it suddenly born. The city of Jerusalem, one knows, had been held in great reverence both by Jews and Christians from the very beginning: after all here stood the Holy of Holies of the Jewish temple, and it its on this ground that Jesus had once walked. But the Muslims had their own reasons to regard it as sacred, for it was the first qibla toward which one turned to pray until the Prophet received his revelation in 624 AD that Muslims should instead direct their prayers towards the Kaaba in Mecca.

When Muslim armies conquered Jerusalem in 638, therefore, and found the Jewish Temple Mount in ruins, the first thing they did was to build a crude but large place of congregation, a mosque in other words, over it. The grandiose idea of the Dome came afterwards.

Few know that inside the enormous Rock over which Dome is built, there is a room-sized cave. A place to contemplate in? Away from all the warring, and all the trappings of worldly glory? One wonders.

Finding the ideal catharsis
By Prem Singh

ARADHANA TANDON has had no formal training in art. This mother of two sons and wife of an industrialist, discovered the artist in herself about a decade ago. She began with a few sketches and paintings with an accent on figurative representation touching both the sad and happy side of life.

Today Aradhana is having her own studio at her house in Panchkula. Her studio has a good number of canvases — some complete and some awaiting the final touches of the artist.

In this small world of vibrant colours, stark expressions and brooding figures immediately engage you in an eloquent visual dialogue. Her painting is suffused with raw energy and creative intensity achieved through her consistent and continuous artistic quest over the years.

A selection of 20 oils from this oeuvre were on display at the galleries of All-India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, recently.

About her new paintings Aradhana says, “My paintings are my mind’s diary. Colours, themes and their treatment reflect the state of mind at any given time. They are therapeutic. By expressing my anger, happiness, sorrow, disappointment, elation etc, they serve as the ideal catharsis.’’

Further she, in her self-effacing mood, says, “I am no great artist, nor would I claim to say that I am a serious student of art who follows or understands all the different schools, thoughts and styles of the great masters. I am simply an observer, who thrives on human relationships, bonds and emotions. These I try to capture on the canvas with the hope that they stir a chord within the onlooker’s heart too.’’

Aradhana spent her childhood at Hardoi, a small town of Uttar Pradesh, and did her masters in psychology from Lucknow University before moving to Chandigarh after her marriage. Her interaction with the art college faculty and local artists did mature her artistic sensibilities.

Through the maiden solo exposition of her 20 oils she has solicited creative, artistic and individual fulfilment via people’s reaction to her work.

Painting, his life-long passion
By H. S. Bhanwer

G.S. SOHAN SINGH, the 86-year-old artist, belongs to the generation of S.G. Thakur Singh and Sobha Singh. He inherited art from his father, Bhai Gian Singh Naqaash, who devoted his whole life to doing fresco paintings on the walls of the sanctum sanctorum of the Golden Temple.

After passing his middle standard examination from Government High School, Town Hall, Amritsar, Sohan Singh joined his father in doing fresco paintings in the Golden Temple. Keeping in view his innate leaning towards drawing, his father sent him as apprentice to Hari Singh, a well-known artist, who had at that time been working in the famous Elphinston Theatrical Company, also known as Corinthean, Madan Theatrical Company.

The young artist thus had the opportunity of visiting various cities like Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Bombay and Calcutta, seeing several art galleries and museums and meeting devoted artists like S.G. Thakur Singh. He learnt from close quarters the different techniques in art endeavour.

Later, with the winding up of the company around 1932, the master and the pupil both came back to Amritsar.

Bhai Gian Singh had by that time retired from service in the Golden Temple. Both father and son started painting religious themes, preparing charts for students as well as framing pictures. The wheel of life had started moving slowly, but surely, on the road of art.

The first multi-coloured design that was got printed and marketed by Sohan Singh was that of the undaunted hero Baba Banda Singh Bahadur. Encouraged by its popularity, he painted many such designs on religious themes. Since then he has never looked back.

The artist has, since 1932, tackled multifarious subjects in the art field such as calendar designs, oil and water colour paintings, commercial labels, designs for book jackets and subject illustrations and newspaper advertisement designs.

He has also dealt with the fine themes in the old Kangra, Pahari, and Mughal styles, besides the Sikh School of Arts founded by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. He has also successfully carried out assignments in landscape, Indian monuments, portraits, and imaginative subjects. He concentrated on painting the Sikh history.

He has produced several books on art and the fresco painting, of his father.

Still active at 86, he devotes hours to paintings, his life-long passion.