Telling that my visit to Victoria memorial was mind blowing would be a lie.
But the place has one of the most impressive collection of Indian landscapes created during the British Raj period. The artists are Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell. The views of Calcutta(a collection of 12 paintings) and other landscape of places in India are truly breath taking.
The only hitch - the lighting in Victoria memorial is so bad that you really can't enjoy the detailing in each of these 12-15 inch paintings. I'm not sure if there are no tube lights to protect the paintings from harsh lighting or its just plain poor infra-structure.
One more interesting detail which caught my eye is the small hand held portrait of Queen Victoria. The portrait doesn't depict the regality of a queen. Rather it has a blue-eyed, rosy cheeked, cute as a button - mouthed, child-woman. It really amused me to think, this was the same lady who made sure that the Sun never set on the British empire, ruling for about 60 years. (will discuss the queens of England in a different post :P)
Either she was really this pretty, or the artist did a damn good job at selling her face to anyone who cared to look.
Other massive, but less impressive stuff - the statues of King George V and Queen Mary, presented by Aga Khan. (have seen more beautiful statues of more interesting people)
Later, I came to know that the Victoria memorial looks truly beautiful at night- all lit up (unhappy that I missed this and went during the day..)
Now it's time to explore the St. Paul's cathedral church!
This is one of the oldest churches built in the East. It was completed in 1847 at a total cost of 5 lakhs. The church has some beautiful artwork about St. Paul's life and work.
The cathedral is huge and impressive in its height. I think most churches during this period were built in a Gothic style, very much like this one.
The Birla planetarium is just beside the Cathedral. There is one Birla planetarium in Hyderabad too. I know there is one in Jaipur. (Should google some time and check why the Birlas had an obsession about building planetariums. I think there are few more built by them in India.) I gave the planetarium a skip.
I went back to the Maidan station, caught a metro to Park street. The frequency of the trains is pretty cool. There is a metro every 5 minutes. :)
I roamed the streets of Park street before visiting the Indian museum. The museum is under renovation. Apart from that, this museum was one of the very bad, poorly maintained of all the museums I've visited. Even most of the artifacts and collection were extremely unimpressive.
I enjoy visiting museums a lot. I love going around each detail about every small collection. Somehow museums make me appreciate mankind - its power of creativity, imagination, excellence at work. Museums make me acknowledge the generations and civilizations that came before me, the way they lived life, men - who came, created, felt, conquered, and died leaving behind immortal pieces of work. Museums are tangible proofs of human emotion, expression and wealth of knowledge of bygone eras.
This was the first time that I dint want to take a complete, detailed tour of the museum.
This feeling shocked me more than the sorry state of kolkata museum itself :)
I decided that I had to go back to Salar Jung Museum once I was back in Hyderabad, just to decide if I lost my past love for the history or the Kolkata museum was genuinely bad.
After the disappointing museum experience, I caught the train back to Kavi Nazrul station and went back for some delicious food, and a good night's sleep.
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