Madhya Pradesh

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Parvati Sharma grew up in Ziro, Paris, Pondicherry, Jakarta and New Delhi, where she studied English literature and Indian history. She has worked as an editor, travel writer and journalist. Her first book is a collection of short stories called The Dead Camel And Other Stories of Love, published by Zubaan in 2010. Since then she has been working on a novel. She has been travelling to madhya pradesh on travel assignments for a few years now and almost every time it’s given her something new, usually little known and often fascinating. Here she talks about rock art and guardians of the ancient practice.

For the love of rock art

“Kathotia is close, yes, but not advisable,” says Dr. Vyas. the gentle, white-haired archaeologist has helped me on many trips to Madhya Pradesh—where to go, whom to meet—and this time he’s the expert himself. We occupy his study, a tray of tea and mithai balanced precariously on a table between us, and all around are shelves and drawers and tabletops of books and papers and maps and shoeboxes of transparencies—all devoted to one grand passion. Rock art.

I have come to research a travel guide to Madhya Pradesh and its prehistoric paintings, in which central India is particularly rich.

“Go to Hathitola instead,” says Dr. Vyas. “You’ll see the best animal drawings in the state.”

“But Kathotia is not so far is it? I could go to both.”

“Kathotia isn’t advisable. the roads are bad…”

“How bad?” I have read of Kathotia and its Sarus crane etchings.“Quite bad. there’s also a tigress roaming that area,” he says with a small laugh, and I have to concede defeat.

Hathitola is a low hill an hour’s drive from Bhopal, on the outskirts of Raisen. In Raisen’s two-room museum of cement and medieval sculpture, I am to drop Mr Vyas’s name and ask for Rajeev chaubey. Mr chaubey is a chemist but his heart lies in the hundreds of rock shelters along and about the Betwa river. We ride to Hathkoti on his put-puttering motorbike, under the afternoon glare of the medieval Raisen fort—which, too, Mr chaubey takes a protective interest in. the museum we met at exists because Rajeev chaubey and his friends felt the town must have one, given the wealth of loose sculpture lying about it.

His causeless devotion reminds me of Dr. Pradyumn Bhatt, a schoolteacher in faraway Bhanpura—so far away it lacks any kind of fizzy cola. Shocked to discover I’m shocked to discover this, I sip at a shot of tea-stained sugar in a thimble-sized cup.

Still, Bhanpura does have chaturbhujnath Nala. this is a stream of cold clear water burbling along in that enchanting kind of way you don’t really expect to see in real life. there’s no sound except of its lapping; sometimes a bird chirps, a woodpecker knocks its beak against bark. We can see our dusty city faces reflected back at us, softened in the leaping, cheery flow. on both its banks are long kilometres of low shelters. Many are painted: with deer, tigers, monkeys; there’s even a rhino or two, and elephants, neither of which animal lives here anymore. But then, the earliest of these drawings may be 6,000 years old, and a lot has changed since.

Dr. Bhatt’s favourite cave is closer to town, on a hill called Dar ki chattan. there’s a wall here dented with over 500 ‘cupules’—semispherical hollows. Bit basic, yes, but consider this: these little cups may be two hundred thousand years old. Dr. Bhatt’s eyes twinkle as he ambles up the steep incline, while my colleague and I huff and puff behind him. He’s had the once-bare hill covered with thick bushes to discourage vandals. He writes to bureaucratic chains of command, asking for maintenance, research, a guard. Until then, Dr. Bhatt protects that precious wall as best he can.

Back at Hathitola, Rajeev chaubey leads me up another hillock, this one crowned by two shelters, one on top of the other. He points at a herd of barahsingha on one ceiling, bison running down a wall, chains of long-necked deer. He says I could spend weeks here, exploring Raisen’s rocky land. Dr Vyas from Bhopal is, of course, a frequent visitor. the last time he came to Hathitola, he was attacked by bees and violently sick. I am shocked and concerned, but I confess I’m also a bit horrified. In all the talk of tigresses in Kathotia, where was the mention of furry, venomous insects on the prowl?

I call Dr. Vyas. “You didn’t tell me you were so badly hurt!” He laughs it off. He was ill for two months, he is still recovering, but it’s nothing, he’s fine. these things happen. When you give yourself to what you love, I suppose they do.