Visapur And Ravi Varma

We leave Pune early and reach Malavli station (near Lonavla) by train around 8 am. Just over an hour's walk from here (past Bhaja caves) is where the trail to hill fort of Visapur branches off from the main pathway to Lohgad. The latter is a well-beaten and easy track but Visapur sees very few trekkers - part of the reason is that to reach the only entrance at the top, one has to do something approaching rock-climbing (albeit without special equipment) for nearly half an hour; and this climb is up a slender seasonal stream flowing down the hill-side. Mercifully, due to the rocks and boulders having got mysteriously arranged in a climber-friendly manner, the act is more of a strenous workout than a risky adventure.

The top of Visapur is an open laterite plateau with a thickly wooded knoll in the middle. There dont appear to be any shelter anywhere although part of the walls and bastions still stand. We see an annular disk of stone which, we are told, was used to mix the concrete for building the walls (the how of it is not clear to self); an image of Hanuman has been carved onto a stone wall - it is somewhat more than 'life-size' and painted a scarlet red that really jumps out of the black and dripping basalt around it. Much of the plateau is carpeted in seasonal greenery - with a generous sprinkling of tiny blue utricularia flowers (utricularia is a very short-lived insectivorous plant, wonder where its food supply comes from!).

Back in Malavli, we ask around for the litho-press that Ravi Varma, the famous 19th century painter from Kerala had set up in this village(*). We are directed to a walled compound not far from the railway station - we are also told that the place has shut down 'long ago' and that nobody goes there. The place does not really look deserted; there seem to be some caretaker(s) who still stay(s) in the premises (none is readily visible though) and at the gates there is a board "No Entry. Beware of Fierce Dogs". The compound - it seems several acres in area - is thickly wooded so one can't make out much of the buildings in there. We are tempted to try and find the watchman and to buy our way in. But, we are also running out of time (it is well past midday and we are famished and need to get back to Pune) - so, we decide more details will have to wait for a future trip (and post).

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* - Sometime in the 1890's, Ravi Varma and a European partner had set up a Lithographic press in Bombay to churn out affordable prints of his famous paintings; the venture closed down - the Firangi partner is often blamed for this failure. Then the artist moved the setup to Malavli ( the choice of the place seems very strange since it is remote and under-developed, even today), only to abandon it again sometime later - although not before "flooding the country with Calendar art", "making goddesses look very Maharashtrian" and "making the Sari fashionable" (although not the Marathi way of tying the Sari). I am told an art-house movie is being produced by noted director Shaji Karun on Ravi Varma's days in Bombay, the failure of his business and his relationship with a Marathi model - his muse in those troubled days.

Let me wind up with a quote from distant memories of a Hindi lesson we studied at school. It was an article by one Ramesh Sanzgiri (a very Marathi sounding name, that) on Ravi Varma: "When I was a little boy, there used to be a picture of Laxmi and another of Saraswati in our house, both by Ravi Varma. I used to think Laxmi resembled by aunt and Saraswati, my cousin sister. In those days Ravi Varma was very famous - he was as well-known then all over the country as, say, Lata Mangeshkar is today."