Salarjang Museum Drudgery

Tickets were to be bought, I bought them and entered. The entry was ‘genderly’ divided. If you’re wondering why, it was because all of us were going to be frisked inside. Remember: AP… Hyderabad… Naxalite movements….yes.

Inside - massive hall and bare pillars. I slowly started to understand the topography. It was a kind of circular atrium with rooms on the circumference, some 4 odd floors. We started with the ground floor on the left side. The artefacts were arranged genre wise in different rooms with a one word introduction at each door.

First few rooms were captivating. After some distance inside, Salarjung’s family was introduced through oil paintings. I then realised that he was a person who collected these things out of sheer hobby. Amazing! Huge array of stuff, miniature toys, birds, carpets, furniture, paintings, china, ceramic, Italian marble statures, silverware, even the Nizams Jewels, name it, its there. The first floor was good. I had to go on to the next floor. How to get there? No floor maps at all!

This is when I started negating the system and maintenance.

Each of those antiques was kept callously. Visualise the enclosures – iron boxes made with one side or all sides of glass, corners supported with either iron or wood, all painted in a light yellow or light yellowish green paint with rusty hinges. They oddly blended with the uninteresting walls, painted with the typical ‘govt. hospital’ white colour and the red oxide flooring.

The most unfortunate was a mesmerising European lady of the 17-century carved in Italian marble, with a robe and a veil flowing on her face revealing her chiselled features. She was white as milk, and smooth as cheese. She was the most beautiful lady I had seen till date. She was standing inside a dull dilapidated structure; the glass that revealed her had traces of new paint wiped off of it. She looked more depressed than she could ever be!

Going around each room one after the other, somewhere in my head, I felt like I was back in my history class, 9th grade, drowsy. From then on I just kept finding fault and then started to find jocular angles to everything that I found, like a juvenile!

I recalled the same story happened with me when I visited the dolls museum in Delhi.