a little bit of tourism

Several weeks ago I finally made it to one of the main tourist attractions in my city, the Bara Imambara.



The Wikipedia page will tell you that "bara" means "big", and it will also tell you:

The Bara Imambara was built in 1783, a year of a devastating famine, and one of Asaf-ud-Daula's objectives in embarking on this grandiose project was to provide employment for people in the region. According to reports, the famine continued for over a decade and the construction of the building continued for this time. It is said that ordinary people used to work in the day building up the edifice, while noblemen and other elite were called at night to break down all the structure raised, as they were incapable of doing anything else, according to a chronicle of the period. This see-saw efforts continued till the famine period was over. It was a project that preceded a Keynesian like intervention for employment generation.

Interesting.

The friends that brought me around didn't mention the economics behind its construction, but they did explain that the labyrinth on top was built to be handy in an escape from the British (Wikipedia disagrees). Probably the rumored tunnel would have been more likely escape route, though, since the labyrinth is built on top of the building and just opens onto the large rooftops and a small balcony ringing the main chamber.


The main hall. The small thing in the middle that looks like a four-poster bed is supposed to be the grave.


This is one corridor in the labyrinth. It didn't seem all that maze-like, and it wasn't a labyrinth in the sense that my dad would use, but it was still fun to wander the corridors.


This view from the top of the main building, actually makes the rooftops look more zany than they actually are. Mostly they are flat, though the decoration is indeed beautiful.

Aside from the elaborate gates ("gates" doesn't really do them justice...) there are three main buildings in the complex. The Mosque, the Bara Imambara itself, and the Bouli. Wikipedia describes a bouli as a "step well with running water", but this vastly undersells, it. It was apparently used as women's baths and is an large, half-underground hexagonal building built around a pool in the center at the bottom, which opens to the sky. In this picture if you look carefully you can see the sky and inner walls of the building reflected in the (small amount of) water in the pool. The building itself seems simple at first glance but actually accommodates half-stories and a number of surprising stairways. It's not hard to imagine having a difficult time finding your way out (especially if it were still filled with women bathing! yuk yuk.)




The interior walls. If you were looking straight into a mirror you would see exactly the same thing, except with me in the bottom window taking a picture.

A few more pictures:






The friends that took me around. Thanks, guys!


Afterward we stopped at the drive-in for Indian sodas. Also called, "water with salt and pepper and sugar and that flavor they put on everything".

You can see the rest of the album here.

Oh and one final anecdote: Apparently when the British did finally arrive/invade, everyone fled the complex except for the Raja. The soldiers asked him why he had not left like everyone else. The Raja answered that the man who puts on his shoes for him had fled as well.