October, and the Museum that Was

 "This morning seems darker than the darkest of nights.
Is that the Sun, or the last embers of the fire of my dreams?
Today, do the birds chirp in delight, or moan in agony?"

As I woke up to this morning in October, the gloominess of the day reminded me of an old Bengali song I used to listen as a child. Is it really so dark outside? I had to ascertain this by pulling down the curtains. Yes, it's dark indeed! There is a strange reddish glow in the sky, casting a reddish shadow over the earth. It is almost as if there is a premonition of an impending crisis. Something unfortunate, and yet inevitable.

Suddenly, I knew what it was all about. This darkness, this gloomy air around, this premonition--these are all pointing towards the emptiness within me. They are nudging me to reflect upon this numbness of my heart.
The National Museum is going to be closed down in a month's time! The museum building is going to be demolished and another new museum is to be set up in the Central Secretariat. The entire process should take at least 2 years, if not more.

For people who would know me personally (or even professionally) would know that a good part of my life and work revolves around museums.

Museums have always fascinated me, not  because I had to document objects and study them for my research, but because of the sheer joy of witnessing some of these objects in a museum gallery. Imagine looking at the celebrated "Harappan Priest King", or the much used and abused "Dancing Girl from Mohenjo-Daro". You might have seen pictures of them in your school textbooks. What the musem does is to bring you face to face with the object, and initiate a dialogue. This might break your bubble and make your imagined object fall flat at the face of reality! And yet, you feel privileged to be able to get a closer and better sense of this artefact. Some may even be desirous of touching the object (unless of course the security personnel have spotted them!)

Everytime I have visited the National Museum, I would see groups of young school children running from one display section to another, while their teachers try to create order among chaos. I have seen the gallery staff asking the gathering crowd in front of display cases to move ahead and not spend much time looking at one single display section (quite strangely and ironically, though!) Sometime earlier, another regular sight would be the group of Buddhist pilgrim visitors prostrating in front of the Buddha sculpture, all enrobed in orange and bowed down in unison.

To me, these are the different ways in which different individuals engage with the museum. The same artefact could mean so many different things to different people. While an archaeologist is interested in issues of provenance, a photographer is looking for the right kind of light and angle. On the other hand, a group of teens may be interested to look at the big and the beautiful!

That is essentially the magic of a museum. It has something to offer to each of us. To me, the National Museum has appeared in many different forms. Upon my very first visit, I met the Speaking Archaeologically Family here. On yet another occasion, I discovered the huge convex mirror placed atop the corner ceiling, where me and my friend would always click a photograph to mark it as our own. I remember having spent half a day in the museum library, sifting through multiple references. And yet again, I have also met innumerable closed galleries, removed artefacts and confusing objects in the same place that have tested the limits of my patience with the museum!

There was a joy in walking around the museum galleries, up and down the stairs, from one section to another, without an iota of tiredness. There was a joy in running around the locate the correct objects for the treasure hunt competitions here. There was a joy in collecting museum giveaways and not knowing what to do with it! There was a joy in cursing the museum canteen for how overpriced and limited it was.
And yet, these would all be now confined to the past, closeted in my heart. Every other re-enactment of it could mean the penultimate one.

Did you think I got too personal about a museum? Why and how does it matter even if the museum is demolished? What good or bad could come along with the shutting down of the museum's doors? 

Well, think about this: if the museum has really been the place where you got to see an object for the very first time in your life, where you had spent good time during school excursions or weekend visits with your friends, where you had just come to seek solace and soothe your eyes, or maybe just out of sheer curiosity to know more...

Coming back to where we started from. An October morning. There's a mild chill in the air, and some sudden whisps of cold wind blowing around. Amidst all the things that I have seen fast changing in Delhi, this has surprisingly remained the usual way in which October comes in Delhi. It's cold and unwavering. It start getting suffocating towards the end. The weather is deceptive and seduces you into falling ill. And like the fallen leaves of Autumn, it takes away certain things from life. Just like the National Museum, the Museum that Was. I do hope the proposed new museum does justice to the costs of this enterprise. And yet, I cannot rest in peace thinking about all the valuable information and potential knowledge that will get lost with the pulling down of the present building:

"Nights are supposed to be dark and gloomy,
It's possible to bear them by staring at the night sky,
Waiting for the Dawn.
And yet, why does the Dawn look gloomy and dark today?
Wasn't it supposed to illumine us!"