An ode to heritage: How Vijayanath Shenoy's vision led to the building of the Hasta Shilpa village

Vijayanath Shenoy was a man who didn’t believe in museums. Artefacts behind glass left him cold. Labels bored him. His disdain extended to audio tours, smartphone apps, and other gadgets often used to enhance the viewer’s experience. Yet Shenoy was also a relentless collector, consumed with preserving the past. His salvaged treasures included faded brass vessels and a vintage soda pop machine. Born in Udupi in 1934 to a modest family of utensil traders and ayurvedic suppliers, he nursed a primordial attachment to his South Canara heritage. Any signs of modern neglect made him bristle. Even a waiter ignorant of local culinary specialties could prompt an outburst. Often irascible, and sometimes secretive, Shenoy could also be very generous. With the right companion, he could talk for hours about his acquisitions or suggest an expedition to the countryside. His prime interest was vernacular architecture, in all of its particular beauty – everything from jackfruit wood pillars to intricate ceilings fitted with wooden pegs and slatted windows that shielded the inner workings of family life. [caption id=“attachment_4682881” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village. All photos courtesy the writer[/caption]

As lovely old houses were torn down in the 1980s and ’90s, replaced by concrete dwellings that required less money to maintain, Shenoy became a restless witness. He roamed around villages, viewing sites in partial collapse. He vented and cajoled. Intent on gleaning the histories of these homes, he also pressed for their conservation. In many places he was welcomed; elsewhere he was hustled off the property. Shenoy could never quite focus on his day job as a public relations manager at the local Syndicate Bank. “He had this habit of being late. I used to do all his work. Occasionally, he would sign a file,” recalls Milind Nayak, who worked with Shenoy as an assistant manager from 1984 to 1987. Nayak, who later became an artist in Bengaluru, spent more time in discussions with his boss on Western philosophy and local lore, and joined him on road trips.  Shenoy was free to commandeer the bank’s vehicles to view old houses and scavenge for carved wooden beams and intricate grillwork. At one point Shenoy imagined that cinema could be used to enhance public appreciation for architecture. So he led director Girish Karnad and a film crew to shoot Utsav in one sprawling home in Halsanad village. The 1984 film was a hit, and that particular house lingered as a popular location for Kannada movies. But that adventure proved just a token respite from the concrete conquest of South Canara. The dismemberment disturbed his soul. Late at night, Shenoy penned long letters to luminaries in India’s cultural establishment. “What a shame it is for a civilisation, which we claim to be 5,000 years old, when we cannot save our built heritage of even 100 years old!” he fumed in a 1993 letter to a prominent poet in (then) Bombay. Shenoy’s solution was Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village, an enclave of six-and-a-half acres carved out of the university town of Manipal. Galvanising teams of masons and carpenters, Shenoy arranged for 16 houses and nine shrines to be transplanted to the site after getting the land on lease from the local government. The structures ranged from 160 to 700 years old, some of them once serving as homes to noblemen, traders, seafarers and priests. Nine new buildings were also wedged into the site, earmarked for collections of musical instruments, handicrafts, textiles, lithographs, and paintings. But from Shenoy’s perspective, the main focus would always be vernacular architecture and bygone ways of living.

Today, each house contains artefacts arranged according to Shenoy’s exacting tastes. Genuine antiques share space with recently commissioned adornments, such as enlarged motifs from ganjifa playing cards. Muslim, Hindu and Christian dwellings stand in close proximity. Aside from a few discreet boards that identify the houses in delicate font, there’s not a label in sight. As for ambience, Shenoy selected particular music and fragrances to waft through different dwellings. He developed his own notions about “masculine” and “feminine” architecture, and how best to enhance the energies of each space. For example, he saw nothing unusual about combining a rose scent and a recording of Raag Durga by Malini Rajurkar to animate the 14th century quarters of a military commander. While scholars might argue over some of his choices, Shenoy was not a man to kowtow to the curatorial establishment. “He was authentic to his imagination of what these houses would be like. That was the integrity of his pursuit,” says Dhanwanti Nayak, president of the Hasta Shilpa Trust, and co-editor of Inscribed Heritage: Select Correspondence of Vijayanath Shenoy (2015). The sensory impact is unforgettable — a series of “wow” moments that can’t quite be replicated in photographs. It’s an exercise in abundance, yet full of secrets. “It’s very important that in one place, you can get all of that architectural vocabulary,” says Jogi Panghaal, a designer and crafts expert who teaches at five design schools across India. Open to the public in a series of newly devised tours, the venue “is quite mad and very special, and cocks a snook at convention, much like its unconventional creator,” observes Deepika Sorabjee, head of Arts and Culture at Tata Trusts, which contributed funds for the heritage village over the last three years. Shenoy died in March 2017, his spirit reminiscent of Albert Barnes, the legendary 20th  century American collector from Pennsylvania with very precise (some might say stubborn) views of how to display a trove of Impressionist paintings juxtaposed with door hinges, yarn spinners, and other household objects. In Shenoy’s case, the fact that his own finances were pinched makes his legacy additionally striking and mysterious. His shallow pockets were a far cry from those of the affluent Barnes, and even further from the grand Rockefellers, who transported stones from several medieval abbeys in Europe to erect The Cloisters museum in New York. [caption id=“attachment_4682941” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Architectural details/artefacts at Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village[/caption]

Rebuffed by many potential donors in India, the man from Udupi did manage to draw support all the way from Scandinavia, including 6,150,000 krone (roughly 645,000 EUR) from Norway and close to 170,000 EUR from Finland. The story goes that a Norwegian diplomat posted in New Delhi happened to read an article in The Economic Times about Shenoy’s rescue mission involving a 16th century palace. Intrigued, the diplomat made a field trip and stirred interest back in Oslo. At the end of his life, Shenoy grudgingly agreed with donors and local officials that the time had come for public viewing. After working on the project for 19 years and coralling countless hours of volunteer labour from others, he found himself under pressure. Actually, Shenoy preferred to postpone a formal debut. He wanted to make sure that every corner of the heritage village was ready and secure. The loquacious host enjoyed showing items from his collection to close friends, but the prospect of a casual tourist or sticky-handed toddler made him cringe. “He was like ‘The Father of the Bride.’ He never wanted to let that place go,” says Bengaluru-based photographer Mahesh Bhat, who documented much of Shenoy’s work. This is not a museum where visitors roam at will, peering at explanatory texts on the wall and pausing according to their interest. Neither does it come across as a theme park, studded with mannequins or live actors demonstrating how people lived and worked during a certain historical period. Unlike DakshinaChitra, a 10-acre open-air museum on the outskirts of Chennai that displays 18 transplanted houses from four south Indian states, there are no flickering videos or huddled craftspersons. By design, the interiors of Hasta Shilpa leave much to the imagination. The trustees in charge of the heritage village have devised three compact 90-minute tours of limited areas of the complex, called the “Southern Stroll,” the “Eastern Jaunt,” and “Heritage by Night,” led by guides who rely on  rapid-fire storytelling.  The narrative mixes architectural detail with cultural anecdotes and a dash of whimsy. [caption id=“attachment_4682971” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Night views[/caption]

All three tours start with an 1856 structure called Miyar House, once owned by Brahmins living within a large tract of land. The morning guide, Shanti D’Souza, draws attention to the mud plaster mixed with lime and molasses, and the smooth pillars setting off the broad portico.  “The landlord would sit here and greet people with buttermilk and jaggery. If I don’t know the landlord, I have to hide behind the pillar and ask for a favour,” D’Souza explains. Motioning toward the traditional red oxide floor, she adds that “Even now, I feel, this red oxide has a lot of healing power. Your back pain vanishes.” Miyar House was the also subject of a 2011 documentary film by Ramchandra PN, a Mumbai-based filmmaker who recorded the dismantling of his family’s ancestral home. High maintenance costs had become a burden to his relatives, who had all moved away from this remote location for education and work. The transplant evoked mixed feelings in the filmmaker. During the shoot in 2001, Ramchandra says that he felt “a sense of nostalgia and sadness, but also a sense of inevitability.” While he adds that it would have been “a tragedy” if the house was merely torn down, he didn’t sense a deep connection after it was conveyed to Hasta Shilpa. “There was this complete sense of detachment, that it was a dead piece of a museum. It was firmly in the past.” Nonetheless, Shenoy’s memory evokes fondness in Ramchandra. And the footage conveys the tremendous effort demanded by the relocation process. “I liked his passion and the kind of madness that he had,” says the filmmaker. Never mind that Shenoy shooed him away the first time he dropped by to check out Miyar House in its new location, giving him just five minutes to look around. “That’s okay, it was one of his idiosyncrasies,” says Ramchandra. Visitors on the Eastern Jaunt tour are also led to the Kunjur Chowki Mane, built in 1816 by a homesick priest who returned to Karnataka from Kerala. “This house is breathing fresh air all the time,” says the guide, underscoring the eco-friendly nature of wooden homes erected near the scorching coast. Some of D’Souza’s explanations do seem a little too breezy.  She points out the “menstrual room,” where female members of the household would typically be confined for several days each month, forbidden to join the rest of the family for meals or other communal activities due to the traditional belief that they were unclean. “It’s a beautiful room, very airy,” she remarks, as though the confinement was hunky-dory for everyone. The “Heritage by Night” tour conveys a different feeling. Set off from the darkness, pillars and arches gleam in soft white light. A dripping marble fountain poised before the 19th century Nawab Mahal recalls the sounds of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Built by the Barid Shahi dynasty of the Deccan, this palace features a long hall strewn with decaying musical instruments. “When the ghazal singing is in progress, the Nautch girls will come in,” narrates the evening guide, Thomas MJ.  A dusty book of accounts, propped on a low table, testifies to the expense of such pleasures. Nearby, a 160 year-old Portuguese-style Christian house from Mangalore stands in the reflected beauty of its Basel Mission tiles. Its pristine exteriors give way to a cosy kitchen with a jumble of vintage items, including a kerosene-powered refrigerator. Amidst the Jesus statues, the music here is an incongruous mix of Bee Gees hits and an ersatz Broadway rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”.

The guides are vivacious, and the 90 minutes pass in a brisk clip.  The original tour launched in 2016 unfurled over two-and-a-half hours, triggering some complaints of exhaustion, recounts trustee T Harish Pai, a restoration engineer who first began travelling and working with Shenoy in the 1980s.  But now that the tours have been rejigged, some visitors still yearn for a more richly detailed experience. “If they took one day in a week, and scheduled a four- hour or five- hour tour, with just a few three-minute breaks, that would draw a bigger crowd,” says Elgar Vaz, a visiting marine engineer who works for Disney Cruise Line. The notion of time-bound, limited tours seems new in India. In this case, it’s a calculated move to encourage repeat visits and garner more financial support. Fighting termites is costly. Charging Rs 300 per daytime tour and Rs 500 for a nighttime tour appears to be a bold gambit, considering that many Indian monuments and museums try to lure culture-wary citizens with a Rs 10 ticket. With an edge of desperation, the Hasta Shilpa guides exhort visitors to make extra donations to sustain the venue. Meanwhile, primary school groups are funneled to a separate “Children’s Museum,” where some objects are tucked safely behind glass. (Individual children accompanied by adults on family visits are permitted to enter the heritage village.) This venue, two kilometers away, once served as Shenoy’s ornate dream home. He had incorporated diverse elements of vernacular architecture into it, and regularly hosted open house days. But he ultimately relocated his family after local media coverage prompted a nightmarish stream of visitors. Some curios vanished and the tourist presence proved intrusive. “We were little kids back then,” recalls Shenoy’s son, Shrinivas. “My sister and I would just scramble from one room to another. Some people would even follow us into the bathroom!” Now the trustees are scrambling to figure out how to bring more visitors to Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village. For the moment, the venue remains largely under the radar; even in Manipal and Mangalore, many students and traders are unaware of its existence. Art pilgrims from Bangalore and New Delhi have trickled in. But it does seem possible to tap into the growing wanderlust of India’s middle class. And given the accessibility of Mangalore’s international airport, Hasta Shilpa also has a reasonable chance of luring foreign tourists, as well as Indians returning from the Gulf for family visits. Moreover, it holds promise as a site for architectural scholarship. “The potential that Shenoy has built up is mind-boggling. The challenge is — what’s next?” says Sathya Prakash Varanashi, a Bengaluru-based architect and conservationist. [caption id=“attachment_4683021” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  At Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village[/caption] There are plans to establish an education and outreach programme. Security cameras are now gradually being installed.  Many rooms devoted to special collections are still locked up, with the exception of a superb gallery devoted to Bastar tribal sculptures from Madhya Pradesh. The art that remains off-limits includes a collection of gold-encrusted Tanjore paintings and lithographs by Raja Ravi Varma, together with his old printing materials. Two tours were added in late April 2018, and will resume after the rainy season.  From June to September, the venue will remain open for a one-hour, Rs 200-rupee Monsoon Walk — aimed at visitors willing to slosh through puddles and view the architecture only from the outside.  Shenoy would have recoiled at the prospect of muddy footprints marring the interiors. In India, vernacular architecture has gotten short shrift in the classroom, despite global appreciation for its ecological sensitivity and cultural relevance. “A lot of heritage has been lost because people had no respect for it. Formal architectural education failed to address that,” says Pai, the restoration engineer. “When you don’t know what you have, or know that it was designed in a particular way, how will you respect what you have?” To counter this trend, some design schools have started to dispatch students to spend time at Hasta Shilpa. For example, 10 post-graduate students from the Bengaluru-based Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology went there in November/December 2017.  They brainstormed on ways to add a more human dimension to the venue. One idea was a series of oral histories, featuring relatives of those who originally built and owned the houses, or those who crafted the artefacts.  When a structure is relocated from its original environment, such as the Miyar House, it needs extra help to transcend its new status as an object. “Because things are becoming dead in the name of heritage, how do you enliven the space?” asks Srishti faculty member Ishita Shah, who serves as the UNESCO Chair coordinator. Her students also came up with the notion of linking Hasta Shilpa to popular cultural events, such as Mangalore’s massive Car Festival, known as Kodial Teru. Despite Shenoy’s well-known distaste for technology, the trustees say that they are not averse to adding some gadgets for visitors. Unlike Barnes, the collector from Pennsylvania, Shenoy did not leave a will that blocked alterations of his original vision. (Already, select artefacts have been bundled away into storage, due to concerns that some rooms at Hasta Shilpa appeared cluttered.) “If Siemens or some other company wants to donate a huge number of audio tours, we could offer them,” Nayak says mildly. “He didn’t tell us, ‘you have to do everything the way I planned’. ” Other suggestions include a few rooms dedicated to the story behind the assemblage of Hasta Shilpa. While the documentation process remains incomplete, there are plenty of photographs, architectural drawings, recordings, and scribbled notes that could provide insight. After a day out scouting for houses or smaller collectibles, Shenoy liked to settle down and dictate his reminiscences to companions. “He would sit in a bar and rattle out a story. I wrote it down on tissue paper,” recounts restaurateur Rajesh Pai, also from Udupi, who often travelled with Shenoy. “His greatest asset was his memory. There were a lot of attempts to capture that.” Such a display should be “mandatory” for purposes of transparency, says Miki Desai, a retired professor of architecture at CEPT University in Ahmedabad. Future generations should understand which architectural details are original and which were added according to Shenoy’s instructions. Known for his work in documenting Kerala’s vernacular structures, Desai recalls that he first visited Hasta Shilpa in 2003. “When I saw it for the first time, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this old man is really doing a great job!’” Yet on subsequent visits, Desai became uneasy. “It is a slightly misfired effort,” he concludes. “I love people bringing some sense to the vanishing cultures of architecture. But how systematic is it?” In Shenoy’s world, any hierarchy of objects was less important than the emotion they conveyed. Even a grimy radio or rusty bicycle wheel could convey warmth. Was some of it junk? Maybe. But his life was a rebuke to throwaway culture. His curiosity overstepped narrow academic specialisation. In his ardour, Shenoy was willing to trawl rivers to obtain ritual objects that villagers had discarded. He walked through parched fields to gaze at a particularly graceful set of pillars. Shenoy could be gruff, he could be dismissive, but he was always a man in love. Margot Cohen writes about culture in Asia. She is a former correspondent of The Far Eastern Economic Review.