18/ 100 Green Door Dog

This little guy was napping on a doorstep deep in the old part of Jodhpur where almost every building was slowly being eaten away – what once must have once been an incredible architectural masterpiece was now slowly returning to the soil.

So many of the places we have visited in India over the years have looked like they belong in a museum. In the photograph above you can see the intricate stonework, covered by layers and layers of thick paint, softening the once sharp edges. The wooden door is a masterpiece of carpentry with incredible amounts of embellishment that surely must have only been added for cosmetic reasons.

One day we visited the Royal Palace in Jaipur and marvelled in wonder at the carved wooden balconies and windows covered with hand-carved shutters. Then, a few days later, we were walking down a back lane in Jodhpur, flanked on both sides with ancient buildings that had exactly the same intricate details, only this time they were not in such good condition. The difference was that the buildings in Jodhpur were simply regular houses with people and small businesses occupying them.

We saw metres of carved wooden edging that had been hastily chopped out of an ornate doorway so that a sign could be erected in its place. Doors had been taken from their frames – perhaps centuries old – and used as makeshift covers for animals to live in. Little wooden shutters decorated with Islamic carvings were left on the floor where they had been deposited after their hinges had rusted away.

The people live and work in buildings that could undeniably be classed as museum pieces, with seemingly very little in the way of legislation about what you could and couldn’t do to the building you occupied.

At first I was a little horrified at seeing all of the irreplaceable antique detailing being completely ignored, or destroyed. Then, when I thought about it, why shouldn’t it be this way? These have been people’s houses for a great many years and they are, after all, using them as they were intended. Simply because I, as a visitor, think that the people of India should protect these ancient houses rather than using them is completely wrong of me. They are, of course, their houses, for them to use as they wish.

What is also interesting to me is that it must have taken an awful lot of money to design, commission and make these beautiful pieces of art for the buildings that now house very poor people. Where did the wealthy population, or at least their money, go to?