clive my hero?

This week I had the opportunity to work on a project at the Clive building at the secretariat ie Fort St George. The work in itself is pain staking but my god that building makes it so worth the while, every time I get a couple of minutes off I wander around. It is like a maze, and each room has some curious feature or the other. A courtyard which is overlooked by a verandah, huge windows which open in strange ways, floors with glass cubes embedded in them that allow light in, rickety small stairs, huge big stairs and so much more. However the rooms are also in the process of being conserved and renovated, so many of them have no roof, some no floor and some are used for purposes they surely were not intended for (like the toilets! ugh!!!)

One day me and a couple of the boys who work there as research scholars finished the days work and were walking back to the office and we saw a huge hall with a wooden floor, huge pillars (very huggable :) And as I was thinking aloud, I asked them what they thought it had been used for. Promptly in all grave ernestness one guy said Clives bedroom of course! We stood there considering the room for a few minutes and then the other boy said why would he have needed such a big room, to sleep!! I thought it was funny but definitely it seemed nothing like a bedroom, but who knows what these strange colonial rulers thought of as a suitable bed room really!!

So the next day I met one of officials at the fort museum and I asked him about "Clive's bedroom", he said it was a ball room!! ahhh now that makes sense, I had imagined it as somewhere where parties could happen…… And then I asked him if there were any books on the Clive building, what the rooms were used for, how the people livedetc. He said that there was too little information available on the building to write a book, we only know it was Clive’s house for a few years from a letter that claims he hadn't paid his rent :P some things don't change I guess. He also said Clive’s son lived there as well and it originally belonged to an Armenian merchant. Now what was an Armenian merchant doing amongst the British and the French I thought? Yes I am ignorant about the colonial history of India, all I know is that we got our independence form the British after much struggle…

While talking about the building he also told me that Clive was considered a hero by the British, I said but he isn’t a hero to us is he??? And he said, no he can be your hero if you want, he is a part of history after all..... So true isn’t that? What does it matter if he was one of the colonialists subjugating us??? I looked up on Wikipedia (cannot live without it I think) and it was all mixed. There is no hero or villain; it is history, a man who was not born with a silver spoon, who landed in a small village in India (madras) at the age of 18, who at 25 grew famous for his military exploits even though untrained! And who made it through life and supported not only himself but his siblings and a certain Major Lawrence, the commanding officer who had encouraged his military genius.

I wish I could actually take you through the Clive building, through its many strange and lovely rooms, and that you could imagine with me all the good, bad, sad and happy memories those rooms hold, which we will never know: D you may think I sound all stupidly romantic about an old building. But just imagine all the people who worked there, the cooks, the sweepers, the maids, the women and men in the house. Maybe some of them had a horrible life, maybe many of them hated the building and yet I want to just go back in time one day no maybe just an hour. How I would love to see how much of what I have imagined is a reality… fanciful huh?? :D I guess it’s not Clive who makes history so beautiful for me but all those people who were nobodies in the larger scheme of things but yet each had their own lives, memories and emotions!!

By popular demand have added this Picture, not a great one,but it does show some of the brilliant windows (http://gibberandsqueak.blogspot.com/)