JOIN USIt affirms a great lesson of history: conflicts can be harsh, but they often rejuvenate. That’s what happened in Spain’s beautiful old city of Granada. Atop a plateau, gazing possessively over the city rises the iconic fortress of the Alhambra. It was the centre of power during the 800 years that Spain was an Islamic state. Formidable and exquisitely impressive at the same time, the Alhambra expresses the finely-honed tastes of many generations of Spanish people who practised the Islamic faith.
Land of the moors
Walking around this great complex, we were frequently reminded of our own Mughal heritage. Like many of our fortified palaces, the Alhambra is a red-walled township guarding the city at its feet. Behind it tower the awesome heights of the great, snow-dusted Sierra Nevada mountains. The farmers in the sheltered valley, or vega, of Granada called the Alhambra, al-kalat al-Hamra, the castle of red earth. This forbidding title is misleading. Hidden by those great bastions, the Alhambra is an unending series of beautiful palaces, halls with exquisitely carved ceilings, corridors with delicate columns and arches patterned after encrusted stalactites.
The fountains, reflecting pools and formal gardens reminded us of Kashmir’s Shalimar. Both were inspired by the same longings: both were the architectural dreams of people from arid lands hankering after their vision of the cool, watered, Gardens of Paradise. In addition, the architecture of Alhambra had many centuries to evolve out of a virile mysticism where every arabesque had both a religious and a mathematical significance. Looking for a souvenir that would capture the magic of the Alhambra, we chose an alicatado tile. They have designs, more intricate than a yantra, expressing both the dynamism and the complexity of maya captured in mosaics of inlaid stone and ceramic.
We looked down from a high, wind-swept battlement. Massed like a glazed jig-saw, Granada spread below us with the green columns of cypress trees thrusting between the white-walled, red-tiled houses. Descending, we trod down narrow, stepped, lanes, picked our way through an intriguing labyrinth of old streets. Moorish merchant-princes once lived here in walled mansions with vine-shaded courtyards. They’re high-priced properties now, known as the coveted carmen. This is a leisurely, shopping-browsing area where a woman in a caftan ambled past a bearded man in chappals arranging bright displays of tooled leather.
Spanish leather is held in high esteem all over the world and a trader held out a pair of black shoes saying, “Genuine toro bravo hide”, claiming that it came from a ferocious animal bred for the bull-ring. As a predominantly settled agrarian people, distinct from nomadic herdsmen, the Mediterranean-Dravidians gave the bull roughly the same pride of place as the Vedic pastoralists gave the cow. They, however, treated bulls as symbols of power, manliness and wealth, to be challenged and subdued, not propitiated. Spain’s famed bull-fights and the Tamils’ jallikattu are expressions of this combative ethos.
Indian influence
Later, in the old town, we found another historic Indian connection.
One night we entered cave-like dwellings off the steep streets of the Sacromonte district. The matriarchal owner of the Cuevas los Tarantos, Zambra Gitana, had an Indian name, Maya. We told her so. Her partner was a man who could have been a trader in Chandni Chowk. He informed our guide that, according to tradition, his people had migrated from north India.
These cuevas are the homes of the gypsies who are noted for their lively flamenco dances. Though the origins of the flamenco reputedly go back to distant, and almost mythical, times, we saw many features in the dance that reminded us of the vibrant Kalbelia of Rajasthan: their costumes, verve, singing, hand movements, foot stamping and use of castanets were similar. The atmosphere of the cuevas was electric with the crashing guitars, the rat-a-tat-tat of the dancers’ heels and the appreciative shouts of “Ole!” Significantly, their guitar, which is an essential instrument of their music, is called a baja.
We saw the same spirit of eclecticism in the great cathedral in the heart of Granada. Its massive walls had been raised when it was the principal mosque of this once-Muslim city. “It was only after the old mosque had begun to crumble with age that it had been reconstructed as a church,” explained a guide to a group of eager American tourists. The cathedral was awesomely magnificent. It dominated the heart of the town, light filtering through its great stained glass dome, reflecting off polished wood, marble and the sacred icons of our own Roman Catholic faith, glinting off an emperor’s ransom of gold. The guide remarked, “Here, we honour our compassionate faith with the treasures that our conquistadores pilfered from the kingdoms of South America. Have you ever seen such an altar?” An elderly man with the look of an Edwardian aesthete admitted that he had: in the churches of Old Goa. “Ah! Goa,” smiled the guide. “Our Iberian cousins were fired with the same zeal to justify pillage!”
Quite true, but the Portuguese grandees did infuse new vitality into their Indian colony. As we have seen at home, old princely families have the means and the vision to adapt to changing circumstances. This, we were told, is what prompted the owners of a grand old mansion, on the outskirts of Granada, to convert their ground-floor reception rooms into the exclusive, Restaurante Ruta del Velenta. Everything about it — the framed paintings glowing with pride, a staircase leading to the upper floor where the family still lived, the quirky blue-and-white ceramic milk jugs decorating the ceiling... everything breathed the confidence of a long, revered lineage.
We visualised their enormous, inherited, dairy farms being wiped out in the Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936-39. Then this astute, tough-minded, noble family decided to tap the status-seeking appetites of nouveau-riche tourists. They gave us a ceramic milk jug as a souvenir when we left. It was just the sort of quixotic whimsy that eccentric old families delight in.As we said, revolutions can rejuvenate.