Museum in an airport

The National Museum in Kolkata is not only the oldest but also the largest museum in India. It has six main sections comprising 35 galleries.

It is also called the Indian Museum and it also the earliest and the largest multipurpose Museum not only in the Indian subcontinent but also in the Asia-Pacific.

But in two weeks time, the National museum is all set to lose this distinction to a new upstart which is coming up in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital.

In just a little over ten days, largest museum where the entry will be on the basis of international airline tickets, will open its glass doors to the public.

The newly constructed museum in housed in the International Airport in Mumbai and it has 7,000 artefacts covering a range of  people, kingdoms and eras. What is more The museum will have a three kilometre long art wall which will feature works by over 1,500 artists.

This museum is built between the check-in and baggage claim and it is part of Mumbai's new integrated terminal T2. The art wall and the museum is so designed that it will showcase the best of Indian art, craft and designs to visitors, Indians and foreigners alike
The art wall and the art programmes will be one of the biggest of its kind in the world and no airport anywhere in the world will have this facility.

The installation at T2’s departure area occupies 80,000 sq ft and it will house ancient artifacts and finds some as old as the 10th century. A range of ancient articles including sculptures, statues, paintings, wood work, old temple chariots and articles of daily, religious and social use collected from villages, towns and cities will be on display.
The T2 is slated to open on January 15 and initially only passengers boarding or alighting from international carriers will be allowed to have a look-in. With a handing capacity of  40 million passengers annually, the museum could comfortably push Paris’ Louvre, currently the most visited art museum in the world with 9 million annual visitors, off its perch.
Similarly, the arrival corridor too has been given a massive brush up. It has works by several eminent contemporary artists such as Nek Chand, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Mithu Sen, Riyas Komu  Desmond Lazaro. All of them and of course several others have worked on the art wall that is 18 metres high and 1.2 km long. Like the departure wall, this wall too can be viewed from all levels.
Where there is Mumbai, can Bollywood be far behind. The best of Bollywood too is present here.

When the new integrated terminal will open on January 15, Air India’s Newark-Mumbai flight will be the first to arrive at the new terminal which is called T2.
T2 will have bigger areas for check-in, security check and baggage delivery. Spread over 439,000 square metres, the MIAL which will operate the airport is a joint venture of the GVK group, the Airport Authority of India, Airports Company of South Africa and Bids Services Division, Mauritius.

All of them are together executing the Rs 12,380-crore airport modernisation project. The work on the new terminal building began in February 2009.
While the old international terminal had 80 immigration counters, T2 will have 140.

The tea museums of India

There are a variety of museums relating to a wide spectrum of  topics right from history, geography, folk art, folk dolls, dance, drama, music, literature, automobiles and what not.

But this museum should surely take the cake for it is one of its kind in India and certainly a rarity even in this age. This is the Tea Museum in Kerala and it is located in a tea estate in Munnar, which is one of the most beautiful spots in God’s own country as Kerala is called.

The museum was started by Tata Tea, which is one of the most recognized brands in India. Since the Tata group was one of the pioneers of tea cultivation in Munnar, it thought it fit to start a museum in its estate in Munnar.       

It is called the Tata Tea Museum and it is a connoisseur’s delight as it can give you a history of tea and the phases of development that it underwent over the last few decades.

The museum is in the Nallathanni Estate and it chronociles the beginning of tea plantation, the equipments used then and the brands of tea that have emerged from the estate.

The highlight of the museum should be a rare sundial which is placed on a granite bock. This beautiful device was crafted in 1913 by the Art Industrial School at Nazareth, Tamil Nadu.

Another exhibit which attracts attention is a original tea roller called the Rotorvane. The device was manufactured in 1905 and was used for CTC type tea processing.

CTC means “Crush, Tear, and Curl” and also “Cut, Twist and  Curl”  and it is a method of processing black tea. In this process, the tea leaves are passed through a series of cylindrical rollers with hundreds of small sharp “teeth” that crush, tear, and curl the tea.

Apart from this CTC, there is a “Pelton Wheel” widely used in  power generation plant that existed in Kanniamallay estate in the 1920s. The Kanniamallay estate was part of a series of estates in Munnar that Tatas named as Kannan Devan tea estates

Another exhibit that will captivate visitors is the rail engine of the Kundale Valley Light Railway, which carried men and material between Munnar and Top Station during 1900s.

There are a few exhibits that do not relate to tea but were found in the Tea estates such as a burial urn dating back from the second century BC. The urn was discovered near Periakanal estate.

The museum also has a section exhibiting classic bungalow furniture, typewriters, wooden bathtub, magneto phone, iron oven, manual calculators and even an EPABX or telephone exchange of the 1909 telephone system.

The best place in the museum is the demonstration room for tea tasting.  It is here that we come across varieties of tea. Visitors are also made aware of  various stages of processing tea and even preparing black tea.

The museum is open on all days of the week and there is a en entrance fee.

Munnar is a hill station in Idukki district in Kerala. It is situated at the confluence of three rivers-Mudrapuzha, Nallathanni and Kundala.

Munnar is part of the Annamalai Ranges, with south India's highest peak Anamudi. Munnar easily accessible by road. The nearest airports are Nedumbassery in Kochi, Kovai in Coimbatore and Madurai. It is hardly four hours by road from these places. The nearest railway stations are Alwaye,  Ernakulam, Madurai and Coimbatore.

Another  tea museum is at Dodabetta in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu. It was opened in 2005 and covers an area of once acre.

The museum has three sections:Origin of World tea, Tea history in India and finally Evolution of Tea in the Nilgiris. You can also check out facts on how tea as a beverage is made and how it is traded.

However, the credit for the tea museum at the highest point in India is at Darjeeling, West Bengal. This is described as India’s first  working tea museum and it is located at a height of  6,800 feet at the foothills of Himalayas.

The museum is at the Happy Valley Tea Estate in the fringes of Darjeeling town on Wednesday. Assam is also planning on a tea museum at its capital of Gawhati.

India has a long history of tea cultivation. It began in the 1820 when the East India Company commenced tea cultivation in Assam. Today, India is one of the largest tea producers in the world, though over seventy per cent of the tea is consumed within India itself.

India is listed as the world’s leading producer, its 715,000 tons well ahead of China’s 540,000 tons. However, because Indians average half a cup daily on per capita basis,  70 per cent of India's immense crop is consumed locally.

The tiger that roars no more

He was called the Tiger of Mysore and true to the adage he was a tiger in real sense of the word. The British feared him and the Nizam of  Hyderabad never felt secure with him. The Marathas too were wary of  him.

Having killed a tiger during his youth, he was known for his bravery and patriotism.  One  of his everlasting ambition was to throw out the British from India. No wonder, he was the most discussed personality of the British Empire in the late 1700s.

Tipu Sultan, as he was called, was perhaps one of the most illustrious rulers of  Mysore. During a hunting expedition when he was young he had singlehandedly fought a tiger. The people had conferred on him the title Tiger.

Tipu and his father Hyder Ali had instinctively sensed that the British and not native rulers of India were the main enemy. Both fought long and hard to throw the British out of India.

Soon after Hyder Ali’s death, the mantel of the Mysore kingdom had fallen on  Tipu Sultan. Tipu had tried to stitch together an alliance against the British but he failed.

His request to the French Emperor, Napoleon, for help to oust the British from India too did not bear any fruit though Napolean had promised him help. When the final war of Mysore took place in 1799, Tipu was alone and he was betrayed by one of his own men and he met a heroic death in his capital Srirangapatna on May 4, 1799.

Tipu had such a deep hatred of the British that he had got a special mechanical contraption made in which a tiger sat on a fallen British soldier and roared. It was made of wood and painted in several colours. There was small keyboard with 18 notes and when pressed, it created the roar of a tiger.  

This contraption and several other personal articles had the motif of a tiger which was Tipu’s favourite symbol.  

When Srirangapatna fell, the British and their allies went on a looting spree. They first ran to the palaces of Tipu and his Treasury and picked up whatever items they could lay their hands on.

The British discovered this contraption in Tipu’s summer palace,

The then Governor General of the East India Company at Madras, Lord Mornington, sent this device to Britain where it was initially to be exhibited at the Tower of London.

When it arrived in Britian, the device was shown to the people who were led to believe that this was the extent of hatred that  one of the Indian Kings had for Britain. In 1808 it came to be exhibited at the Tower of London. Subsequently, it was placed at the office of the East India Company in London where it became a prized exhibit.

In 1880, the exhibit, which by then had been drawing crowds, was shifted to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  It is now placed in the section called Imperial courts of south India.

The device has drawn the curiosity of several authors and painters. The first description of the device is given by an aide of the Governor General. He says. “In a room appropriated for musical instruments was found an article which merits particular notice, as another proof of the deep hate, and extreme loathing of Tippoo Saib towards the English. This piece of mechanism represents a royal Tyger in the act of devouring a prostrate European. There are some barrels in imitation of an Organ, within the body of the Tyger. The sounds produced by the Organ are intended to resemble the cries of a person in distress intermixed with the roar of a Tyger. The machinery is so contrived that while the Organ is playing, the hand of the European is often lifted up, to express his helpless and deplorable condition. The whole of this design was executed by Order of Tippoo Sultaun. It is imagined that this memorial of the arrogance and barbarous cruelty of Tippoo Sultan may be thought deserving of a place in the Tower of London.”

James Salmond was the first person to paint this device in 1800. This painting was for his book “A Review of the Origin, Progress and Result, of the Late Decisive War in Mysore with Notes.”

When the device was kept for public viewing in India House on Leanden Hall Street, London, visitors frequently turned the crank handle of the device so that the arm of the European would rise and the tiger  would roar. Even the French writer Gustave Flaubert saw the exhibit and was impressed.  By them this device came to be called The Tiger and the Thistle>

Sometime after 1843, the crank handle disappeared and the tiger stopped roaring. In 1858, Britain formally took over the East India Company and all its assets. In 1874, the tiger then found its den at the India Museum in South Kensington, London.

The India Museum came to an end in 1879 and several exhibits, including the tiger, was moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum. During World War 2, a German bomb fell on the roof of the museum and the wooden casing of the devoice was shattered.

When the World War ended, the wooden pieces were put back together and the tiger was being to being exhibited. In 1955, it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The device is believed to have suffered irreparable damage when it was dropped ion the floor by a person incharge of cleaning it. Since then , the tiger has stopped roaring.

Today, the entire device is kept in a glass enclosure in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A replica, albeit a smaller one, is kept in the museum in Bangalore.

It is a sad day for all Indians that a device that symbolised Tipu’s ambition is still lying in the heart of the country he so assiduously sought to expel from his homeland. Is is not time for the Government to get its act together and get back the Tiger.   Meanwhile, the tiger contiunes to be conficned in a glass cage. What an irony.