Hasta Shilpa village is Vijaynath Shenoy’s years of hard work
By Anirban Paul
& Indranil Sarkar
In today’s times of modernisation, when traditional institutions are being jeopardised due to factors, including urbanisation, strong western influence and technology, pastoral livelihoods and joint family systems have been on the receiving end of victimisation. In such times, the passion of one man led to the development of a hand-built empire structured solely around accumulating and instating the traditional symbols of historical societies.
Located in Karnataka’s student town of Manipal, the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village was conceptualised almost 45 years ago. Vijaynath Shenoy, a regular Syndicate Bank employee of the town then, began collecting remains of magnificent old structures which were ancestral and left uninhabited.
Most of these ancient homes were located in the countryside and had started collapsing due to their archaic conditions. Therefore, they were either demolished for firewood or sold to various small-time industries. A common man in nature with not much financial capability, Shenoy could not do much initially to prevent these damages, which he believed were blows to an important heritage of the past.
“Architecture is one of the most visible symbols of our culture. Dance and music may be powerful, but are not tangible the way buildings and constructions are. These homes are way more than what they appear; they represent the conceptualization of our spirits, the skills of our very own native craftsmen and also a proof of our ancient, ingenious and indigenous technology. They work as a connecting link for our cultural growth and heritage. But both the connection and the heritage were breaking and disappearing in front of my own eyes, and sooner, there would have been hardly anything left for us to embrace as our roots. I had no other option, but to step in to save this from dying.” Shenoy elucidated.
In 1974, Shenoy started by acquiring some pillars and doors from certain sites with the limited money he had. In other cases, he even pleaded the owners to donate certain items to him instead of selling them off to the scrap dealers. Eventually, he managed to recover some extraordinary artefacts from unused attics, junkyards and debris of shattered homes. He brought all of thesestructures together and reused them to build a home for himself, which took five years to complete. He named it Hasta Shilpa (Creation by Hand).
According to Shenoy, “This is not a museum of traditional craft. It is the recreation of composite architectural tradition, in its true glory.” He added that the house wasbuilt in a way to adhere toVaastu Shastra, a traditional Hindu system of architecture that combines principles of physics with metaphysics in order to bring in peace and harmony within the house. “Because of the nature of the home in terms of art and architecture, it soon ended up achieving acclaims. Intellectuals, art appreciators, commoners and students started visiting his home to simply have a look at his creation and, in his words “experienced the aura of traditional India of yesteryears,” he said.
In 1991, Shenoy declared Hasta Shilpa as a Public Charitable Trust following which he moved into a new simple house along with his family due to privacy issues arising out of excessive visitors. Hasta Shilpa was the home to some priceless objects, but Shenoy said he never considered selling it. “I was never the owner of that house. I was just a mere curator.”
During our conversation, Shenoy went back to a time to recollect a painful memory of how in 1983 he witnessed a beautiful ancestral home in Malnad (in Karnataka) being taken down into pieces by its owner. Being extremely perturbed by this situation, he begged and pleaded the owner to not trash the remnants. But this request received a heated reply. “You have no right to tear this house down,” Shenoy retorted then. “It doesn’t belong to you alone; it belongs to all of us.”
The owner got so furious at Shenoy’s response that he had him physically thrown off his property. A man enthused with a mission to restore traditional symbols, Shenoy stood outside and witnessed the remaining pieces being shred apart. More than three decades have passed and yet his voice trembled and eyes watered up as he went ahead with the narration, “I couldn’t control the tears.”
That incident changed everything that was going to happen in the following days. It was at this time he decided that he needed to do much more than collecting doors and pillars. Hence, he firmed a decision to reconstruct for the modern times, a priceless archaeological history of the past. He set out on a journey to preserve the traditional narratives by rebuilding the dyinghomes and restoring the architecture in a site, which would be open for the world to visit.
But for a regular banker, to rebuild fragments of ancient societies was a herculean task. Dismantling dying homes, transporting them and reconstructing them back was quite a financial challenge too. Despite that, Shenoy did not give up. He approached Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), and was successful in receiving a Rs 40lakh. Along with it, he also received a six-acre plot from the Government of Karnataka, which was enough to set the ball rolling.
Following that period, with years of hard work and a lot of restoration efforts, he was successful in setting up what he desired and thus, the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village was born.
For an average visitor, the extent of history and tradition that the Heritage Village holds is bound to throw him/her off with awe. To name a famous few, one would find a gallery of paintings and lithographs of Raja Ravi Verma, a fully restored house of the Deccan Nawab complete with the actual fittings of Belgian glass and German influenced tiles, the Darbar hall of the Marathas, a house from the times when the Vijaynagar Empire flourished.
Accompanied with that, to capture lifestyles, the site contains structures like a completely restored house from Kerala inhabited by a Brahmin joint family, the Buntsalaya, which was an ancient building used for trading purposes in port towns such as Udupi, and a Mangalore Christian House complete with original furniture and kitchen utilities. To capture the overall image of the magnificence of antiquity that the site holds, the Heritage Village is a land that beholds history and culture at a glance.
For years the place was not open to public until recently. Till then Shenoy let enthusiasts, architecture students, journalists, artists and students visit the place. “It is a place of education and enthusiasts who are eager to learn will understand the true purpose of this place. They are more than welcome,” Shenoy said, adding that he never wants the place to be a mere tourist attraction but a place where people have a deeper sense of involvement, witnessing splendid creationsof the past.
Vijaynath Shenoy passed away on March 9, 2017. Heritage Village is indeed a tribute to the desire of a man who was mad enough to dream, but equally determined to succeed. Generations to come will definitely be indebted to Shenoy for single-handedly putting his blood and sweat towards conserving the rich architectural heritage of ancient India. His mammoth efforts can be encapsulated in his own lines, “Success can come only through pain. If you are suffering from intense pain, then all your actions will be honest and aimed towards getting rid of that pain. And in that process, you will definitely succeed. In this process, you are not driven by worldly pleasures.”
(Anirban Paul is a former
journalist, currently pursuing post-graduation at NLSIU,
Bengaluru. Indranil Sarkar
is a journalist)
Photos by authors