Holipura Heritage Village, a small (and save for the glossy paint, largely non-descript) board on the road from Agra to Bah announces a potential excursion to those meandering in the ravines of Chambal… that ‘tis a short detour swings the decision in its favour as one turns the car down a narrow bumpy road for the three odd miles…

The road ends at the junction of two large havelis brooding perpendicular to each other… Sanjay Chaturvedi, a lanky disposition of around fifty or so who serves as the local guide (a vocation one assumes he has a monopoly on), peeks inquisitively from the courtyard and snaps into the role at our behest…

Holipura has a 500-year history clinging on to its ruins, a seat of saint Hari Hara Nandji who’d have inspired this settlement of Chaturvedi brahmins established by Holinath Chaturvedi, many of whom went on to achieve important positions across politics, law, business and many other areas… the state of the village belies this fact though… while ‘tis the way of the past to pilfer away eventually, laying claim to a brood of well-renowned gentry should ideally buy it some more time, which in this case it clearly doesn’t…

There are supposed to be more than 30 odd culturally important buildings here, but apart from half a dozen or so havelis, everything else is a callous caricature of crumbling facades… there are very few abandoned buildings though… Indrajeet Bhawan was the one building that still preserved some character, imagery of Gandhi upon its rusting balcony railing speaking of the fervour of the freedom struggle… another decently preserved building housed the local branch of Allahabad Bank… the rest are ruminations on urban migration and those left behind biding their time…

No doubt there are some stories, for broken walls are seldom bereft of an anecdote… the quintessential Rajput connections… small vertical slits in the walls used for mounting guns now romancing vines… ornate Victorian doors now embellished with charpoys and cloth hooks… there is forlorn look about the place, as if all the beseeching to those in places of prominence led to little more than some cursory acknowledgements in government annals…

We’d come to Chambal for the crocodiles, hence this was a strange flavour on the palette, the sombre hues of decadence… yet one also realizes that this despondency mostly plagues the visitor, for the native almost always weaves a cocoon, one that reminisces in the glory of the past and remains indifferent to the perils of the present…

Musings on a heritage village, Holipura, Uttar Pradesh