Pen Drawings - Vignettes of Mysore

I have lived a larger part of my 61+ years in Mysore. But when I lived there, I sketched rarely. Doodled, is perhaps a better description. Now that I live elsewhere, whenever I visit the place I make it a point to go out and sketch. There are some beautiful old buildings there that beckon me. I drew some of them during two visits to Mysore recently. Here they are with a note about each.

This is a must-do for tourists. The Mysore palace. It is built in the Indo-Saracenic style. Originally, the kings of Mysore, the Odeyars, had a wooden palace which was destroyed by fire. In its place came up the present one.

I drew it from the northern gate side with the gate as the central piece and the central tower of the palace itself in background. For most Mysoreans, that is what the palace is. Background. Though not as tall, it is like the Eiffel Tower for Parisians, perhaps.

I digress. But, the common spelling for Odeyars is Wodeyars. This is the result of the Kannadiga habit of interchanging vowels and consonants in certain names. Woodlands is a popular chain of hotels. Many of their boards read oodlands in Kannada. (ಉಡ್‍ಲ್ಯಾಂಡ್ಸ್ instead of  ವುಡ್‍ಲ್ಯಾಂಡ್ಸ್)

In contrast to the grandeur of the palace is this humble house on Ramavilasa Road. The roof is made of local tiles (ನಾಡ ಹೆಂಚು) which we normally see only on houses in villages. The roofs of houses of more well  to do people were normally made of “Mangalore tiles”. It has the look of a modest but elegant house - once. It has yielded to commercial interests and the occupants’ monetary needs. A part of the house is now an agricultural goods shop and another a tea stall. The last, one of many run by Rajasthanis, you find all over Mysore.

I was once a serious student of the musical instrument Veene. I even appeared for the “junior” examinations and was the senior most examinee that year. The examinations were held in Maharani’s high school for girls. So, I have fond memories of the place. Finally I got down to sketching it.

Tucked away well below the road level of Jhansi Lakshmi Bai Road (one of the longest roads in Mysore - starting from the railway station and ending at the Ooty Road near the foothills of Chamundi Hills) is this elegant building housing an office of the department of education of the government of Karnataka.

Mysore had two “statue squares” - old and new. Each had a statue of an erstwhile king of Mysore. One of them is in front of the North gate of the Mysore palace. Here is a sketch I made of it with the palace again in the background.

Another imposing building in Mysore is that of The Oriental Research Institute. Not many know this fact but a scholar from this institute,  Dr. R. Shamashastri, unearthed the, then thougth lost Artha Shaastra of Kautilya.

Here is a study of a part of the building.