Dine with the masters

Hotels have emerged as repositories of art. In the first of an occasional series, the author walks through the ITC Maurya in Delhi

The Maurya took its location in Chanakyapuri, Delhi very seriously. This is probably why it used the theme of the golden age of Indian politics, religion and diplomacy in its architecture and art. It's been modelled on the ancient Buddhist Chaitya cave temples in Karla, Maharashtra (they even call it the Chaitya Art Gallery) and was made from red sandstone - the stone from which the Buddhist stupas and Ashoka's pillars were created. The heart of the hotel is the lobby that focuses on Buddhism, King Ashoka's battle at Kalinga and war and peace.

The end result is one of India's rarest collections of contemporary masterpieces ensconced in architecture based on Buddhist monasteries from the 2nd century. Like a traditional monastery, where monks would congregate in the sanctum but live and meditate in the caves around it, there are four corridors that lead off from the lobby. Each is filled with some of the finest artworks of the progressive painters of the 1970s.

The moment you enter the lobby, the first thing you see is the Krishen Khanna mural splashed across the dome, which depicts, in the artist's words, "the great procession that is India and Indian life." The colours make it look like a Basilica but the scenes portrayed are typically Indian, including tea-sellers and old women gossiping. There is even a portrait of Khushwant Singh, an old friend of Khanna's.

It's called the Great Procession and is covered with painted scenes over three levels. It took four years to complete. The artist uses the curved surface area to fuse scenes of Mauryan past and the present day. As the artist says, "(it)...uses ordinary daily life incidences to show a continuous journey with no beginning and no end. If you look carefully, you can find yourself in it...One side of the dome isn't painted, so if you stand there, you are a part of it." While this is possible at the lobby level, it's far more apparent on the 12th floor where you find yourself equal in dimension to the girl painted on the dome to your right.

A panel from the Arthashastra by M F Husain

Around it, on 18 brightly painted glass panels, is MF Husain's interpretation of the Arthashastra - the political treatise by Chanakya (the first Mauryan king's advisor) from the 4th century. The similarity to a Basilica is increased by these glass panels that represent episodes from the Mauryan dynasty, including Chanakya writing the Arthashastra, the birth of Gautam Buddha, his enlightenment and the battle of Kalinga at the end of which emperor Ashoka saw the carnage around him and converted to Buddhism.

As you stand under the dome and look around, every direction offers another treasure. Behind the reception in front of you is a tapestry created by Husain. It's divided into three parts. The first shows Buddha's mother, Maya, looking at a man in a cloak with bows and arrows and hoping that her son would be a great king. The second part shows the Buddha sitting in abhay (fearless) mudra with a white dove flying near him. The third shows the other classical Mauryan theme of power and war where a group of people runs as a man and horses surge forward in a display of raw power. Renu Modi, the owner of Gallery Espace, recollects Husain's enthusiasm while he was painting it. He would rush into the Maurya singing "carpetwala aa gaya"!

As you turn anticlockwise towards the left, there's a 12-foot-tall bronze statue that towers in the lawns outside. The statue, Ashoka at Kalinga by Meera Mukherjee, shows a brawny, armor-clad man with one hand clasping his sword and the other limp as he realises the futility and horror of the carnage he has ordered.

Another quarter turn brings you to A Ramachandran's fantastical bronze, zinc and glass statue called Ashoka after Kalinga hidden behind a pillar. This sculpture (it was created 10 years before any of the other pieces) shows Ashoka's body covered with the inscriptions he wrote against war. But it's the look of sadness on his face and the crippled hands that makes this such a haunting sculpture.

Bull in the Mountain Landscape by Tyeb Mehta

To its left, next to the lift, is Tyeb Mehta's Bull in the Mountain Landscape. Using one of the four majestic animals that were most often represented on Mauryan pillars, Mehta's Bull shows the fracturing of the human psyche when confronted with war and despair.

But keep turning. Across the lifts is another primally coloured painting - this time an Akbar Padamsee landscape.

The Mauryan theme is repeated on the 12th floor in a Ramachandran that depicts a horse fleeing after the battle of Kalinga. And in the tea lounge is a 13 feet by 6 feet Sanjay Bhattacharya triptych. It shows Ashoka on an elephant with his soldiers. There are also five other smaller panels by him showing scattered images of an Ashokan Pillar with a forlorn background; a door with jutting out nails against a background of the Ashokan pillar, an edict and a man with a sword outside a huge wooden door. Despite the fact that they were painted 11 years after the rest of the artworks, they fit in perfectly with the theme and the colours that define this hotel.

The Ashoka scultpture by A Ramachandran

In the corridors off the lobby, there are more works by Yusuf Arakkal, Satish Gujral, Satish Gupta, Paramjit Singh, J Swaminathan, and Pratibha Dakoji. Right across from Ramachandran's Ashoka sculpture is one of Husain's famous triptychs called Naad that shows the moods and emotions that music inspires. Most of these artworks aren't as closely related to the Mauryan empire as the ones in the lobby.

Essentially, Krishan Khanna took the opportunity, when he was appointed as art consultant, to buy the best of the artworks of his contemporaries. He, and the ITC team that followed, managed to commission a collection that, as art critic Gayatri Sinha says, "is a path-breaking and farsighted collection. Sometimes great art transcends the ordinary moment and strikes a moment in infinity. This was one of the few collections ever that married art to architecture, which almost no one else has done."