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How the Bengaluru airport got royally gamed
Mummadi’s reign began auspiciously enough; at the tender age of six, after Tipu Sultan’s death in 1799 CE, he was escorted to his hereditary throne by none other than Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.
Time was when summer vacations, for anyone who grew up in Bengaluru, meant a house full of outstation cousins who had descended on you because you happened to live in such a cool city. They meant weekends at Cubbon Park, matinee shows of ‘English’ films in a Cantonment theatre, ice-cream treats at Lakeview or Chit Chat, and afternoons playing endless games of carrom or Monopoly or Ludo or ‘Donkey’ or, if you had grandparents around, chowka bara or alagulimane /pallanguzhi.
It is traditional board games like these last – but with a royal twist! – that the newly-opened Terminal 2 of the Kempegowda International Airport celebrates in four specially designed floor mosaics on its Departures side. The mosaics are inspired by drawings commissioned by Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, or Mummadi Krishnaraja, the longest-ruling monarch of the Wadiyar dynasty, for one of his many treatises on board games – no, seriously – written circa the 1850s.
Mummadi’s reign began auspiciously enough; at the tender age of six, after Tipu Sultan’s death in 1799 CE, he was escorted to his hereditary throne by none other than Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. Until 1810, when he turned 16, he ruled under the regency of his grandmother, the formidable Maharani Lakshmi Ammani. In 1831, however, he was controversially dismissed by the East India Company, after a series of popular uprisings erupted across his kingdom. He never again regained his throne, but parleyed successfully with Queen Victoria, before his death in 1868, to secure the throne for his infant grandson, the great Chamarajendra Wadiyar X .
The decades in the political wilderness may have broken a lesser man, but our Mummadi, a polyglot who spoke Kannada, English, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu with ease, poured himself into writing – he was the author of several Kannada works, most prominently the Sritattvanidhi, which, among many other things, included illustrations of 122 hatha yoga postures, more detailed than in any other pre-20th century text. He also spent time mastering the veena, patronizing talented writers who collectively developed a new style of Kannada prose, artists who not only created giant murals but also illuminated manuscripts, and artistes who developed and perfected the performing art of Yakshagana.
The king also spent an inordinate amount of time locked up inside the Krishna temple inside the Mysore Palace, playing board games (with Krishna himself, it was believed), and creating new and fascinating versions of old ones, including Kreeda Patra, a pre-medieval Indian card game that the Mughals had adopted and knew as Ganjifa. The Mysore version of Ganjifa included 13 complex games developed by Mummadi, and featured hand-painted circular cards with mythological, astronomical and astrological themes.
Chaturanga, or chess, was another huge passion, and Mummadi is credited with being among the first few people in the world to crack the Knight’s Tour, a 9th century puzzle which involves a knight starting at any square on the chessboard and moving to the remaining 63 squares without ever repeating a square. Mummadi’s version of the solution, which he had painted on a silk handkerchief in 1851, is now a prized item in the collection of American chess collector, Jon Crumiller. In fact, several other board games that Mummadi had artisans produce in rosewood, ivory inlay, metal inlay, or as lithographs and paintings, to give away as gifts, now form part of private and museum collections across the globe, including the V&A in London and the Smithsonian in Washington, and often come up for auction at the world’s top auction houses.
And to this day, in esoteric international colloquiums on board games, Mummadi Krishnaraja is hailed as a Magister Ludi, Master of the Game.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)
