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City heritage hamper for Mumbai
Lucknow is gift-wrapping something with great care for Mumbai. Something which Mumbai had almost lost ? the blueprints of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus building.
Lucknow is gift-wrapping something with great care for Mumbai. Something which Mumbai had almost lost – the blueprints of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus building.
Earlier known as the Victoria Terminus, the CST was declared a World Heritage Site in 2004. While preparations are on for a grand dedication ceremony in March in Mumbai, Lucknow too is busy. The Pink City has forty-three original drawings of the building. A decade older than the 118-year-old CST, these drawings show the first sketches of a dream project. The National Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property (NRLC) in Lucknow is restoring these sketches.
Last year when the NRLC received the packet of intricate drawings, damaged beyond recognition, from the Central Railways, they knew it was going to be a mammoth task. First they carried out experiments to zero in on the formula to restore the drawings which have an average size of 99 cm x 65 cm. Now, the NRLC is working overtime to finish restoration and conservation of 10 drawings and send these back to Mumbai for the dedication ceremony. One has already reached Mumbai.
“Mumbai wanted 20 of the drawings to be restored before the March ceremony but the work is too intricate and delicate, says Virendra Kumar, head of the conservation division of NRLC. Once the NRLC is done with these 43 drawings, it will get hold of the rest of the total 175 drawings of this outstanding example of the Victorian Gothic Revival architecture in India.
These days, teams of conservation division are busy on several drawings. They first document each drawing, then take photographs of them. Finally the arduous conservation work begins. First they fumigate the drawings. Since the drawings are on paper, they de-acidify them chemically. Then they do away with, what the conservation teams call, the “criminal thing” that was done to preserve these drawing — remove the cloth stitched to the drawing. Finally, the entire sheet will be covered with preservative coating.
