A Taste of Holme
A Taste of Holme
The life and times of India’s celebrated artist, Amrita Sher-Gil is a fascinating read here. Gautam Anand has even brought forth recipes indicative of her Hungarian roots, influenced by Austrian cuisine under the Austro-Hungarian Empire
It was to be a farewell dinner for Malcolm Muggeridge whom Amrita had befriended, after her return to India at the end of 1934, perhaps her final crossing of the oceans and civilisations.
When she was in Paris, one of her professors often said that judging by the richness of her colouring, Amrita Sher-Gil was not in her element in the West, and that her artistic personality would find its true atmosphere in the East. In 1933, Sher-Gil ‘began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India feeling in some strange way that there lay her destiny as a painter.’ Amrita Sher-Gil returned to India at the end of 1934.
Malcolm and she had met at the Gaiety Theatre in early 1935 in Shimla, the then Summer Capital of British India. Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, then working as assistant editor and leader writer for The Calcutta Statesman. Their friendship grew stronger when Muggeridge became a house guest at the Sher-Gil family house The Holme at Summer Hill. A short intense affair took place during which she painted a casual portrait of her new lover. The painting is now with the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.
By September 1935 Amrita saw Muggeridge off as he travelled back to England for his new employment. She herself stayed on at the behest of an art collector and critic, Karl Khandalavala, who encouraged her to pursue her passion for discovering her Indian roots. In India, she began a quest for the rediscovery of the traditions of Indian art which was to continue till her death.
She was greatly impressed and influenced by the Mughal and Pahari schools of painting and the cave paintings at Ajanta. A substantial portion of her work was done in Shimla between November 1934 and June 1938. This phase of her life and painting is often referred to as Amrita Sher-Gil’s ‘Shimla Period’.
A background for our readers.
Amrita Sher-Gil was born on January 30, 1913, in Budapest.
Her father was Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, the scion of an aristocratic Sikh family from Amritsar and mother, Marie Antoinette Gottesmann-Baktay, a Hungarian opera singer, who had come to India as the travelling companion of Princess Bamba, grand-daughter of Punjab’s Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The baby was named ‘Amrita,’ after Amritsar, the ‘tank of immortality’.
It was in April 1921 that the Sher-Gils came to Shimla and moved into their villa, The Holme. Two ladies were employed by her parents to give Amrita and her younger sister, Indira, piano and English lessons. For two years, 1922 and 1923, an English gentleman, Major Whitmarsh, was also retained to give lessons in drawing. He was replaced by the brilliant Hal Bevan Petman, who was already known for his somewhat risqué work.
Bevan Petman was impressed with Amrita’s talent and suggested she be trained at the finest schools of Europe. On the art tutor’s suggestion and sensing Amrita’s keen interest in art, her mother took the girls to Florence, Italy, and had them admitted to an art school. Amrita was 11 at the time. This did not prove to be a success and Antoinette brought them back to India. The period June 1924 to April 1929 was spent mostly in Shimla – Amrita and her sister took part in a couple of plays staged by Shimla’s Amateur Dramatic Club. In April 1929, the 16-year-old Amrita was taken to Paris, where her artistic talents blossomed and she placed the foundations of an enduring reputation. In the 1930s, in Shimla, she set to work – even though her friendship with the celebrated journalist Malcolm Muggeridge aroused more comment than her work.
This was, however, more tactical, Shimla was after all a scandal point, Amrita’s work during this period would eventually be celebrated as a national treasure, immortalising a young woman who loved Mother India, above all else.
At any rate, she persuaded a reluctant Marie Antoinette (her mother) to oversee a Hungarian style dinner (Malcolm’s favourite dishes included) from an heirloom set of recipes from the Gottesmann-Baktay, recipe journal. Our presentation today is indicative of that Hungarian cuisine which was influenced by Austrian cuisine under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The dishes and methods of food preparation have often been borrowed from Austrian cuisine, and vice- versa. Some cakes and sweets in Hungary show a strong German-Austrian influence.
All told, modern Hungarian cuisine is a synthesis of ancient Uralic components mixed with West Slavic, Balkan, Austrian, and German. The food of Hungary can be considered a melting pot of the continent, with a culinary base formed from its own, original Magyar old-world cuisine.
“I cook a little bit. I make a Hungarian dish called Chicken Paprikash that’s out of this world. I’ll give a heads-up to all of your readers that it doesn’t have to be between Indian, Asian, European or English every night. Toss some Hungarian in every once in a while. You will not be sorry. Good, solid pleasant old-word food.”
Quoted from the journal of Marie Antoinette Gottesmann-Baktay.
Recipe courtesy: Original recipes by Marie Antoinette Gottesmann-Baktay and their verification by ITC Hotels.
Images courtesy: ITC Hotels.
