Mohatta Palace

When I first started taking pictures, someone told me that if didn't like the way light moved, how it transformed an object, photography was not for me.
That advice has remained with me for years and years.
Lighting and I are not friends- we fight a lot.
But at Mohatta Palace today, the sun sat low and in the west, and I found that shadows and geometric angles can make or break a photographic experience.



The History of the Mohatta Palace:
The summer home of Shivratan Mohatta, the palace was built in the late 1920s in the Rajasthan style from the Mogul era. After Mohatta was forced to leave Karachi (political upheaval made a Hindu's stay in Pakistan close to impossible) the palace became the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After a while, it was given to Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan) where it became the hub for her campaign for presidency. After her death, Shireen bai, her sister moved into the grounds for many years.



Today, the palace has been converted into a museum that currently holds an exhibition called "Tales of the Tiles," which showcases the history of decorative ceramics in the region of Pakistan

I'd been hounding both of my parents to take my to the palace from the first time I glimpsed it out of a car window, driving past Do Talwar (Two Swords).

Rusted metal, rotting wood- offset by the shadows and lines of the window sills were absolutely beautiful. I was instantly in love- floral motifs, balustrades, spandrels and exquisite railings aside, there's something majestic about the palace.


I made both Ammar and Abajaan insane with my incessant need to shift my camera and stop every two seconds. After the eighth or ninth window sill, even Mom was irritated-





Behind the palace, we discovered an assorted collection of "English Statues." Queen Victoria stood tall and pale in her alabaster form.
I learned from one of the men working at the building that after Shireen Bai's death, the palace was left to rot. It was only after Benazir Bhutto's government assigned Rs. 70 million to the Culture Department that the palace was converted into a museum. Apparently the building had to be sandblasted to its orignal color as layers of soil and grime had accumulated over the decades. The frescoes on the ceilings had to be repainted by hand, and the roof, doors and windows had to be carefully conserved.