There is a particular grandeur to Indore, the grandeur of a city raised by a dynasty that never quite lost its appetite for splendour. The Rajwada climbs seven storeys above the old quarter in stone, brick and timber, burnt three times across two centuries and three times rebuilt, its darbar hall and courtyard garden opening still to visitors and its fountains lit long after dark.
Across the Saraswati stands the other face of the same family. Lal Bagh Palace holds forty-five rooms of Renaissance, Palladian and Baroque, laid with Persian carpets and lit through Belgian stained glass; its ballroom floor rests upon springs, so that it gave gently underfoot as the dancing wore on towards morning. The cast-iron gates were shipped from England, modelled upon those of Buckingham Palace and built to twice their size.
The city keeps its smaller marvels close. The Kanch Mandir, a Jain temple lined floor to ceiling in glass and mirror, is an interior without equal in India. The Krishnapura Chhatris, the cenotaphs of the Holkar rulers, stand in a row above the Khan river and are at their most beautiful in the last hour of light. At the Central Museum lies Paramara sculpture gathered from across Malwa, some of it carved in the very century that raised the palaces of Mandu; and near the old city the Bada Ganpati shelters one of the largest Ganesh idols in the country.
Then the light goes, and Indore sheds its formality altogether. The shutters come down over the goldsmiths of Sarafa, and in their place rises what is by common consent the finest street kitchen in India - jalebi drawn from the pan at midnight, garadu dusted in pepper, bhutte ka kees, sabudana khichdi, and a scale of sweetness that must be witnessed to be credited. Chappan Dukan, fifty-six shops along a single lane, keeps the same table by daylight. In the bazaars behind the Rajwada there is Maheshwari and Chanderi cloth, leatherwork, and namkeen weighed out by the kilo.
Beyond the city the Vindhyan escarpment breaks away at Patalpani and Tincha, both at their most theatrical once the monsoon has come. Indore has been judged the cleanest city in India for eight consecutive years, and it wears the distinction with an ease a visitor remarks upon within the first ten minutes.
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