Abhishekams
In 1986, we had heard that a 350 year old Rukmini temple that exists on a private property in Nagpur was going to be demolished to make way for apartments. As young students of Architecture, we were bothered by this and decided to approach the Archeological Survey of India. They told us that they only protect monuments over 500 years old. I guess there were just too many for them to manage/protect. We then approached the owner of the land and after failed efforts to persuade him, we managed to take permission to document the temple, in case we were able to raise money to have it moved. So, we raised money to build a scaffold around the temple. We measure and figured out the geometry and all the sculptures were documented in pen and ink. During this process, we found some interesting facts about ancient stone construction techniques where stone was cut, dipped in oil, washed with milk, rinsed with water and thus conditioned for construction. Sometimes it is rinsed with citrus juice; per...