Diwali greetings and exciting updates from the DHF!

Bhutanatha temple at the end of the tank, Badami. Photo by Surendra Kumar.

As we celebrate the festive season, which began with the grandeur of Dasara earlier this month and now leads into the vibrant Diwali festivities this week, our October newsletter shines a spotlight on Karnataka—where much of the Deccan Heritage Foundation’s efforts are focused. Wishing our readers a joyous and prosperous Diwali!

Prasad Balakrishnan. Photograph by Sagnik Saha / Courtesy Jayalakshmi Vilas Mansion.

We are thrilled to welcome our newest Board Member, Prasad Balakrishnan, to the DHF family. With decades of global leadership experience in supply chain management, procurement, and manufacturing, Prasad retired in 2023 from International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), Inc., a Fortune 500 leader in nutrition and fragrance. Read a short interview with him about growing up in Mysuru and his hopes for current and future DHF projects.
Q. How has Mysuru changed since you grew up there, and what do you miss about it?

PB: I don’t think the Mysuru of today is very different from 50 years ago. Sure, it has a few more traffic lights, but there is a certain intimacy and respect in the way people engage with each other, and a calmness to the city. I call it the “slowing of the heartbeat to the Mysuru rhythm.”
Q. What do you hope for in DHF’s restoration projects?

PB: I want to revitalise vibrant community engagement— restoring the sites as public spaces where people spend time, just strolling with one’s family, or sitting and reflecting for a moment. Also, facilitating local experts in history and heritage conservation, and stimulating local communities to find their own model for heritage conservation. I believe good restoration projects should drive economic opportunity in the region, creating a virtuous cycle of reinvestment and healthy growth.

The children were riveted while making their clay dolls. Photograph by Sagnik Saha / Courtesy Jayalakshmi Vilas Mansion.

Dasara, or Dussehra, is Karnataka’s state festival and is celebrated with great pomp, especially in Mysuru. To mark the beginning of the Dasara season, we hosted our first-ever event amidst the hustle and bustle of ongoing restoration work at the Jayalakshmi Vilas Mansion and Folklore Museum. This workshop was designed for children and was centred around working with natural clay. The young participants made dasara aane-ambari gombe, or carriage-bearing elephant dolls.

16th-century mandapa extension of the Vitthala temple complex, Hampi Vijayanagara. Photograph by Surendra Kumar.

In our new series on the DHF Instagram page we shed light on the Deccan’s remarkable carved heritage, exploring the significance—both grand and subtle—of intricate details and colossal caves featured in our various DHF publications. Ancient rock carvings across the Deccan form a rich and diverse trove of artistic tradition. It is often through these labour-intensive, sometimes weathered and broken carvings, that we glimpse how people ate, prayed, and bathed. These carvings offer a lens into dynasties, economies, mythologies, and traditions of eras long gone.