Attempting to draw a portrait of the city, Akshay Singh Maksudpur - a cinematographer and historian collaborates with the portraitist and painter Mahesh Soundatte from Ichalkaranji to produce an album on the city of Patna.  Drawing from the Patna Kalam company paintings,  landscapes of the William and Thomas Daniell,  the urban studies of the painter Charles D'Oyly - they juxtapose the erasure of history overgrown by the urban sprawl of the city against historic depictions of the same vista from past depictions to document the fall of Patna into colonial hands.  

The creation of fictional scenes, scenarios and time travel in exceedingly beautiful watercolours take us into the intrigues of battles that played out in Bengal and Bihar in the 18th century.  The Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and Raja Sunder Singh of Tekari as the protagonists of these tempera gouache paintings stare into the ruins of present day Patna fort which is the old city from the vantage point of the Ganges.  

Through the collaboration between Soundatte and Maksudpur we build a visual dispositif of history hidden behind layers of colonial records through the forms of a painterly restitution of the narrative from those who conquered.  

Veerane Pe Kya Guzari.... - a phrase from a poem by Raja Ram Narain, the Subedar of Bihar in 18th century where he laments on the 'Defeat at Plassey', 1757 of the Nawab of Bengal by the East India Company. It translates to ' How does this desolate land fair?'  A poetic forewarning of how the British reduced Bihar to multigenerational abject, famines and a culture of violence for about three centuries after -- which is still mirrored in its present

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