Page 251 - Eye of the beholder

The street is not very crowded, with bullock carts seen in the far left where there is a crowd of people. There are two bulls in the centre foreground laden with goods and at the side are three men, of which one carries the parasol and next to this group a man is seated on the high platform fronting the rich merchant’s house. The rest of the houses bounding the street on one side apparently belong to the lower middle class as they are single storied and roofed with terracotta tiles. The sloping tiled roofs are characteristic of Bengal architecture, its shape determined by the material and the local climatic conditions, particularly the heavy monsoons. At the end of the row of the red tiled roof houses can be seen a building similar in style to the one in the foreground, perhaps the house of the merchant. Behind all these tiled roof houses rises the temple, which from its scale appears to be monumental and dominates the scene. The temple similarly has sloping roofs, a small upper structure similarly covered and crowned by a finial. On either side of the temple can be seen the tall coconut palms as well as the thick greenery of the foliage of trees.
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