Praneet Soi | Mashrabiya: Experimenter – Hindustan Road, Kolkata

The Queen refers to the tiles situated on the facade of the tomb of Miran Zain, the mother of Zain al Abedin, the 8th Sultan of the Shah Mir dynasty that ruled over Kashmir. This tile is unique in design and hard to pin down. In Western parlance, it is an egg-and-dart motif. To Soi, its four-petalled shape with an oval centre could refer to a lotus flower. It could also be an anthropomorphic form, although this is unlikely. However, all these possibilities have made this tile a site for rumination on the intertwining of form with history. In mediaeval times there was an accretion of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic motifs, leading to a rich visual language in the valley and the surrounding regions, such as Ladakh, all of which would have influenced the craftsmen that constructed it.