Great Oad (Architect) of Garhwal - Ghanna Mistry

Great Oad (Architect) of Garhwal-1
Ghanna Mistry (An Expert Stone Carver,Archetect and Builder)
By Bhishma Kukreti


If you are inhabitant of nearby 0f Kasankholi (Lainsdown Thaseel), you will know the creativity, expertise of Ghanna Mistry. If aware Garhwalis pay attention on the old buildings (kood) nearby their areas, they will be surprised that Garhwal has a specific style of vastu (Science of building the building). The building art of Garhwal has taken many shapes and style from other parts of India but the Garhwali Oads (artists and engineers of building the building) kept the specialty of Garhwali Shilp alive till date. Though all the following areas come under Himalayan region, the building art of building system of Garhwal, Kumayun, Kashmir, lower Himachal Pradesh, western Himachal Pradesh, Northern Himachal Pradesh and Eastern Himachal Pradesh differ from each other by many ways, especially shapes, stone, curvature, slanting and wood carving.

Even within Garhwal, each area has its own peculiarity of building art (art of building/vastukala). Most of the studies have been done on temples/famous old architectures of Garhwal. The Garhwali people should come out for exposing the photographs (outside and inside) of old buildings in their villages that the experts or learned people come to knowing the uniqueness and the differences of architectures of each area of Garhwal.

The area wise differences in architects of each regions of Himalaya or differences among the sub regions in art of building or architectures is because the differences of economical along with geographical needs of the area and the differences of imagination and implementing capacity of different architects.

Each area has its own great architects (oad). Ghanna Mistry is one of the famous architects of Kamankholi area in Lainsdown tahseel. Ghanna is experts of building TIBARI (a unique drawing or conference hall). Any body can differentiate tibaris built by other oads and the tibaris constructed and fabricated by Ghanna Mistry. Born in 1907 in Kaman Kholi village, Ghanna Mistry is an expert of mining and carving the stones of chajja, urkhyal, jaandur and mundal. People used to wait for months for Ghanna Mistry to start mining the stones from stone mines for various uses for their buildings.

Tibari construction requires various kinds of skills for a chief architect and artists of architecture as co-stone-carvers, wood-carvers and other architectural artists. Ghanna Mistry has the skill of constructing and carving the chajja, tibari, rabam, kup, teere, mor singad, urkhyal.

Mind, Ghanna Mistry like archetects are not educated persons who make sketches on papers. they sketch the outline and planning on mind only or some times sketch on stone by coal.

(Data are collected around 1986, and require further revision, 2/2/2009)