How to read a Shekhawati wall

The top band is usually mythology, the middle is the family, and the bottom is whatever was new and astonishing when the painter was working — which is why there are trains, motor cars, gramophones and aeroplanes on 19th-century merchant houses here. Once you know the order you can date a facade to within a decade from the street.

Written from the verandah, with a cup of chai going cold.