Calcutta, Feb. 7 :    Calcutta, Feb. 7:  A leaning terracotta tower shaped like a dagger. A huge pile with an octagonal pinnacle overgrown with creepers reminiscent of Brueghel's Tower of Babel. A panel depicts the arrival of the steam engine. The darkened Prince Hall of Victoria Memorial came alive with these bright images in vivid colours as they were projected by George Michell to illustrate his McCutchion Memorial Lecture on Wednesday evening. It was meant to commemorate the 30th death anniversary of the man who had extensively documented over 12 years the terracotta temples of Bengal in the 60s when he took these photos. David McCutchion used to teach at Jadavpur University then. The clarity of the transparencies and their sparkling tints left the audience wonderstruck. One wished Michell had shown more of the photographs, particularly the ones taken in Bangladesh. In what state are the temples in now? There was no one there to answer that question. Michell, 57, who has done extensive research on Indian architectural history over the last 25 years and has several publications to his credit, did not retell the story of McCutchion's death in Calcutta at 42. Instead, he related how he became involved with David's unfinished work and the academic material he had willed to Robert Skelton, then curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Before McCutchion's death in 1972, he had already won a grant to carry on his research. Though Michell knew little about Bengal terracotta temples, in 1975 Skelton chose him to continue the research as his specialisation was Early Chalukya architecture. In 1978, he began his work in right earnest. He stretched the funds meant for a couple of months over three years and travelled extensively in Bengal districts and Bangladesh. McCutchion had already classified the temple architecture. As Michell says: 'Others like Hitesh Ranjan Sanyal, Pranab Roy and Amiya Bandopadhyay had done some documentation. McCutchion, often accompanied by Tarapada Santra, was the first to do it systematically through all of Bengal. He travelled extensively by bicycle, by local train and on foot.' The passion had developed from an amateur weekend interest. He had documented 1,620 temples, most of which 'don't exist bureaucratically', and took 15,000 photos. All the academic material is now in the custody of the Victoria and Albert Museum. However, he had not done an extensive survey of sculpture. Michell selected key monuments from his archive, made drawings of architecture and sculpture and verified dates. What was missing from the archive was the map, without which it was impossible to locate all the temples. But a CPWD engineer had already done the mapping. Michell chanced upon Shambhunath Mitra, who admired McCutchion's temple monograph, in National Library. 'This gave geographical precision to David's work.' When Mitra followed in McCutchion's footsteps, many temples were already derelict or had been vandalised, but he marvelled at the man's measurements 'correct by half-an-inch.' Mitra has documented them in black and white. This collaboration resulted in a 1984 compendium of articles and visual material titled, Brick Temples of Bengal: From the Archives of David McCutchion. The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences has inherited Sanyal's photos. Soon, the Centre for Archaeological Studies and Training, Eastern India, will bring out a commemorative volume on McCutchion and Sanyal. As the well-attended lecture proved, McCutchion lives on in our memories.