The editorial 'Crumbling heritage' (Oct. 21) was apt and timely. No doubt monuments and sites and works of art and craftsmanship are all material creations subject to deterioration, and to that extent the loss is tolerable. Unfortunately, however, much of the decay is caused either as a result of activities intended (wrongly) to improve the living conditions or the so called 'renovation' and 'modernisation'.

When I did research work for Ph.D. dissertation on wall-paintings during 1968-1973, I had located 193 edifices having extant remains of mural paintings, out of which 153 were in Punjab, 38 in Haryana and two in Chandigarh. Within a span of nearly 30 years half of these have perished due to various reasons, mostly by white-washing or marblising the walls and by fixing electric wires haphazardly.

KANWARJIT SINGH KANG, Mohali