the first day i see none of this old stuff, arriving in the train station and descending into the arid air outside to be picked up by friends in an AC car. driving thru the newer stretches of the city that first day i saw only an affluent suburbia, the slums screened off by strategically placed rusty pink walls to hide any distressing sights from the tourist’s gaze, walls enlivened by happy drawings of camels and elephants, kings and courtesans, other images evocative of that rajasthan of romance, of fantasy. shopping malls, art emporiums, gift shops, craft centers appeared here and there along the wide avenues of the outer city, even so far from tourist central. lazy avenues, walled-off enclosures, broad roundabouts, quiet. from inside the AC car i felt like i had entered some dream world. where were the streets all chaos and crammed and erupting?
as my friend meena showed me into the home where i was staying, her aunt and uncle’s grand house of marble and upholstery that was impressive and formal with imitation western classics hanging the walls, faux greek statues, a grand staircase and outside a lush green lawn a gazebo and a driveway clogged with cars, i thought, this is the india that had been hiding from me, with its mercedes and swimming pools and slinky dresses. and here i had come with a suitcase loaded with salwar kameez for a state i had been warned off of as dangerously conservative, where BJP ruled and as recently as the 90s there were riots and controversies over satis n such. should i have come with my tight jeans and halter tops? sitting in some hip-grungy-cool hookah bar with a crowd of kids dressed just like the kids back home, jalapeno pizzas and coronas on the table, college-esque posters pasted across the walls, even dressed in the most western of my clothing i felt more than a little frumpy and funny.
(donkeys!)
but what was most striking on entering the old city was the rusty pink of all the buildings, synthesizing all the buildings new and old together into a single impressive whole. made all the more impressive by grand architecture surprising u with its beauty as well as its continued existence, and by the grid layout for which jaipur is famous, a city centered on a few long wide boulevards filled with the usual rattle of traffic and lined in arcades in which one finds the bazaars selling juti, bandej-decorated cloth formed into scarves saris bedspreads salwar kameez, lehengas, bangles, other local crafts, in the more tourist-oriented bazaars, and on those made more for the common man the basics like dried fruits spices pulses grains and whatever other wares might be necessary.
on the outside of the arcade painted the traditional white on pink are the names of these shops, in compulsory hindi designed to be more authentic or appealing or i don’t know what for the foreign tourist (formerly many of these signs were in english)... who can now admire the beauty, the wonder and mystical mystery of the devanagiri script, which unknown to them spells out such words as "gupta giftorium" or "rajasthan craft center". but i guess they have no need to find these signs readable, as they have guides and autorickshaw-wallahs to guide them, sometimes forcibly, to these places, not to mention the shopkeepers themselves in tourist epicenters like hawa mahal who are shameless in their attempts to have u into their shops, that stock in addition to the rajasthani specialties an assortment of the classic indian wares geared for the hippie (the slung bags in a patchwork of colors, t-shirts emblazoned with OMs, for example) or other tourists... for instance the pervasive selling of cozy kashmiri shawls an awful long way from the mountains.
(entrance to city palace)
at the center of the city, the city palace. the entrance gate is gorgeous, grand, but within it is somewhat less exciting than the gateway had gotten me expecting. some very pretty structures, but it felt more like a series of photo ops somehow than a historical place. the fresh coat of that jaipur pink with white highlights did not do any good either in making you feel like this place is actually as old as it really is.
(city palace)
one excitement tho was a kathak class being held in the diwan-i-am, the public audience hall, an open-air pavilion where the maharaja once received visitors of consequence as well as his own subjects. there, among the marble pillars and below some glorious chandeliers, some little girls struggling along with the jaipur-style kathak as entertained tourists looked on and snapped photographs. later on the kathak students would disperse and be replaced with the less-likely (as in, not so historically accurate, i don’t think) folk dancers whirling in circles around the floor, some intrepid foreign tourists joining in.
(kathak dancers)
some of the parts of the palace have been converted into very nice galleries, showcasing weapons, miniatures and manuscripts, and textiles. but most of the rest of the palace felt empty, unadorned. except for the gates in one courtyard painted lushly with peacocks, flowers, and ladies and gents of the court. there with these old images of human beings, creatures, plants, something colorful and alive.
(painting inside city palace)
(more painting from city palace, this from peacock gate)
another day we went museum hunting. the albert hall museum was closed for renovation, but we stood outside it for a few minutes admiring this creation. then we set off for the museum of indology, the project of the son of one artist and avid art collector, a dusty and incredible assembly of objects. located down some random side-street, the rickshaw-wallah had no idea what we were talking about when we wanted to go to this museum, as people only really seemed to know abt THE museum, albert hall.
but we spied a sign to the spot behind some bushes, and shortly thereafter arrived. with my foreigner ticket price came also a tour by the keeper of the collection himself. he led us first into a room of manuscripts, including an 11th century one that was up high on some shelf, he pointed at it but all we could see of it was the binding. there were also some samples of calligraphy, paper cut-outs, and old newspapers including one that he said was the oldest remaining sample of an indian newspaper, a copy of a rajasthani newspaper in hindi from the year of 1856. there was also a copy of the koran written by aurangzeb, an english translation of ain-i-akbari that had been presented to warren hastings, and letters with such writers and recipients as wajid ali shah, the last of the mughals shah bahadur zafar II, akbar himself... i asked what these letter were about and aside from the one to that last of the mughals (it was a marriage contract for his son) the guide did not know... proclaimed it a matter for research, for scholars who would come. he made this assertion numerous times, i just wonder when this team of knowledgeable folk will be arriving, and how long these resources will just sit around there in that dusty room waiting for attention. then he took us downstairs, where there was a collection of foreign-produced objects, owned formerly by the wealthy indians of jaipur. lamps, vases, boxes, statues, all higgledy-piggledy arrayed behind glass. in the center of the room was a collection of old paper currencies, from all over the world, from all times. then was the stamp collection. then he led us upstairs where there was a collection of folk paintings, jewellry, stone-age implements, architectural plans of palaces of rajasthan, religious statues (small, of stone), shoes, and tantra art. such a mass of objects that my eyes glazed over, my brain didn’t know how to absorb it all.
but the overwhelming-ness of that collection was far outdone by that of the museum of shri sanjay sharma, located in the old city down some little lanes behind the bazaars. here again, it was the son of the founders of this institute, bereaved of their other son in whose name the museum was dedicated, who gave us a tour. three floors of the building were covered ceiling to floor with miniatures and manuscripts and other object of art, from playing cards to board games to glass paintings. image after image, visually overwhelming. but most impressive of all was the top floor, where contained in steel almirah after steel almirah were thousands and thousands of manuscripts, which our guide’s daughter showed to us, throwing open door after door to expose to us endless of stacks of writings on everything from palm leaf to paper. waiting to be opened analyzed rediscovered... but so many untouched, unexamined, left to lie in these tall metal lockers. somehow seeing these left me both sad and stirred, for this material untouched, waiting.
(at jantar mantar, pointing at my sign)
we did go also to jantar mantar, an impressive astronomical observatory dating from the reign of sawai jai singh II, founder of jaipur and passionate watcher of the stars. sundials of all sizes, big medium small, and other clever devices for analyzing the travel of both star and planet across the sky. i wasn’t crazy about it tho.
(radioactive sheng in cafe kooba)
what else? afternoon teas and evening drinks at hotels like rambagh palace (run by the taj group) where jasmine floated in pools of water, perfuming the air, and waiters serve in polo uniforms at the polo bar. and at raj mahal palace, another hotel, less fine but more cozy, less calculated and clean. lunches at kooba cafe with that mmm jalapeno pizza the smell of hookah smoke and lounging couches. evenings at techno-luvin clubs followed by three am picnics on the hoods of cars and long drives into the sunrise, gray and gold over the burnt landscape. and in the midst of political violence and rioting in jaipur and its environs, including a one-day bandh that shut down the businesses of jaipur, a retreat into my hosts’ house, many a less-than-satisfying hollywood movie, many a slice of pizza, and an enforced rest from the chaotic busy-ness of my kolkata life. stranded as i was in a jaipur disconnected, its roads closed and trains cancelled, escapable only by plane, i had no choice but, for once, to chill.
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