As usual, the telling begins on the road. After a bit of investigation in Pushkar, I think that I’ve found a seat on a reputable tourist bus that should have cushioned seats, maybe some fans and will generally travel the short distance to Jaipur with relative ease and swiftness. As I soon find out, this hopeful assessment is decidedly optimistic. My first pang of worry arises when I arrive at the bus stop and am shouted at by the staff that I am holding up the bus’ departure – the proposition that I am making a bus late in India is difficult to comprehend; just seems impossible to me that any bus company could be that concerned about punctuality. The ulterior motive becomes clear soon enough. The bus is full mostly of an Indian tour group, with a few scattered non-Indians: a Dutch couple, an Israeli guy, a Korean girl and myself. My seat is in the way back, where each rock in the road has the effect of pressing a small ejector button on my seat. It is very hot (no fans), the seat does not recline at all and I am thinking unhappy thoughts. After a few minutes on the bus, we stop. For the moment I am happy simply not to be bouncing up and down, but soon I am wondering why the entire tour group is disembarking and piling into horsedrawn tongas, and why the few of us remaining are now driving away and then stopping again after a kilometer or so. Eventually the horse carriages arrive with their passengers, who then mill outside of the bus for a while only get back on the carriages and take off again. My bemusement turns to more genuine concern. Shouting abuses at the driver, who is clearly getting a kick out of the whole arrangement, I am informed of the obvious, namely that this is a detour for the tour group which we non-group members will have to suffer through; which we did, for another hour and a half before all of the stragglers finally came back. The wait is fairly maddening but also hilarious, especially when Ofir the Israeli, seeing that we were stuck, immediately decided to start smoking hash in the back of the bus. When you are the butt of the joke, its definitely best to laugh along. After everyone returns, I decide to at least try to find a better seat on the bus, since I noticed one with a reclining chair was unoccupied. The bus commander fellow (different from the driver) would have none of it, so I simply ask the man who had a vacant seat next to him and he was fine with it, and then took a shine to me when I trotted out my few broken Hindi phrases “Me vidyarthi hu” (I’m a student), “Me Pune me rhata hu’ (I live in Pune), reporting each new fact about me to his wife and daughter sitting in the seats in front of us. By the time we arrive in Jaipur, I have already shifted from traveler’s frustration to traveler’s wearied pleasure of survival and recollection, this new choice story tucked away in my collection.
I am staying with Andrea’s good friend Mia in her well-appointed flat. The heat is considerable already and when morning comes I don’t feel any pressing need to sally forth immediately to see more Rajput castles or temples, but I do get dragged out of the house in the afternoon to see a polo match at the local pitch, Rajputs being after all quite accomplished horsemen and Jaipur being not only the current capital of Rajasthan but also the former capital one of the more powerful Rajput princely states. The Polo field is really quite nice, and we sit in the stands next to the Maharaja of Banaras, who receives all kinds of obeisance from the flunkys that surround him. Its a proper match, with fairly accomplished players and even an announcer whose single tag line for successful goals is “and he makes no mistake about it”. I’m duly impressed.
I spend three more days in Jaipur, seeing the requisite sights – castles and havelis (mansions) and an old city painted pink by order of some monarch in the 19th century. These and other marks of the now marginalized (though apparently still existing in some form) local dynasty are worthy viewing, as are some of the more recent marks of the colonial period, which are not surprisingly in a bit better shape. Perhaps the most fascinating sight is an enormous house built for the women of the royal family to watch processions without going out in public. This is definitely a procession sort of town; the roads are wider and better maintained than anywhere I have been yet, even in the old city, where tiny alleys with multiple twists and turns are usually the rule. Apparently the old city was actually the result of some pre-modern urban planning, the effect of which is quite apparent.
The wide roads and long distances of this large and sprawling metropolis are grist for another bit of hilarity. On one evening, I accompanied some friends of Mia’s to a concert of Egyptian Sufi music. As Holi had just passed, there was some leftover bhang lying around of which we all partook. I haven’t totally pieced together the mechanics of bhang, which comes in small balls that look and taste a bit like chocolate candy (or else is mixed in lhassis) but it is clearly some sort of cannabis derivative, though for some reason it is treated quite differently here both juridically and culturally than more traditional renderings of the plant like hashish i.e. it is apparently not illegal and is even considered as normal fare for otherwise respectable folk to consume on occasions like Holi when a bit of rambunctious intoxication is called for. Anyway, I hardly need to invoke my “When in Rome” philosophy to justify partaking of such a delicacy, though I do feel reassured that my hedonism can be justified in the name of cultural experience – Sufi music is after all an exercise in ecstatic and emotional release, right? In any case, the concert is really excellent, lots of dancing and singing and amazing drumming. Sufism has always been close to my heart, and by the end of the show I am thinking of converting, or at least returning for further performances. The finale involves a man dressed to look like a woman with multiple skirts which we turns into dazzling discs of color by spinning rapidly. Sometimes standing, sometimes laying down, sometimes spinning one skirt, sometimes two (one above his head and one around his waist). The crowd at the open-air theater goes wild. By the time the show lets out, the bhang has all of us spinning like one of the skirts; my two companions are especially affected and decide that walking back from the theater to the road would be an ill advised journey, so I am sent on a mission to find a rickshaw, at which point the aforementioned roads of Jaipur take center stage; because, unlike most cities in India, rickshaws are just not that plentiful in Jaipur. The distances are so great and the roads so wide and the crossroads so few that there’s just nowhere for them to sit and wait. Anyway, I intrepidly set out to find us some transport but am easily stymied and distracted, so instead start talking to a young guy who can see that I look confused. I tell him that I need a rickshaw and we agree that none seem to be in the vicinity. An apparent impasse is sensed, to which he responds quite decisively by inviting me to hop on the back of his motorbike, assuring me that we will find a rickshaw without too much trouble. I’m a bit bewildered by this unexpected turn of events, but there’s really no way to say no and in any event I’ve been dying for a ride on the ubiquitous Indian motorbike. Off we speed into the Jaipur night, and soon a rickshaw is in our sights, though unfortunately it is traveling away from us, a fact which necessitates a considerable acceleration of our speed. The chase is on. We make up considerable ground, but before catching up to the rickshaw we spot another one parked on the side of the road. My new friend drops me off, I agree to an outlandish price for my return trip with the surprised rickshaw wallah and we are off again, with me screaming “jaldi, jaldi, mera dost bimar he” (quickly, quickly, my friend is sick), another memorable tale stashed into my pockets.
