January 15, 2016
Philip Ward wrote a great book, Rajasthan, Agra, Delhi: A Travel
Guide, in 1989. His descriptions of Rajasthan are lively and bang-on. Here are a few that resonated with me. The photos are mine.
On coping with India...
"India cannot be said to steal up on your senses gradually, like a morning
mist, but to assault you suddenly and frequently, like monsoon rains
interjected by lightning. I needed to
sleep long and undisturbed to cope with the flooding sensations from morning
till evening, and those who choose to remain unaware of creeping emotional
exhaustion may find themselves inexplicably wrecked, gaping with open mouth and
attention confused. For one thing,
hundreds of people will come up to you to see you something, show you
something, engage you in interesting conversation, or beg... . When you feel that India is whirling around
you like a hot tornado, just take a seat, like the Italian at Ratangarh, and
wait until tranquillity returns."
On eating...
"Around a rusty green tin table sat two middle-aged men in stained vests
and shirts devoutly shlurping their sweet tea in little glasses and scooping
little balls of rice into their open mouths like quick urgent postmen eager to
finish off their round by shoving the rest of their mail into the nearest
letter-box. … the two shovellers stabbed
up the last grains of rice from the tin plates, their long nails predatory as
curlews’ beaks. One burped in
appreciation of the wholesome fare, to show his host’s ample hospitality. The other attempted by facial and bodily
contortion to burp louder as an extra compliment but managed only a deep sigh." P. 121
On riding in motorcycle
rickshaws…
"I hailed autorickshaw DER 7587, being operated by a chatty,
fearless roadhog called Bijay Bhushan Sharma, clearly descended from one of
those invading families whose mission in life was to roar down upon defenceless
homes and lay them waste with the quickest and noisiest demolition
possible. I suggested that we might head
for Qutb Minar, and he accepted the challenge with the alacrity that Timur the
Lame’s generals might have demonstrated on being ordered to advance on the next
village, devastate, and loot. Past Maitreyi
College, along Satya Marg and the National Rose Garden we threaded our
backfiring way down Shanti Path, above the Railway Museum, tackling the Ring
Road with conquering fervour.
Open-sided, the three-wheeled menace gave me a high level of low-level pollution. Bijay roared past ruins and the tombs of
saints and warriors as though he personally took credit for all carnage. Even a dual carriageway of three lanes each
did not dampen his fiendish delight in overtaking anything that moved by a mere
hair’s breadth to show off his prowess."
P.5
On street sweepers…
"A
roadsweeper thrust a broom comically along the broken pavement in a vain
attempt to persuade specks of dirt to change positions with each other: they
just flew sadly up into the choked air and came to rest again where they had
come from. Waded past, weighed down on both flanks by bags of washing, above
which a near-naked boy of nine or ten guided his mount nonchalantly through the
raucously crowded street. …A
bullock …A stout Hindu lady swathed like
the inside of a laundry-basket scolded her sweating rickshaw-wallah as if he
were a lazy donkey. Rummaging in the
magical cotton folds on her voluminous lap, she drew out a red handkerchief as
if it were a conjuring trick. These
scurrying figures, jerking and swerving through the endless hustle, are the
heroes and heroines in their own stories and in nobody else’s: they move like
hunted animals in turbulent fear of digressions which might interrupt their
transient purposes. If they achieve
their aims, they will only start their worries off again tomorrow, adding to
the burden of their endless fate. …I,
who have lived long years with desert silence and soliloquy, find this
pandemonium endlessly distressing, like a wound. Yet it must be endured as an adventure…" P.24
"By the side
of the road a woman in an orange sari was sedulously sweeping fine dust from
outside her compound into the road.
Traffic roaring past would then whoosh it back to its point of origin:
she did not look up, but held her shawl over her face to protect her eyes from
the blinding particles." P.57
On dealing with rubbish…
"I was
standing with bits of orange peel in my hand. ‘You have rubbish bin?’ I
enquired diffidently, seeing no such receptacle. ‘Yes’, he nodded
fervently. I gave him the orange
peel. Bunched in his right hand, the
bits of peel suddenly flew out of the open doorway and into the street, where a
pig snuffled at them with gratification.
You wait outside a photo shop long enough, and the occupants will feed
you orange peel." P. 48
On Indian roads…
"A bus to
Jaipur was filling up with an incredibabble of sprawling passengers paying one
rupee for their eleven-kilometre ride, roughly one-twentieth of a similar fare
in Britain. A toothless lady who might
have been fifty sprayed betel juice from her crimson mouth into what might
loosely be considered a gutter, though there was in fact no difference between
the road and the ‘pavement’: all was potholed and uneven, spotted with cowpats
that would shortly be prised up for fuel.
I found a café with table and chairs where I could watch the cavalcade:
bullocks and sacred cows, horse-drawn carts and tempos, cycle rickshaws and men
of burden carrying on their head and back such cargo as a refrigerator and a
chest of drawers. The racket of shouts
and motorhorns was describable: Indian."
P.74
"A rally,
demonstration and procession organised by the Congress Party hoots noisily
past, with its cycle rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, brass band, and firework
specialists, letting off rockets in the middle of the road under the benevolent
or absent gaze of be-truncheoned policemen."
P.78
"Jaipur’s
city streets and ample bazaars, planned in1728 on the model of Ahmedabad, are
wide enough to allow Indian tumult its megaphonic apotheosis. Elephants of earlier centuries have by and
large given way to honking trucks and buses.
But buffaloes and sacred cows mooch in their splendid indifference from
one side of the road to the other, finding their own laggard way home at dusk
to sleep. Goats poke their noses into
gutters and piles of rubbish." P.90
"During my
visit the monsoons had failed for seven years, and cattle fodder was being
trucked to Western Rajasthan on grotesquely overloaded trucks which had to
drive only a foot off the left or right edge of the uneven tarmac roads to
overturn: on the way to Jaisalmer I saw several such disasters, massive beached
mechanical whales stranded and waiting for police or army assistance. The driving is not so much noisy or reckless
(though it is both) as central. These are no longer motorways or trunk roads,
but ribbons of asphalt, patched and holed like a tramp’s shirt, and as ragged
at the edges. So all vehicles, to avoid
snagging their tyres, try to drive in the middle of the road, and the greater
the truckload, the more vociferously and arrogantly you assume the crown. It only takes two such juggernauts to refuse
to give way, and both are inevitably sanded in, their wheels buried up to the
hubs. Accidents are frequent… ."
P.102
"The name haveli too is Persian, defining at least
in the Mughal period an aristocratic self-contained town house of fortress-like
dimensions, virtually closed from the outside except for a stout wooden
door. Life within revolved around an
open courtyard, with its own well and laundry space nearby, and a communal
‘playground’ for children in the open air but not risking their vanishing or
being hit by passing vehicles or animals.
Several small families or one or two large families would live in one haveli, which might be four or five
storeys high. An inner courtyard usually
protects the women’s quarters from prying eyes." P.102
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