Hello all.
So, things have happened since my last post, and I now intend to divulge them, to the best of my ability. First a disclaimer: when traveling in a country still known worldwide for its high instances of waterborne pathogens, do try and take care when accepting glasses of the stuff from strangers, even if you are at an upscale joint such as a country club, officer's club, rotary club, bridge club, or otherwise. Make sure it comes from a bottle, or from a filter, and you can rest assured that you may just avoid spending 24 hours layed up in bed nursing fever, chills, and other such un-pleasantries. But that's jumping ahead, so let's start at the beginning.
I took the bus out of Delhi last Monday morning early; there was some mix-up with the tickets, and as such I was redirected to a second bus which appeared as if we just might have to get out and push at some point along the 6 hour stretch, with a motor in it that sounded eerily similar to a dentist's drill running haywire, located somewhere, by all probability, directly under my feet by the sound of it. However, due was made by me, and I popped in my headphones and read the paper and watched the parched Rajasthani countryside come into view. And it is parched right now, I saw two rather large dust cyclones as we drove into the desert, possibly 100 feet high or more; I was reminded of pictures I had seen of the Oklahoma and Kansas dustbowl during the Depression years in the states. This part of India is still hanging on the last precipice of time before the monsoon rolls in, which I have been assured by many people is due to arrive in the next week or two. As such, Jaipur is dustier even than I remember it, and sitting and having chai in the morning in the cool of a roadside stall there was one instance in which myself and a number other well-to-do Indian men have had to take shelter behind trees and whatnot as the wind stirred up a dust-storm that threatened the integrity of our milk and sugar water (with a little tea added in for flavor). But as Shukla has written elsewhere, most Indian chai demands a certain percentage of dirt in the mix to make it authentic as such, so it was really ok in the long run.
I arrived, and Raja Park is pretty much exactly how I remember it. Same people, same shops (excepting that Spencer's closed down), same dogs, livestock, etc. I was very happy to see all the trappings of South Jaipur firmly in their place: the roaming bands of garbage-consuming pigs running wild and free as they wish, the genital scratching monkeys on most every corner, the obligatory cows standing idly in the middle of the roads here, making for even more horn honking and whatnot. Gandhinagar looks as if it's been completely finished (there were bets being made on whether this would occur last summer), and the same rickshaw-wallahs are still having the same chai in the same stalls or under the same trees. To my surprise, I was recognized by quite a few people quickly off the bat, and it made me feel as if I had truly had a home here last summer, and will again this year.
The morning after I arrived, I was walking the lanes of Adarsh Nagar when I ran into my friend Rohit. Rohit is an interesting guy; he sold me a phone last year, and in true Indian fashion, before you could say hospitality we had had chai and biscuits together, and I met his wife and his son, and went to his house (if only the Verizon guys at home were this amicable). Rohit speaks very good English, and so we were able to communicate easily, which adds to the experience of course. I mean, I can speak an Anglicized version of caveman Hindi at this point, but not enough to ask you about your life story or anything. So when I saw Rohit I suggested chai, and we took his car to a place not far away. We talked for a while, and within about 5 minutes he had suggested that I accompany him to Punjab to see the Golden Temple and the Atari ceremony at the Indian/Pakistani border. I thought about it for a while, as he seems legit, but in the end I declined. Maybe next time.
Still, I took him up on an offer that evening to accompany him to the Indian equivalent of a country club, the Jai Club in a prestigious area of Jaipur. This turned out to be a good time, but was probably the reason that I fell ill--I assumed, country club = filtered water, but perhaps not so, turns out. Anyhow, the World Series of Cricket is going on right now, and so after a while spent lounging by the pool, we took a seat out on a vast lawn and watched a match, though I can't remember exactly who it was (I'm not the world's biggest fan of sports, but I try to be accomodating). Anyhow, Rohit had managed to smuggle in about three quarters of a bottle of cheap whiskey that he had stolen from his father's room earlier in the evening (the irony is that Rohit is 35 years old, a commentary on communal living I suppose), and proceeded to order a plate of food and some water and ice, and began mixing his own drinks unceremoniously at the table while the sullen faced waiters in white looked on disapprovingly. I would assume, though I could be wrong, that this type of thing is frowned upon in country clubs the world over. After a few polite "no's" I finally broke down and had a drink, which quickly turned into somewhere between 7 and 10--Rohit is a pretty persuasive guy when he wants to be. And he was doubling me for every drink--he can really put it away it seems. Then it gets sunnier. At some point, he decided that it would be a good idea to call his dad, who as it turns out, was drinking in the gambling hall upstairs, and so his dad came down and of course looked at his drunken son and his disheveled American friend with some distaste. But he joined us for a drink anyhow, and went on to ask me what was so great about America anyhow, and if Gatlinburg Tennessee would be a good place to vacation, and why it was that Indians were better at math and science than Americans were, and so on and so on. He also, in a fine display of his Indian-ness, drunkenly quoted some poetry at length (a piece by Amitabh's father, Medushala, which I knew), and sang a few bars of some quaint Bollywood film track from the early 1970's.
So, needless to say, we split the scene, as it was getting late and Rohit and his father were beginning to show some of the biological tendency towards competition inherent in all father/son relationships. As we left, Rohit shouted something at the waiter, to which the waiter responded despondently "Ok Sahab..". Rohit later told me that he had ordered the waiter to put all of our food and drinks on his father's club tab, which he found to be roaringly funny. I did too, turns out.
I was getting tired at this point, but Rohit was up for more action, and when I got out of the club the hot night air woke me up a bit, so we went drunkenly tearing around Jaipur in Rohit's car, thank Bhagwan for the lack of traffic. Rohit, turns out, has friends in high places, and a good friend of his is married to the princess of Jaipur. So we decided it would be a good idea to make a quick visit to Raj Plaza, a heritage hotel nearly 200 years old owned by the King of Jaipur at which Rohit's friend is the head manager (positions of privilege and nepotism exist everywhere it seems). The hotel is huge and beautiful, an old converted estate with massive lawns and stables in the heart of the city. Due to Rohit's influence, he didn't see fit to stop for the security guard at the gate (it's 2 AM now, remember), who cursed us as we passed at 40 miles and hour, and we roared into the driveway in a flash of dust. Rohit beamingly and grandly walked me up the steps to the heritage palace, commenting on this architecture and that, and entered the palace with much noise and commotion. Another security guard stopped us, and Rohit sent him away boomingly, so the guy told us to at least keep it down, this is a hotel for gods sake (well, he might not have said exactly that, my Hindi isn't that good). So we looked at the old pictures and artifacts and polo trophies and etc, etc, etc, which Rohit explained each of them to me in meticulous detail (an example: "This picture, yes it is very old, and the people in it are from long time ago").
Our evening coming to a close, we split and went for coffee, but the place was long closed and some poor bastard was inside washing up and Rohit spent like 10 minutes yelling back and forth, asking him what we could get at that hour, and the guy of course said we could get nothing, so we had just that and left.
So then Rohit dropped me off at my hotel, and I woke up the next morning and felt strangely ill, and by noon I was in the bathroom for 30 minutes at a stretch, and the other times I was sleeping or trying to sleep. I got about 20 hours sleep in the past 24 hours, no joke, and ate nothing, but my spirit isn't dampened, and today I feel a bit better, so much so that I had some chai and biscuits this morning and now am contemplating lunch if I can manage to get my ass up out of this internet cafe and walk somewhere in the heat, which I can do surely. So long kiddos, I head back to Delhi tomorrow and then look forward to April being here on Saturday night. If it's not readily apparent, I need her to keep me in check, and I love her dearly for it. More soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment