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City on Lakes I walk past an alley near the Jheel Guest House just after an auspicious occasion. A cow has just given birth, a holy birth in the land where the cow is held as sacred. Her newborn calf has ended up stuck in a gutter at the side of the alley, and a crowd of people has gathered. A man braves the protective mother and uses a towel to grip the slippery calf's legs and pull it out of the gutter. The mother cow stands over her newborn, and both look worn out from the ordeal.
Street performing is alive and well in Udaipur. Click here to hear some Udaipur street musicians. In the shadow of an intricate set of arches next to Lake Pichola, a young girl walks gingerly along a tightrope. For an encore, she balances in a small hoop and rolls forwards and backwards along the tightrope to the rhythm of a dholak, a folk drum with animal skins covering both ends, which a man, perhaps her father, plays.
Udaipur is best known as the site of the lake palace used in the James Bond film, Octopussy. One menu is like the next here: many pages long, with an extensive selection that includes Indian, Chinese, Mexican and Italian fare. Includes -- the menu runs for pages and pages. I wander to the Natural View restaurant to meet Steve, a weathered, lean lover of the outdoors from the south of England. We have a leisurely breakfast overlooking Lake Pichola, which in many parts is covered with a green carpet of water lilies that were brought here many years ago as a gift, but have since multiplied to take over large parts of the lake, clogging many a boat motor.
Unsettled, windy, a mix of clouds and sun, choppy. Steve is a gardener from Weymouth, Dorset in England, and offers some tips for composting:
You can use newspaper to separate the layers. A larger compost pile is better, because it produces more heat and thus breaks down faster. One should surround the compost pile with four wood walls lined with plastic, with the bottom open to the soil and the top covered in carpet lined with plastic like the walls. A smaller pile should be stirred to mix it up every few weeks. Our leisurely breakfast has nearly brought us to noon. Steve is off to have a shave at a roadside stall, a great pleasure in India as long as you insist on a new razor. I opt for letting my facial hair grow, which draws a steady stream of requests to shave it from the numerous wooden shaving stalls and men seated at road's edge with an orderly selection of razors and scissors laid out on a cloth. The latter are one example of the enormous variety of jobs in India. Everyone needs to make a living one way or another, and if someone can't find a job, they will often create a job for themselves. Some people sit all day next to a scale, and offer to let you weigh yourself for a rupee. Others make their way from restaurant to restaurant with a straw whisk broom, clean under your table, and ask for a few coins. Some lay out a rusty selection of medieval-looking dental equipment; I suppose they pull teeth from anyone who will allow it. And these sidewalk barbers, giving a clean shave and a welcome respite from the morning routine for about a quarter. I rent a bicycle of the clunky, hardy Indian variety, the kind that can carry an entire family, and peddle off towards the Monsoon Palace, which straddles a nearby hilltop. As I ride out of town, the tourists thin out, then vanish outside of the occasional auto-rickshaw puttering towards the Monsoon Palace. Clunky, hardy India bicycles have only one gear, and are apparently not meant to be used to climb steep hills. After a mixture of riding and walking, I'm greeted by a hazy view of Udaipur and the surrounding countryside from a balcony on the Monsoon Palace. A Hindu family stops to take a photo with me.
Two Hindu men and I attempt to carry on a conversation, although we can't communicate much in the linguistic sense. They use a lot of body language when communicating with each other, body language I'll need to learn to convey my feelings in this foreign land. I feel a warm sense of humor in their efforts to surmount the language barrier. The view stretches hazy in all directions, lakes and desert in the distance. Pigeons, squirrels, the distant putter of two-stroke auto rickshaw engines struggling up the long hill. Dry plant growth. Brakes all the way on the ride back down for this hardy clunker. A woman at the side of the road carries an enormous bundle of wood on her head, enough to heat, cook, and live for some time. I ask to take a photo, an awkward need to preserve the moment. She stops so I can take her picture, and I give her some rupees for her trouble.
Every night in Udaipur, chanting, singing and general excited noisemaking can be heard from the Jagdish Temple, which sits atop a hill in the center of town. Click here to hear the chanting and noisemaking coming from another temple in Udaipur. By day, the stairway to the temple entrance is lined with all manner of people trying to catch your eye, offer an idea, or ask for a handout. Many are sadhus with years of physical and spiritual travel speaking to you through their eyes. The sadhu is an ascetic, a holy man, one who has renounced the societal connections of caste, money and authority, and seeks enlightenment. Sadhus often spend many years, the remainder of this life, on a pilgrimage from one holy site to another in their quest. They have a long tradition and are highly respected in India. Sadhus grow their hair and beard long, and so I am asked more than once if I am a sadhu. Few men in India other than sadhus have long hair like mine. Tonight, the stairway leading to the Jagdish Temple is mostly empty, but the sounds of evening puja, a term for prayer and worship, draw me up to the temple complex at the top. Inside the main temple, a group of devotees is chanting, singing, swaying and playing musical instruments to worship the God and Goddess of the temple. I notice that all of the women are sitting together on one side of the room, while the men sit together on the other. They welcome my presence. A man plays a harmonium, a small organ with a movable backboard that is pumped like an accordion to give rise to a wheezy, muted keyboard sound that weaves a lively backdrop to much Hindu devotional music. I somehow convey with body language that I think I could play something on the harmonium, as I play the piano and the connection seems obvious to me. But playing a harmonium involves a different kind of coordination between right and left hands than the piano, even more complex than rubbing your stomach while patting your head. The single-handed melodies move about in intricate patterns I'm not familiar with, and none of the melodies I begin to pick out resemble Hindu devotional music. In spite of that, my efforts are politely, if not enthusiastically, received. After an hour or so of ecstatic music making, the curtains are drawn in front of the altar. The temple priest brings out a small candelabra, which he moves in front of the curtained altar in the shape of the mantra Om. People ring bells and bang gongs to awake the God and Goddess, and the energy builds. It is time for darshan, the viewing of the deity. The curtain is opened, and the devotees file past to leave offerings for the deities. The offerings can be sweets, incense, garlands of flowers, or money. The offerings are blessed and then some are given back to the devotees. The evening's puja complete, we walk outside to the temple courtyard to put on our shoes. My hiking boots are nowhere to be found; apparently someone has made off with them. During the daytime, there is usually someone who watches the footwear of temple visitors, but not at night. Everyone takes an interest in my missing shoes and reacts sympathetically, but they don't seem to understand my feeling of loss. I interpret their reaction as my shoes are gone, so it's best to forget about them and move on. A few people offer me their slippers, but I decline, and walk back to my hotel barefoot and feeling humble. |
