Hoping for some exercise, Ami slipped out the door and took in her surroundings. A wide front yard with sprawling trees, then a long stretch of flat road. She couldn’t see either end, so she started jogging easily to the right, relishing the emptiness. No one was around—just house after large, seemingly empty house. After a half-mile, Ami decided that she was heading away from any semblance of a town, so she turned and headed back the other way, passing her still-sleeping guest house, and trying to note her distance. An older man, head wrapped in a thick wool scarf but legs bare under his dhoti, gave her a disapproving glare and she slowed her jog to a walk.
The quiet street let out onto a busy thoroughfare, where a swell of scooters and motorcycle rickshaws was already gaining momentum. Ami found a tea stall cozied up to a tree along the road, and hunkered down on one of the makeshift benches with the small group of men already sitting there. They each stared at her, but no one spoke a word.
“Chai,” she said to the vendor. “Ek chai.”
He grunted, pulling his hands from beneath his sweater vest and poured hot tea into a glass. Ami handed him several rupee coins, which he pocketed with a nod.
The chai worked wonders. Hot and sweet, it seemed to make its way into her core, soothing her fears and misgivings, warming her to the idea of the day, of the untapped possibilities. She tossed back the hot liquid, returned her glass, and took off purposely toward the guest house.
Dev was tinkering with the Ambassador in the driveway. “Already up?” he looked surprised.
“Just out for chai,” Ami told him.
“You take chai in the kitchen,” he pointed toward the dining room where Ami had endured the mediocre dinner. His brow creased with concern.
“I like the chai stalls,” Ami told him. “Don’t worry, I can look after myself.”
He half-smiled. “You are taking breakfast, and then we go Junagarh.”
She looked confused.
“Very nice fort of Raja Rai Singh. You are taking camera, make some nice photo.”
Sight-seeing. Dev was turning out to be a not only a driver but a tour guide as well. Ami nodded and went off to get ready.
(image from www.slochai.com)
Even in the winter, the desert turns hot in the daytime. Earth bakes into dust, and out across the expanses of land people toil under the sun. It seems that no one would live so far out, half a day’s drive from the nearest town, but people do. It’s impossible to drive more that a minute or two without seeing signs of human life. Along the road, small groups of pilgrims move, one of them carrying a pole with a white flag. And off in the distance, a man drives a camel. Brown earth, brown camel, brown man, bright turban of red, pink and gold wrapped around his head.
The women, too, wear their colors. Wide skirts of red and green, cholis of yellow or purple, and half-saris spanning their torsos with vibrant hues of magenta and chartreuse. Perhaps that’s how their men recognize them—by the colors of their saris. The people cover themselves in the colors that the desert doesn’t provide—otherwise their eyes would starve for longing.
But there is color. In the resplendence of the mustard fields, in the sudden oasis of a water hole where sleek black water buffalo sink into the mud, in the shrines dotting the countryside: white and orange.
(image from www.exotic-tour.com)
The Fort proved to be a monolith of pink stone, complete with a moat and a palace with courtyards, balconies, and towers. Ami trailed after a group of what appeared to be Rajasthani villagers, pointing her camera out at the gardens now and then. She marveled at the arched doorways, carved lattice and ornate elephant litters, then distracted herself from a vicious-looking weapons display by watching two village men unwrap and redo their pink and red turbans. They wound the lengths of fabric at impossible angles, from the crown of the head to the right ear and then back to the left ear, leaving a tail trailing down the back.
Other young men, perhaps city bred, watched Ami, winking when they caught her eye. She laughed inwardly, thinking that she was a good decade older. They looked for their reflections in antique mirrors, pulling combs from their back pockets to arrange their shiny black hair, vainly tucking their shirts into slacks, gold studs flashing in their pierced ears. They were as beautiful and as vain as girls, except for their feet, which had somehow been overlooked. Wide brown feet in rubber sandals, thickly calloused and often cracked.
Passing by the lattice-work balconies where the women of the palace had lived, kept in purdah their whole lives, witnessed the goings-on of the palace, Ami tried glimpsing through a narrow opening. If she pressed her whole face against the marble, she could see a section of a courtyard. Mimosa trees, papery bougainvillea flowers and still pools. Her lips were dry, reminding her she was in the desert, and no matter how cool the temperature, she’d better ask Dev to stop for bottled water.
Down one hallway she found herself in a wash of color—light filtered through yellow bottle-thick orbs of glass—another purdah curtain. But amidst all the pink stone, the color was welcome. She trained her camera on the amber hallway and snapped a shot.
The morning had warmed significantly—enough to necessitate peeling off her fleece—when Ami left the fort and made her way back to the Ambassador. The parking lot, by then, was crowded with the bulbous black cars, as well as tour busses and minivans. Dev was waiting in the sun, talking to another man. They leaned toward each other as if they were sharing a secret, the man’s arm around Dev’s waist and Dev’s arm draped across his friend’s shoulders. When Ami approached, they slid apart a little.
“Madam,” Dev announced jovially. “My good friend Raja.” He said it like goodfriend, all one word.
Raja stuck out his hand, and when Ami took it, he simply held hers limply for a moment, as if he knew the gesture of shaking, but had no use for the act itself. “Madam,” he said. “How do you like my country?” He gestured broadly.
Ami wondered if he meant the actual countryside around them, and if, indeed, it was, in some way, his, or if he was referring to the whole of India. “Fine,” she answered lamely.
“You are English?”
“American.”
“Oh, very nice. California? New York.”
“No, Philadelphia,” she replied.
He looked disappointed. “My cousin-brother is living LA,” he offered. “Many many movie stars.”
“How do you know Dev?” she asked, to avoid the movie star conversation, a subject on which she was grossly under-informed.
“We are driving same route,” Dev explained. “Many years now, driving tourists in Rajasthan.”
“So Rajasthan is your specialty?”
“Yes, exactly,” he answered. She’d meant it as a joke, but obviously he took her—and the comment—quite seriously.
“So, where next?” she asked breezily.
“You are visiting Rat Temple?” Raja offered.
Ami looked quizzically at Dev, who explained, “This temple is some miles outside of the city. Very special temple where devotees make offerings to the holy rats.”
“Holy rats?” She didn’t like the sound of that.
“So many!” Raja informed her. “You cannot believe! And so large!”
“Please, not the rat temple,” she turned to Dev, almost whining. She wasn’t ready for that much of a cultural experience.
“Okay, okay,” he waggled his head. “We are going to Jaisalmer. This is very long drive, so we are leaving soon.”
Ami settled into the Ambassador’s lumpy back seat, wriggling her butt into a comfortable sag, readying herself for more hours of bumpy roads and exhaust fumes.
(image of the Rat Temple from rtwshoestring.blogspot.com)
Flying over the potholes, Rajasthan opened on all sides. It was not a place so much as it appeared on the map—the jagged western corner of India—but a concept. An idea of long-lost kingdoms, regal princes and mysterious queens secreted away behind locked doors. A dream of mogul rulers who built lakes and floating palaces on the dry earth. A last romantic hold out.
For no logical reason, men set up brick factories in the middle of nowhere. In their lungis and sandals, they dug the clay and pressed it into blocks. Then they fired the bricks in tall kilns, sending the smoke into a relentlessly blue sky. The finished bricks were stacked in walls that snaked along the boundaries of a boundless land.
Small houses and baked mud huts popped up here and there, in the middle of a mustard field or a broiling sweep of land. Women worked tirelessly to carve a living from the dust, children played with whatever they could find. In a fraction of time, just enough for a snap-shot, a man lifted a charpoy from in front of his small home—too small for a window against darkness—and moved toward his brother who waited just a couple yards away. There were no crouched women in the picture, no children with hair knotted by the wind and sand. Before the man could even lift his eyes to the blue ceiling over his life, the car sped past, sweeping the only witness away.
(image from www.worldtravelreports.com)
It was midday, or sometime after a Leonard Cohen tape and a Fleetwood Mac double album, when Dev pulled into a rest stop and Ami peeled off her earphones. The rest stop was a far more elegant version the ones she was used to along the freeways at home. This was a large building—sandstone, perhaps, painted a cheerful yellow. Poles along the perimeter boasted colorful flags, and a tall stretch of wall secured a grassy courtyard.
What is this place?”
“Restaurant, madam. You are taking some lunch?”
Ami slid out of the Ambassador and stretched her legs, then wandered toward the entrance, a long, cool hallway leading into the main building. To her right she spotted the washrooms, and ducked inside, happy to find the toilets were the western variety. That was always a treat—though so far Dev had veered away from anyplace featuring the traditional squat toilet and the ever present water tap and bucket at hand-level. Admittedly, she did feel guilty using toilet paper, knowing it wreaked havoc on the India plumbing systems. But she tried not to think of it too much as she shut herself into a stall.
A few moments later, washing her hands, Ami noticed a small woman wrapped in a faded sari standing by her elbow. She turned off the tap, and the women instantly produced a folded triangle of paper. Ami took the bit of towel, dried her hands and looked at the woman again, who was holding out a cupped palm expectantly.
Oh, Ami thought, feeling stupid. She found a couple rupee coins and handed them over, but the luxuriant courtyard, the bright flags and the western toilet suddenly made sense. This was, in affect, a tourist trap. This place was set up so drivers could stop off with wealthy European and American fares. And probably Dev got some sort of kick back for bringing his clients here.
She wasn’t surprised to find the menu to be expensive, once a thin, haughty waiter had seated her at a sunny table. Ami ordered dhal fry, a chapatti, and an overpriced bottle of water, then looked around. A German couple was plowing through a heap of pillau, and a table of French travelers, all in elegant, upper class trekking wear, were slurping lassis through straws.
Suddenly, Ami felt lonely. She looked around for Dev, but he was nowhere to be found. Probably out back lounging on a charpoy with the drivers of the Germans and French. Probably comparing their fares, laughing about the silly westerners and their aversion to squat toilets and tap water.
A peacock strutted across the grass, dragging its long tail. Ami wondered what the hell she was doing.
It was one thing to visit India as a student, safe in the company of classmates, no matter how annoying the group dynamic became. Travel was made for the young, for people with no sense of time, responsibility or financial obligation. Students with their parents’ credit cards and several hundred dollars worth of traveler’s checks, which looked like a pile of Monopoly money.
It was probably just fine, too, to travel as a wealthy person on holiday. Just to pop in to a country for a week or two, have an exotic experience, then jet on back to business as usual.
But to work and save, planning the journey out for more than a year, all based on a dream of temples, incense and mogul palaces gleaned from books and movies… and then to tear away from life, from routine, hoping that it would all still be there to return to… that was an altogether different situation.
The food came, piping hot, but otherwise fairly bland. Bland, of course, so as not to offend the western palate. Ami ate, sliding chunks of chapatti through the butter-drenched lentils, and then she paid her bill, leaving a tip though she wasn’t sure if that was protocol.
Dev reappeared out of nowhere, standing by the car. “Nice place?”
“It’s a tourist place, Dev.”
“Yes. Good, clean for you.”
She nodded unhappily and folded herself back into her seat, sinking back into daydreams and miles of dusty desert road and the vastness of space, sky and silence.
(image from www.slstourist.org)
Just before the sun set, Dev stopped at a grove of trees along the road. They were in the middle of nowhere. At first, Ami thought he had to pee, but that would have been out of character. They weren’t familiar enough with each other for Dev to show signs of having bodily functions. She never saw him eat or seek out a bathroom, and she had no idea where he slept. In the car, perhaps. He spoke rarely, and those times with his brow so furrowed Ami hated to prolong the conversation for fear of adding to his burden of worry.
But when Dev climbed out of the car, he gently opened her door for her and motioned that she should follow. Through the trees, they climbed a rocky path onto a ridge, and there lay a small lake. It appeared perfectly round, and still. The path led to a diminutive shrine, far too small for a human being to go inside, but other visitors had left offerings of marigold flowers and coins. Ami left a five-rupee coin and looked back at Dev, who nodded approvingly.
“Now you are ringing bell,” he pointed to the copper cylinder suspended overhead. Ami pulled the rope, and it chimed, ringing out over the water.
(image from http://farm2.static.flickr.com)
She didn’t love him in that moment. It wasn’t that easy. She didn’t even turn to look at him, to notice the clean line of his jaw, his handsome brown eyes, the set of his shoulders. But she did see his hands. Strong brown hands, clean under the nails. It wasn’t like they bumped hands and then moved shyly away, she just happened to notice. Nice hands is what she thought. It wasn’t about attraction.
And later, much later, when they’d finished two King Fishers and an embarrassing amount of whiskey sneaked into a restaurant’s garden in Udaipur, she noticed again. The hands, as if they were disconnected from him. Strong hands, helping her up, guiding her into the twist of the streets, into the dark heart of yet another city.
“Madam, you must be careful.”
“Sir, I think it’s your job to watch out for me.” She erupted in a fit of giggles over his insistence on niceties after they’d spent the evening drinking, shoulder to shoulder, in some restaurant apparently frequented by collegiate travelers and upper middle-class Indians on the make.
They were caught in the beams of an on-coming rickshaw, and he pulled her up against him as it hurled past on the narrow street.
He smelled like aftershave, and alcohol, and incense.
Their faces were so close she could count his eyelashes, even without the aid of a street lamp.
“It is late,” he was saying, but it didn’t mean anything. For in reality, it had been too late for some time. That’s how it goes, she thought to herself. By the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already pretty much happened.
(image from www.designsbyrylee.com)
The first real problem came in Jaisalmer, when Dev ushered Ami into a high priced guest house overlooking the town. She balked at the rates and fled to the car. Undaunted, Dev continued on, trying a newer place, complete with a restaurant, which was in the right price range, but didn’t offer hot water.
“Is there anywhere else?” Ami asked, feeling frustrated, hungry, and ready to be off the road. Dev pulled into a seedy hotel at the outskirts of town. A group of men, all with slicked back hair and greasy undershirts, crowed on the steps spitting pan into the dirt. They followed Ami with their eyes as she made her way to the door. Right away, she didn’t like the place. The desk clerk, a paunchy man in polyester slacks, showed her to a windowless room with a soiled bedspread. “500 rupees only,” he announced. A man peeked out of the room across the hall, grinning to reveal a mouthful of bad teeth.
“No way,” Ami told Dev. “That place is horrible. I bet it has rats.”
Dev looked offended. She decided not to care.
“These men are staring at me, leering as if they have no manners. What’s the matter with them? And why should I pay 500 rupees to sleep on a dirty bed?” Ami was getting worked up. Why should she care if this was his friend’s place or his cousin-brother’s or whoever? It was dirty, and full of seedy men. She wouldn’t sleep there.
“Which place, madam?” Dev asked stubbornly.
Ami stalked back to the car and fished her guidebook out of her pack. Flipping to Jaisalmer, she read off the name of a few guest houses that struck her fancy. “Deepak Rest House? Hotel Paradise? Hotel Chandra Niwas?”
Dev shook his head. “These places are inside fort.”
“So?” She’d read a bit about the fort. Wasn’t that sort of the point of going to Jaisalmer?
“Car is not going into fort. Only by motorbike or by foot.”
“Oh.” She suddenly understood.
Dev seemed to register her disappointment. “No problem. I am driving to fort entrance, and calling motorbike to take you. Then I am returning to meet you in the morning.”
“No, it’s okay.” She made up her mind. “We’ll stick together. Just a nicer place, okay? Somewhere not like this.”
“Okay? No problem.” Dev opened her car door for her and she got back in, determined to be a bit more accepting.
They tried the Centerpoint Guest House, a place claiming to be family-run. It was a little further from the fort, and located down an especially sandy road, but the rooms were clean and promised hot water from 7am to 10am.
“Madam, I’m picking you up at 8 o’clock. Many things to see tomorrow,” Dev announced once Ami’s bags were stowed in her room.
“So early?” She knew she sounded like a spoilt child.
“Okay, okay. Eight-thirty.”
Arun Chodary leaned back in his chair, surveying the scene. A group of western girls—college aged—chattered to each other across the room.
“English?” he asked his companion. “Canadian?”
Dev turned to look at them. They wore long skirts paired with lose kurtas and the hiking shoes favored by Americans. But he only shrugged.
“Tell me about this one you’re driving. Is she wealthy?”
“Not like most of them. Not a backpacker, but not with money to throw around.”
Arun nodded. “Is she good looking?”
Dev sighed heavily, and smiled at his friend. “You can see for yourself tomorrow when you give her the tour.”
But Arun wasn’t really listening. One of the girls had caught his eye. She was blond, her hair tumbling down her back in a loose ponytail. Arun flashed his straight-toothed grin, and she turned back to her friends giggling.
“Perhaps I’ll give a little private tour this evening,” he said, low, to Dev. “Shall we meet up later for drinks?” He checked the gold watch at his wrist.
“No, I’m tired. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Eight-thirty?”
“Nine o’clock,” Dev revised the plan. “She’s not an early riser.”
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