Udaipur, Day 12

Another morning, but this one different. This one wholly of Rajasthan, of the desert, of a majestic place. Morning rises up over Lake Pichola in striated shades of cream, the colors of Indian sweets destined for the temples.

Udaipur is new in the morning—perhaps like everywhere, but somehow more so. It begins the day washed clean, a fresh canvas waiting to be imbued with all the romance, the dreams, the mystery the city holds. Buildings slowly gain definition, pulling their shapes free of the pre-dawn mist. A single palm finds its reflection in the lake’s smooth surface.

Above the old town, Jagdish Temple is most vivid, first to receive the morning light, almost too solid against the backdrop of watery hues and surreal shapes. All the buildings of the market fan out in an array of pastels—yellow, pink, blue, white—like castaways from other Rajasthani cities.

And far beyond the grip of Udaipur’s tangled streets, the Monsoon Palace sleeps on its hilltop, barely visible between mist and sky, out of reach of the sun’s rays for a few more minutes.

Everything is held in its place, on the verge of shimmering for the want of the day, and then the sun burns its way up from behind the dome of a hill. Sky goes orange then blue in a breath. No vultures circle, the road around the lake is suddenly occupied by a flurry of bicycles, the dobi walahs appear at the water’s edge with their burdens of laundry.

By the time the sun has gained footing in the sky, the shallows of the lake are crowded with boys beating clothing into submission. They work soap into fabric, their arms and backs straining, and then swing the cloth onto the rocks with a loud smack. Fabric opens and fans out in the water, floating over the murky surface. Somehow the beating and then the drying, spread out along the ground under the hot sun, bleaches the clothing back to white, despite the tainted water.

The day has a rhythm of its own—slow at first, almost imperceptible, but gaining speed as the earth heats up and people wake into the busyness of their own agendas. But there is a moment—a few moments—where all motion hangs in the balance; a breath held. And the watcher of sunrises could part the day with a broad stroke of her arms, cracking the city open, splitting the temples and drinking the confluence of prayers.


(image from www.ashepherdsbushmaneatsfromacan.co.uk)

Adil Nasim took his time with watering the garden. He let the water fan out over the lawn while he stretched, flexing his shoulder and back muscles in case the new guest was looking. If he turned slightly to the side he could see her on the screen porch, reading a book, her hair pushed back from her face with a pair of blue-lensed sunglasses, her legs kicked out in front of her, bare feet propped up on a chair.

He’d noticed her when she arrived the night before. She came with Dev, who usually brought his fares to Adil’s family’s hotel, but this particular girl was different. She traveled alone, carried her own bags, asked only for a bottle of water, complimented Adil’s brother, Rafiq, on the tidiness of the room. “It’s perfect,” is what she told him.

“What’s she like?” Adil had asked. “Pretty up close?”

“She’s okay,” he told his younger brother. “Not your type, though. Too old for you.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know, maybe thirty.”

Rafiq did know, of course, because he’d taken the information from her passport when he checked her in. But ever since the responsibility of the hotel had fallen to Rafiq, he’d become annoyingly proper, and discreet.

“They say older American ladies—” Adil started, but his brother cut him off with a sharp look and sent him to rake the lawn.

There weren’t many others in the hotel, not during the slow season, especially considering they were located off the beaten path. Not in the old city, but across the lake along the fairly quiet stretch of Rani Road. There was an English couple, older and very particular staying on the back side of the hotel because they couldn’t bare the noise of the road, the dhobi wallahs and the prayers floating over the lake in the morning. And there were a few Indian businessmen, but they were content to boss the waiters and hang around the bar when they weren’t racing off to meetings in hired rickshaws.

Adil used to help with delivering the breakfast trays, extra towels, opening stubborn windows and fussing with the ceiling fans, but ever since he’d needed a daily shave and had developed visible pectorals, Rafiq had found other jobs—outdoor jobs—for his younger brother. Especially when there were single women on premises.

He finished another sweep of the garden with the hose, then turned the water off and allowed himself a glance toward the porch. She was talking to someone. Rafiq. He was sitting on a chair across from her, the one she’d been resting her feet on. She was smiling, even laughing at what he said, leaning toward him with her hand cupping her chin.

Adil wrapped the hose haphazardly, threw it in a heap and crept up the back steps so he could hear what they were saying.

“I want to see the city palace,” she told Rafiq, in a low, confidential voice. “But do you think I should pay the fee for a guide?”

“Only if you can find one with good English,” he admitted. “No, forget I said that. City Palace is magnificent. You must see it. Yes, go with the guide—you will learn more, even if his English is poor. But don’t hire a guide outside the Palace—this is a scam. Only the ones working inside are for real.”

She thanked him and he waved her thanks away with a grand gesture. “It’s nothing. Shall I go call your driver?”

“I don’t want to bother Dev,” she told Rafiq. “Maybe I’ll take a taxi.”

Adil walked in, trying to look casual. “I’m going to town soon, Madam. I can give you a ride on my motorbike wherever you like,” he offered.

Rafiq didn’t even make eye contact with his younger brother. His voice remained fluid, warm. “I am knowing Devesh for many years,” he said. “I’m sure he is happy to drive you any place you like. I’ll go speak to him straight away.”


(image of the Lake Palace Hotel from www.theodora.com)

Ami looked out across Udaipur from a balcony of the City Palace. In the sun, it was warm enough for her to peel off the cardigan she’d been wearing and tie it around her waist. She’d chosen a long cotton skirt—at home she called it an Indian skirt, but since she’d been in India she’d only seen them on other travelers—and her sandals. It was, perhaps, the dressiest outfit she’d worn so far, but hardly did justice to the magnificence of the palace, its ornate rooms and luxuriant courtyards. Not to mention the Indian tourists, especially the women, who promenaded through in gold-threaded saris and kameezes of silk. Next to them, Ami felt downright slovenly.

From the balcony, she escaped her tour group for a moment and surveyed the market that spread around the Jagdeth Temple. She looked for Dev, but couldn’t quite see the parking lot where he’d promised to meet her. “Two hours,” he’d said, but she’d lost track of time.

Dev had been amenable to driving her to the Palace, but he’d only shaken his head when she asked him to be her tour guide. “I am not knowing this place,” he told her. “Shall I arrange a good guide for you?”

But she told him she’d pay the fare inside and follow along on one of the many daily walk-throughs. And she was glad she’d come, even though she had a hard time hearing the guide, understanding his rapid and clipped English. It didn’t really matter. She’d bought a packet of postcards, each with a far better photo of the Palace than she could have managed with her camera. And, in truth, she was glad just to be around other people, moving in their company for a period of time. It felt like too long since she’d been part of a group, had known her place, her direction, what was expected of her.

At the end of the tour, she was ushered into a garden of sorts with refreshment stands, souvenir shops, and a strange collection of medieval torture devices. From there, she wound around the perimeter of the garden, looking for the Ambassador. There were most of a dozen cars, exactly like Dev’s, in the car park.

Dev waved when he saw her coming, asked how she’d liked it, accepted her “oh, just fine,” without argument.

“Where now? Sight-seeing? Monsoon Palace?”

“You know, Adil told me he could take me to the Monsoon Palace,” Ami told him.

Dev looked worried. “I think this is very bad idea. Adil… he is having thoughts…”

“What sort of thoughts?” she asked innocently.

Dev darkened slightly. “He is only a young man. Still a boy. It is not proper for American lady to go off with an Indian boy.”

“Oh, but every day I’m going off with you,” she said lightly.

He didn’t seem to see the humor in her remark. “Please, Ami—”

“Oh, I’m only joking. I wasn’t really planning to go off with that Adil, and especially not on that scooter he drives.”

Dev was visibly relieved.

“No more sight-seeing, today,” Ami continued. “Let’s go get some lunch. Can you take me somewhere for South Indian food?”

He thought a moment. “You like masala dosa?”

“I don’t know, never had it. Let’s just go some place you like.”

He opened the car door and she slid in, pulling the wide fabric of her skirt after her. For just a moment he caught a glimpse of her pale calf, and something in him twinged like an electric shock had run through his body. Only not wholly unpleasant. He looked at her again, at her brown hair falling over her shoulder, the graceful curve of her chin, the narrow torso suggested through a black t-shirt, the small, round biceps where her sleeve ended. She turned, her silver earrings swinging and flashing in the sun, and caught his eye.

“Dev? You okay?”

“Yes, only thinking.”

“Of what?”

He paused, wondered exactly what it was he’d been thinking of. “Only where to eat, Ami. Best masla dosa in Udaipur.”


(image of the Monsoon Palace from www.cache.virtualtourist.com)

After Emily, the English girl, there had been others. Few and far between, really, but there had been moments of unbridled lust, if not actual emotional intimacy, with other foreigners. He wasn’t immune to the charms of Western women, didn’t claim, like some of his proud Indian friends, that no woman was as beautiful as an Indian woman. Lying bastards, he though in the back of his mind. These men who pointed to Saraswati, Sita, Pavarti, even Radha as classical examples of Indian beauty. The humble, placid female. Elegant, refined, well versed in poetry, music and art.

But what about the wives of these men, claiming to revere India’s lovely daughters? The wives, left at home, stout with another child, invisible in the markets, the restaurants, the dance clubs.

Not that he really dwelled on it. Dev had no problem with Indian women, didn’t chase white flesh like other men he knew. He’d been introduced to plenty, even dated now and then. Every time he visited his mother, she had a tea party and there they were. I’d like you to meet Lalu or Nimola or Shanti, she’d say, ushering in her latest choices for her son.

And his sister was forever playing matchmaker, too. There was Prema, the med student, Padmini, the aspiring actress, Aisha with the heavenly singing voice. How many arranged meetings had Dev suffered through, one of his sister’s single friends chaparoned to observe him at his job, before reappearing at an afternoon tea (as his sister's friend, of course). The girls would sip their tea together, giggling, while Dev took his tea in the kitchen, waiting for the moment when the girls would make an excuse to fetch more sugar or milk. The friend's eyes would meet his, but only so briefly, so much meaning held in that fleeting glance. It wasn’t that he didn’t find them attractive, charming, intriguing. He could even go so far as to picture the wedding night, the almond eyes and full lips gazing up at him from the nuptial bed.

The problem was, he never met a girl he could imagine a life with. In his mind’s eye, he could see himself, twenty or thirty years out, gone grey and dapper, wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and bouncing a chubby grandchild on his knee. He had names for the future generation, too—the little girl would be Deepa, the boy Dilip. The problem was, he couldn’t see himself, five years ahead, a father and a husband tending to his own small brood. The image just wouldn’t come to him.

And of course, he told himself, he couldn’t see this American dandling their infant child, either. She of the narrow hips and small breasts—she wasn’t even adequately built for the work nature asked of women.

But he could see her. That was the problem. Even as he was dismissing the ludicrous idea, the vision loomed fully formed before his eyes. Her, holding their child, a tiny bundle of fine brown hair, large eyes, creamy skin. It didn’t even matter whether it was a boy or a girl. She held it on her hip, her pelvis thrust to the side to support the baby. And it wore the mark of love—that warm golden complexion, the erotic and highly public testament to an interracial union. The indisputable evidence of its parents’ copulation. Multi-racial children bare that distinction, unlike the offspring of single-colored families who appear to have been born, fully formed, like the goddess Saraswati, from their parents’ intellect, rather than from their desire, their heat.

Dev was looking at her, unable to stop himself. Her, sitting there calmly, attempting to fold her paper dosa, dip it in the sambar, and feed it to herself with some degree of grace. She looked up, made eye contact and crossed her eyes at him like a mirthful school girl.

“Are my table manners really that grim?” she asked. “You look as though your stomach’s just turned, and your face has gone all pale.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he took a deep breath and placed his sweaty palms deliberately against his thighs. “I think I’ll go ask about a Limca. Would you like one?”

She accepted the offer of the lime soda so prevalent in Indian cafes and carried on with her meal as if nothing had passed.

Which was, in a way, the truth of the matter.


(image from www.picasaweb.google.com)

As much as talking with Dev confounded her, Ami had to admit she rather liked the attentions of Rafiq. His polished English, his smooth demeanor. Unlike Dev, he knew just what to say, juggling small talk and business as usual.

In the bar of the hotel, he sat with her and talked easily of his family, of going to the University, of his love of music. “I am very glad you could visit our place,” he told her. “Dev is my very good friend, always stopping here when he’s driving tourists. You know, we offer all his customers a special fare.”

That’s nice,” Ami commented, not feeling that much was required of her. She checked out his gold watch, his manicured fingernails, neat and square.

“You have been enjoying Udaipur?”

“Yes, very much.”

“One thing, though. Please don’t allow my brother Adil to take you… anywhere.”

“Really? Why’s that? Is he a bad driver?”

“No, his driving is no problem. Only he is young and a bit wild, I’m afraid. I feel I must warn you.” He looked truly embarrassed.

“It’s okay, Rafiq,” she said, considering laying her hand over his, but deciding against it. “I’ve already talked Dev into taking me to a showing of Octopussy tonight, so I don’t think I’ll be requiring Adil’s services.”

Rafiq nodded. “Very good. You are a James Bond fan? Everyone must be a James Bond fan, at least in Udaipur.”



For the travelers, India is first a slap in the face—the filth, the pollution, the crowds. Everywhere, hands in their faces—beggars, children, beggar children, lepers. Everywhere, the evidence of humanity, until humanity appears inhumane. So many cripples lining the walk, so many grey-faced women shrunken into dust-caked saris. So many children, hair matted, clothing torn to rags running surprisingly fast on toothpick legs. “Madam, school pen? Chocolate? One rupees?”

They always said “rupees,” even for just one, as if they weren’t native speakers, either. As if they, too, had come in from some other place, their sense of belonging, of knowing what to do, a distant memory.

India is a kick in the gut—not the walled gardens through which peacocks strut and languid girls strum sitars, but twisted, angry streets, incessant noise, a glut of bodies. Too difficult to cross the street for fear of being run down by a bicycle rickshaw, a motor scooter carrying an entire family, a heard of wild, razor-backed pigs. Too difficult to cross, so the day’s work becomes just walking on one side, all the way to the market along the road side. Every hundred feet or so a sandy pull-off where more families camp, staking out space in cardboard boxes, on broken pull-carts, on blankets worn back to the fibers from which they were woven. In the middle of the city, these crude camps, the poor crowded unconcerned around a swampy puddle. And though those people holding place, staring glassily from yellowed eyes, show no sign of offense, the puddle is quickly recognizable by its stench as not collected rainwater but the community sewer, putrid and unmoving.

And then India is a surprise. Just when the nausea, the unbearable weight of seeing and knowing set in, a traveler turns a corner and finds herself swept along by a thin plume of incense, the Muslim call the prayer, the vision of vivid velvet patchwork blankets strung along a fence.

A boy selling Jasmine, his eyes bright, his smile sweeter than the blossoms he carries, stops her and gives her a corsage. Just gives it to her, even though he isn’t wearing any shoes and his feet have gone yellow with calluses.

A shrine to Hanuman, wedged against the corner of a building, is bright with marigold malas. A sadhu raises his right hand, blesses her for no reason.

India shakes the pieces loose, refuses to be what the traveler thinks it is. Turn a corner, fall over a leper—nose gone, fingers eaten to the knuckles. Turn a corner, see a bride carried on horseback through the crowded streets, red and gold blossoms strewn in her wake. Turn the corner, see a goat slaughtered, its blood running red in the gutter along with vegetable peelings, excrement, bits of confetti. Turn a corner, witness two old men, their spines still straight in Nehru jackets, hold hands like school children and cross the street. The traveler becomes a snow globe, all of her pieces shaken into the dome of sky, and she can do nothing but wait and see where it all falls.

But for the pilgrims on the road, there are no surprises. The sun rises and they move, shaking off sleep, forcing their stiff bodies into the cold air, building fires and hunkering low around the meager heat. Soon after daybreak, they’re on the road, some barefoot and dressed only in dhotis, homespun cloth, even their turbans colorless and humble in the vast bleak expanse of the desert. Some travel all the way to the Ganges on foot, homeless and in between worlds. Others hitch rides on passing trucks, taking in the blur of scenery racing away from their eyes. And still others—weekend pilgrims—make the journey by train or air conditioned bus, eating tin plates of food and listening to the wail of Hindi-pop all the way to the river, which calls to their souls.

Those walking move with the sun, with the forces of nature. Theirs is a natural world, and they walk toward infinity. Even in the desert, the river calls to them. The great sluice of water where the mother Ganga rushes from the Himalaya, ice-cold and fierce, to the muddied banks and crowded ghats of Allahabad and Banares.

The river waits for none, embraces all. The desert people—these camel drivers and brick layers—feel the tides in their blood and they go. Perhaps they’ll never leave, they’ll die there, feet worn through from walking, souls collected by the flow like so much detritus, waste made holy by baptism.

Travelers are pulled, too, but they can’t say by what. The lure of markets, of cheap goods, of exotic fractions of time. The romantic impulses born into them by movies and novels, the legacy of Merchant Ivory if not the British Raj; the weak and almost indecipherable call of the spirit.

If religion is the attempt to fill the emptiness of a life, then pilgrimage is the crossing of the landscape of emptiness. Free at last of the trappings of job, home, responsibility, the false pretenses of self, the pomp and ritual of the temple, the accessories of worship: the soul goes free and naked into emptiness.


(image from www.flickr.com/photos/pinebird)