Life in Jaipur

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Volunteering at Ladli enabled me to get off the tourist trail and this was one of the best experiences of my travels.

Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, is a large, sprawling, polluted city. However, the house we were renting was just outside the city in the quieter suburbs. Prabhakar Goswami had arranged for us to rent his younger brother's house, a new purchase that he would be moving into in March but in the meantime was available for rent.

The Goswami family are Brahmins, the highest caste within Hinduism, and the house was located within a newly developed Brahmin residential area. After 8 1/2 months of hostels and budget style accommodation I moved into a three bedroom marble floored house, with an newly fitted kitchen, bathroom, living and dining area, large rooftop terrace (as is the style in India) and small front yard. It was incredible, I even had my own room. The rent was reasonable and far lower than you would find on the tourist trail, since we were volunteering with i-india.

I loved being able to shop at the local shops, fruit and chai stalls, where I got to know the various owners and salesmen and was rarely ripped off, unlike the tourist trail.

Girls Ladli is situated in Sodala, a suburb about 2km away, back in the direction of Jaipur. Anna bought a bike and cycled everyday, which at first caused great amusement to the locals. A white girl on a bike! Having witnessed on many occasions how chaotic and scary the Indian roads were I prefered to walk and get the local bus.

So I developed a daily routine. In the morning I would leave the house and if I was in need of a caffeine fix I would stop for chai at a particular stand along the main road. For two and a half rupees I could purchase a small plastic cup full, with which I walked along in the traditional style of an English commuter on the way to work with their takeaway hot drink. India does not have takeaway chai culture and I often caused people great amusement as I attempted to carry my chai without burning my fingers!

After the chai stall was my favourite fruit stall, where I would stop to buy two bananas and an orange for the day, if we had not had any fruit in the house. Once again, this caused amusement and always a hint of ridicule from the stall owner since Indians only buy and sell fruit in kilos, or at the least half kilos. Why would this girl want to buy one orange? they would wonder...well, it made perfect sense to me!

Then I would finish off the walk to the bus stop in the nearby suburb of DCM. The number 29 bus was wonderful. I caught it twice a day every day since it ran right along the Ajmer Road up to Ajmeri Gate in Jaipur, so whether I was off to Sodala for the day for 3 rupees each way or going into Jaipur at the weekend for 5-6 rupees, I could get around the local way, avoiding extortionate costs and the hassle of negociating with auto drivers.

The no. 29 buses were all short in length with a bench of seats across the back and one down each side. If you were not lucky enough to be one of the first on the bus you had to stand in the middle. Indians should win prizes for the number of people they can fit into one vehicle. To be honest all of the South East Asian countries I visited were adept at the art of people cramming but India takes it to a particularly special level. The buses clearly work on basis of commission, each with a conductor hanging out the door drumming up business. If you want to get on they will fit you on, so be prepared to be flat packed at whatever angle you may fit, regardless of what you are carrying and if necessary you have to hang out the door! Although their were times when being squashed into a bus trying to hold on to my bag, occasionally ending up in a situation were a man was taking advantage of unavoidable close contact, by and large I had no problems and took great delight at being able to travel local style. Unless I was with my American friends I was always the only white person, in fact, foreigner in general, on the bus. It was within these situations that I became particularly good at mastering the way to act around Indian men, the air of total indifference. At first when people (read men) struck up a conversation with me by asking questions, I always answered them. After all, I was in their country. However, it became evident that I needed to make my manner less friendly, ignore the forever repeated most pertinant questions and if I ever caught the eye of a man, look away as if I barely noticed him. It's amazing what some people can take as encouragement, but then again perhaps not within a different culture where white women are widely regarded as being loose and easy. This was drummed in to me one day when travelling on the bus with Roshni, a 12 year old girl from Ladli. She was horrified and totally embarrassed that I was replying to the questions of the man next to me. Unfortunately he was being particularly persistant and irritating. I asked her later...'do men ever try and talk you you on buses?', 'yes', she replied, 'but I alway ignore them'. Incidentally, as we walked along the roads through local communities to Girl's Ganga she was taken aback by how much people stared, often with men passing by motorcycle and turning around. 'Welcome to being a white person in India', I said.

At Sodala I would get off the bus and walk down the lane to Ladli. I liked these areas because they were the 'real' India. What I mean by this is that they were not tourist influenced or altered streets, beyond people like myself going to and from Ladli, instead the people that I passed were those who lived and worked there. At the entrance to this lane was another chai stand run by a lovely family. Normally chai stands are run by men but here the owner worked alongside his wife with their children in tow. At first I used to stop each time I walked past. I love chai, but it was my like for this family and the fact that when they saw me coming they got my plastic cup out, that made me stop so often. Further along I would pass the ironing man, who ran a stall every day outside his home where people brought their clothes to be pressed. Perhaps the females of the family washed the clothes first. I am not sure, but it is quite likely. He had two little boys who took great delight at shouting 'hi' and bye' to Anna, Emily and I every time we passed, as did many of the other children who lived along the lane.

On the way home from Ladli I repeated the process, usually stopping at either the interent cafe in Sodala or the one in DCM, where the price was good and the owners were friendly. My only other stops were to pick up groceries or takeaway form dinner from the food stalls five minutes from our house. I liked the vege roll and pav bhaji man there, he always greeted me with a big smile when I came.

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The poorer side of Jaipur is revealed at the sides of Ajmer road where many families live in tents and self built shelters. They sit outside in the evenings where they cook, and they presumably have to climb into the field behind for the toilet...except for the men, who all pee at the sides of the road. This is one of the things that annoyed me about India the most, the completely unfair toilet situation. In terms of peeing it is widely accepted that men can go virtually anywhere along the side of a road. As I walked towards Ajmer Road cars and motorcycles would stop so that a man could relieve himself, and along the side of Ajmer Road toward DJM one particular section stunk of urine since it was the widely used pee wall. However, where I travelled I never saw a woman doing the same. If I was out for a few hours I would regularly be bursting for the loo and have to struggle home, passing by many men who could stop and go. Grrr, it made me so angry!! Not that I'm saying I would like to pee in public view, but it was rather rubbing it in, no pun intended.

...Anyway, back to the roadside dwellers...many of them would make a living by selling wares at the side of the road, so as I walked along this particular stretch I passed wicker furniture opposite plants, inflatable chairs and animals, terracota pots and cuddly toys, before you reached the next fruit and chai stalls. I got to know a couple of these families a little, both of which wanted their photographs taken, which I printed and gave to them. One particular family had about six small children, who whenever they saw me coming would run over and all shake my hand. They were lovely and despite their poverty, evident in their clothes and the dirt on their skin, these particular children never asked for anything, just that I shook their hands and occasionally produced a camera to take and show them their photos.

Living off the tourist trail I really wished that I could speak Hindi. The others were all learning it and had started before they arrived so Jacob could speak well enough to make conversation and Mike and Anna could just about get by. In the tourist areas everyone speaks English but the number of times one of my neighbours in Nirman Nigar would try and strike up a conversation, or when I was lucky enough to be on a female dominated bus with women curious about me, and I could not reply, well it got frustrating. It would have been wonderful to have spoken properly these people (read women). Nevertheless, I got by. With amusing incidents such as 'discussing' the price of bangles with women on a bus or getting decorated by Henna one one trip, with the lady doodling on my arm every time the bus stopped leaving me with a rather untidy design that I had to spend the next two hours trying to keep away from my new blue salawar suit!

Weekends in our household would always involved laundry. We washed Indian style; by hand scubbing our clothes with a brush using a block of hard, blue laundry soap, and then hanging our clothes out on our roofop to dry.

I usually went into the city on weekends too in order to buy things not readily available in the suburbs. I enjoyed going into Jaipur but it was always hassle, a re-entry into tourist and tout territory. Walking past the shops was like running a gauntlet as everyone called to you to come into their shop, sometimes even shoving a scarf in my face, which never went down well. When you did enter into a shop and found something you wanted you had to invest an awful lot of time bargaining it down to a reasonable price. The experience could be exhausting, especially when you had to return with a tonne of bags in a baked bean can of a bus. I did have a favourite eating place along one of these roads, however. A nice little local place where I would get take away chai and samosas (served with spicy mint chutny and a sweeter red sauce) or go inside for Pav Bhaji and the most delicious sweet lassi I had ever tasted. I liked it because it was simple, quick, cheap and friendly. I could have a meal for 20-30 rupees (80 rupees to the pound), I never got ripped off, I ate alongside local people (since I never saw another foreigner in there, except my friends) and the staff knew me. This was the kind of experience I wanted and could not get from the tour.

Occasionally on a Saturday night we would go to see a Bollywood film at the rather classy cinema in the centre of Jaipur. Although difficult to follow since everything was in Hindi, they were usually great fun provided they had the right quota of song, dance and colour.

Speaking of this, Indian Hindus like to have their weddings in style. Obviously the extravagance of a wedding depends upon the finances of a family, but many families save for years to be able to afford the three day celebration required for a marriage. I had often seen wedding processions go past in the street during my time in India, this is the second day of a marriage when the groom would ride to the bride's house on horseback in a procession of dancing family and a band. It was not until near the end of my travels, however, that I actually got to attend a wedding. My American friends had decided to move and rent elsewhere and Jacob had discovered and befriended a wonderful family who were building a new home and needed to rent the upstairs so they could finance the rest of the building work. Two days after meeting them they took us all to a friends wedding. It was in one of the many local wedding gardens, flash locations designed especially for wedding ceremonies. As we entered it reminded me of a mini Cambridge ball. There was a large stage to the right where the new couple sat upon thrones, looking rather bored since they were not allowed to join in the fun on this third and final day of their marriage. Decorated chairs sat in front of the stage, a flashy fountain decorated the centre and three large food tables and a drinks table, complete with waiters, fed the many guests. I wore my red salawar suit since this is the most lucky colour to wear to a wedding, blue being the big no no, and had hoped to blend into the background. As it happened we were dragged straight onto the dance floor by the people who had brought us and ended up drawing quite a crowd! We were then whisked off to get some food and just as I was really getting into the party and had made friends with some very cute Indian children, we were taken away again since our hosts wanted to leave! Oh well! It was a great experience and privilege to be able to see, even if I did arrive home rather early feeling all dressed up with nowhere else to go!

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Photos

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Road side family

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The photo did not come out well due to the light.

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Me, Anna and Emily

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The girl in the red top is Anu. She was the highly enthusiastic and friendly niece of the family he others were going to rent from.

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Most of my photos did not come out well since the area was lit by floodlights