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Published: September 13th 2011
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Big Load
Why make two trips to the market when one will do? Despite having been in India for several weeks, I had not yet grasped the Indian Head Wobble. When speaking to an Indian local, you typically get a slight wobble of the head from side-to-side. This generally translates to an affirmative answer but you are never quite sure. The intensity of the wobble can sometimes help gauge the meaning. A fast and vigorous wobbling can mean that the person understands and is in strong agreement with you. A quick wobble from left to right can mean a simple “yes.” Whereas a soft and slow wobble accompanied by a smile can just signify friendship. But equally, sometimes it can mean “No” or “I don’t know”. You have to live in India for some time I think, to understand the intracacies of the Indian Head Wobble. I have heard that the wobble originated during the height of the British Empire. It came into existance due to Indian servants being around masters who didn't like to hear the word "no". So this ambiguous gesture both appeased and confused the ruling class, and evolved into the modern day wobble which still perplexes to this day (I don't know how true that origin is though)
My
Hide and Seek
The building where the Emperor played hide-and-seek with his harem next destination was the city of Jaipur, but on the way I visited the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri. This amazing city had once been the capital ciy of the Mughal Empire back in 1560, and had accommodated over 10,000 Indian citizens. The city was purpose-built from scratch, which is a truly amazing feat. It has temples, courtyards, pools, bridges and palaces. As well as being home to royalty, concubines, civilians, priests and laborours, it was home to vast numbres of elephants, horses, tame deer, and a moderate number of leopards, tigers, buffaloes, cocks and hawks. The architecture is impressive, and perfectly preserved, and apparently one of the intricate buildings was designed with the sole purpose of the emperor to play “hide and seek” with his harem. In my opinion, the city would also make an excellent paintballing venue
But the designers made a really huge mistake in it’s construction. Massive. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine you are building a piece of furniture. You’ve got the instructions. You’ve got all the pieces. You spend a whole day putting it together, only to realise you’ve made a fundamental flaw. Maybe you’ve missed out a crucial piece, or a
Indian Cricket Field
Not really. These are the fabulously preserved grounds of the Ghost City, Fatehpur Sikri vital part is back to front, and the whole thing just isn’t going to work. The whole damn thing has to be taken apart to start again.
Now, imagine that you’ve made a huge mistake after building a city. You realise your error, and the city is simply not inhabitable. Except in this case, you can’t take it apart and start again. You’ve really screwed up, and the only option is to abandon the city entirely. You see, what happened was they didn’t consider the location. Geographically and strategically, it was in a good place for the Empire. But there was no source of water! All major cities, especially those in hot countries, are built on a river or lake, to allow access to fresh water. And without fresh water, a city simply cannot survive. I’d hate to be the person who had to break the news to the Emperor.
For this part of my travels, I had a tour guide called Bhuvan. It turned out he was a Prince in his village. Yes, a real, live Prince. It was his destiny to take over as Ruler of the village when his Father dies. But he decided that
Ghost Town
The deserted main square of Fatehpur Sikri before this happens, he wanted to explore his native India, humble himself and experience the real world. So that he could better serve his people as ruler when his time came. And so he took a job as a tour guide. Which was a far cry from his usual life, because in his village, his feet weren’t allowed to touch the ground. Literally. If he travelled from one end of the village to the other, he was carried in some kind of royal chair. Whether this part was true or not, I had my doubts. It almost sound like the plot of some film, like Eddie Murphy in “Coming to America”. But he was an excellent guide, and very informative about most aspects of Indian life.
As we approached the city of Jaipur, the first thing I noticed was the huge number of kites in the air. The sky was packed with bobbing kites, as far as the eye could see. I thought there must be some kind of “kite festival” going on, but no, this was just another day in Jaipur. I like to think of Jaipur as the “Kite Capital” of India. Kites are one of
A leap of faith
A crazy Indian guy leaping off a ledge into a pool of stagnant water the most prolific pastime for children in this city, and also one of the cheapest. The contruction is very basic. We are not talking stunt kites here, just a basic wood frame with fabric stretched over the top. But the height achieved by these flying contraptions was impressive. There seemed to be a competition to see who could get their kite the highest, and so kids had huge spools of cotton the size of a toilet roll with which to release their kites up to the loftiest heights. Some were mere specks in the sky. Another type of competition here is kite fighting, where one person tries to take someone else’s kite out of the sky by force. This is typically done in a very cunning fashion. Kids coat the lines of cotton in a thin layer of glue and then dip it in powdered glass. Leave it to dry for 30 minutes, and you are ready to do battle in the skies! The city is littered with the corpses of defeated kites. They hang from trees, they lie in the gutters, they dangle from rooftops. I wonder if they ever get cleaned up....
Our hotel in Jaipur was
Travelling in style
A half-built truck carrying a family of twelve! basic but functional. It was governed by the same mysterious water timings that I found in hotels all over India. If you are lucky enough to stay in a hotel with hot water, there is no guarantee you will actually get it. They only turn on the boilers at certain times of the day, and those times are seemingly random. I have a theory that the hotel staff spin a wheel to decide what time to switch the water on that day. And I found it amusing to see an“inventory” of everything in the hotel room, with a pricelist. It was meant to be a warning of “if you damage or steal this item, you pay this charge”. But when you see everything listed with a price, you think “hmmmm, I like that lampshade, and it’s only 10 rupees. I think I’ll take it”. Also amusing were a couple of entries from the hotel guidebook:
1. “during the winter months, 300 species of bird come here for roasting and breeding”
2. Please do not accept any invitation from an unknown person for eating/drinking, because later on they may involve you in a different type of temptation
The shops
Cow in the House
Dogs are so last year. Why not get a house-trained cow? of Jaipur were a wonder, because many of them specialised to such a degree that they only sold ONE ITEM! So you would pass a shop that only sold rice. Then the next shop would only sell pickles, and the shop after that would only sell oil. It sounds crazy, but the staples of Indian food are extremely different in variety and quality. For example, the shop selling rice might stock over forty varieties of rice. Mostly basmati but they would be from different regions, be of different qualities and different ages. Because it might suprise you to know that rice, like wine, gets better with age. It’s taste, bouquet and cooking characteristics get better with time. New rice has a tendency to get sticky when cooked, whereas older rice cooks up more fluffy, with each grain being separate. I hope you now look at rice in a new light!
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