After some various travel frustrations which I will not bore you with (kids, don’t ever travel without 3 backup ways to get yourself money), I spent the day en route from Delhi to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. I was surprised to find that it would take nearly 6 hours to travel 230km, because somehow I didn’t picture a highway in India being more like the town lounge for cows. The cows seem to truly enjoy hanging out on the dusty center strip of the divided highway, rather than something you’d expect them to like to do, like frolicking and grazing in a green pasture. Plus, they are unflappable. You can lean on the horn all you want, they won’t flick an ear at you. It’s like they know they are bulletproof around here.
I also learned a few other things about highways in India, after spending all day on one. If you are on the divided highway and you decide you went past your actual destination, all you have to do is turn back so that you’re going the wrong way on the highway and then drive into several lanes of oncoming traffic until you get back there. This is expected and will not surprise anyone. I took part in this charming local behavior myself (sorry, Dad). Another thing is that rather than being like America, where we try to avoid all contact with other drivers aside from the occasional fatal shooting, or like Uganda, where drivers communicate intimately through a complex signaling pathway of flashing headlights and gestures, in India drivers like to liberally use their horns, honking them constantly to alert all other drivers to their position on the road. This is necessary because lane markers here are meaningless and people are constantly drifting around the road like aimless clouds, so if you are anywhere near someone’s blind spot you have to let them know not to drift into you. The trucks are even all emblazoned with the slogan “HORN PLEASE”. The trucks also tell you constantly “USE DIPPER AT NIGHT” – which naturally means flash your headlights instead of using the horn, but I have seen no evidence of ‘dipper’ use.
The trucks here are actually quite interesting because of how festive and decorated they are. Each one has delicate little painted patterns all over it and pictures of birds, hearts, Indian flags, whatever. They have gold and silver streamers flying from them, or strings of pompoms, or a variety of colored scarves, or all of the above. Even the construction machinery is decorated in this way. These observations lead me to believe that India could be far more accepting of a crew of gay, diva construction workers and truckers than the USA would be. I could be wrong about that though.
It’s amazing to see so many women crouched in the fields doing what looks like back-breaking manual labor in the stifling midday heat. They are like fallen flowers, surrounded by many-colored sari petals. The favored colors in this part of Rajasthan seem to be as loud and as unnatural as possible. The top favorite sari color appears to be ‘safety vest orange’, but neon green, pink, yellow and red are also popular.
Along the way to Jaipur, I was surprised at how similar the surroundings were to my road trips in Uganda. It was the same towns and shops, just populated with Indians instead of with Africans. I began to think that perhaps ‘developing country’ just has its own style. Then I arrived in the outskirts of Jaipur, and instantly, I was not in a place like any I’d ever been before.
The buildings were ornate and crowded together around tiny alleyways, like an old Arabian medina. The walkways were crowded with vendors, camels, and elephants, and the exotic-ness of it all seemed not at all apparent to anyone else. When I arrived at the hotel, a smartly outfitted doorman handed me a frosty glass of Coke and put a fragrant necklace of flowers on me. I couldn’t wait to see more of the town. I had a fancy dinner at one of the well-known restaurants here, which was sad only because I hate eating out alone, and I was mobbed by beggars when I stepped outside. I gave my leftovers to the beggars (a huge mistake as it redoubled their efforts), and fled across the street to ‘Lassiwala’, a famous lassi shop. The lassi was the most delicious I’ve ever had, cool and sweet and served in a little terra cotta cone that you throw away after using, which was a difficult concept for me. Enchanting!
I also attended a service at a Hindu temple that was all white marble on the inside, with serene looking god statues wearing pink and gold outfits in the front. They splashed me with water and the rest of the Hindu audience clapped and sang.
The major event of the night though came after this, when I went to see a Bollywood movie. A nice person in line warned me there would be no subtitles or English, but I decided to go anyway, which was the right thing to do, especially since it was only a dollar. The theater itself was brand new, incredibly ornate, and once inside, the crowd appeared awed and began snapping hundreds of photos. I have never seen so many people trying to take photos with their mobile phones all at the same time. We had assigned seats in the theater, which had an old-fashioned curtain and stage. When the movie started, though, the real wackiness began.
The audience was screaming, shouting, cheering, clapping, every time a new star came onscreen. The movie seemed designed for this and the first half hour consisted of very dramatic entrances for each star. The style of the movie (called “Dabangg”) was basically slapstick old Western meets Crouching Tiger and the Matrix. I regret to report that I think the title’s English onomatopoeia was intentional. I have no idea really what the plot was, but the hero was a police officer and so most of it was devoted to him beating up bad guys and then dancing and singing his way down the street while adjusting his belt buckle in a very studly way. Believe it or not, this movie was nearly 3 hours long, including intermission. I could not make it and had to give up after 1 hour, which I’m afraid greatly disappointed my driver, who was loving it. “This was a good movie, not a bad one.” He told me.
No comments:
Post a Comment