J is for Jaipur

A hot, flat and barren land, divided up into small princely states, ruled over with a benign despotism by Maharajas of immense splendour from their walled cities; such is many people's idea of the quintessential India. It is a perfect description of Rajasthan, the Land of the Kings. And few places are more representative of this region than the city of Jaipur. The name has royal ring; it both evokes the whole region, and seems to contain within it the other great Rajput cities like Jodhpur and Udaipur.

Jaipur is pre-eminently the pink city: the red sandstone found throughout northern India is used not just for the city palace, but for the walls, which remain complete and impressive to this day, and for most of the buildings within them. Jaipur is probably unique in India in being a planned city; its streets are laid out on a grid which antedates Manhattan by a century. As a result, its avenues are very long and straight, which can make them even more oppressive than the endless winding roads found everywhere else in India; but set against that, they are broad and airy.

Not that this is immediately apparent travelling down the main road of the bazaars. Apart from the usual problems of traffic, with everyone trying to cut past everyone else, matters are made worse by the camels. If you travel to Jaipur on the train from Delhi - called, appropriately enough, the Pink Express - the odd camel begins to appear in the small villages and towns along the way. In Jaipur they are common; in their painfully slow imperturbability, they are quite unpassable in the street. The result is a gently ambulatory traffic jam - which suits Jaipur perfectly,

The best place to see the town is from the Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds. Externally, this curious building consists of a five-storey wall with a diminishing series of intricate windows and semi-octagonal turrets built into its dark pink facade. But facade is what it is: the window bays and towers are false, and behind there is no commensurately grand palace. Instead, a series of small rooms where the ladies of the royal household would gather to watch the bustle of the streets below without themselves being seen. It is a rare instance of India not fulfilling the promise of its appearances.

From the top of the Hawa Mahal, there are fine views over the city, and of the Nahargarh Fort which broods on its rock above it. But the most striking aspect of the city scene are the bicycles. From this elevated perspective, they seem to swarm down the long roads like huge plagues of insects, their tiny metal limbs and carapaces shimmering in the light as they wobble their way along, Seeing them foreshortened in this way brings home the sheer scale of bicycling in India: there must be millions - possibly hundreds of millions - of these frail contraptions in use.

Jaipur is notable too for possessing two museums, one as part of the old city palace, and the other in a grand, crumbling Victorian building just outside the walls. Both bear witness to the weight of history in Rajasthan; both, with their endless collections of swords and elaborate muskets, along with miniatures of bewhiskered princes, are melancholy reminders of what the proud and glorious Land of the Kings has lost.

A Partial India A to Z

C is for Camel

Unowned, gaunt and pale, cows are ubiquitous in India.  But for the westerner, it is still something of a shock to find them in bus queues, lying beside busy roundabouts, or moseying serenely through bazaars. Encountering a camel is even worse.

It is perhaps because camels are so strongly associated with the Middle East, that their presence in classically Indian areas like Rajasthan is so disconcerting.  Or it could just be that the reality of a camel is deeply disturbing wherever you meet them,  The gibe about a camel being a horse designed by a committee credits the latter with too much imagination.  No sane group of people could have come up with those huge fragile knees, the humps apparently just stuck on as an afterthought, eyelashes that look like some grotesque parody of a 60s fashion excess, and floppy cloven feet with all the grace and practicality of frayed carpet slippers.  Encountering them in their ragged flesh, it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

A similar ambivalence must affect Indians.  Although camels are quite common in cities like Jaipur, the wagons they pull are perpetually empty. Their chief function seems to be to impede traffic.  The fact that not even the usually reckless bus drivers will take them on suggests that camels are held in an even deeper esteem than cows.

Generally speaking, animals occupy a curious position in Indian society.  When for so many life is a daily struggle for simple survival, there is clearly no room for the mawkish sentimentality found in countries like Britain, where societies protecting animals are Royal, whereas those protecting children art just National.  Yet animals are much more tightly integrated into the fabric of society than in the West.

Practically every religion has a defined position on animals.  For Hindus, cows are sacred; for Muslims, pigs are defiling; for Jains, all animal life is worthy of respect.  In more mundane ways too, animals are central to the Indian way of life.  For example, in most areas, horses, bullocks and camels are crucial to the transportation system.  Pigs and wild dogs are often the only form of refuse collection.  And for the poorest city-dwellers, the best source of cooking and heating fuel is the free cow-dung found in the road.

For the tourist too, animals play a large part in defining the Indian experience.  Like the widespread cows, the urban monkey is a frequent sight, particularly around monuments.  Part of the charm of Kashmir, and an element in its otherness, is the presence of great eagles in Srinagar, together with shimmering flights of steel-blue kingfishers, which patrol the surface of Dal lake like tiny jet fighters,

And outside the towns, the blank immensity of land and sky, the sense of heat and dust, the age-old presence and pressure of history - all these are instantly and most memorably evoked by the sight of birds of prey poised high up in the baked sky, wheeling slowly and endlessly over the plain below.  Like so much in India, one small element can contain and be contained by a sense of the larger whole.

A Partial India: A to Z