Z is for Zenana

India has never been a woman's world. Muslims have routinely locked them away, Buddhists regarded them as one of the snares which bind us again to our fleshy, suffering body, and Hindus seem to have ignored them completely. Hindu goddesses tend to be either beautiful pieces of furniture like Lakshmi, or cruel vamps like Kali. The female pantheon comes across like nothing so much as a bunch of fractious film stars. It is probably no coincidence that it is on the screen - large and small - that Indian women have made their greatest impact.

Wherever you go in India there are cinema hoardings, crude and garish posters which almost invariably depict buxom women in slight undress, either looking helpless - like Lakshmi - or wielding guns and whips as Kali might. And where the women, who are young and lissom, tend to look fraught and hysterical, the heroes - who are at least forty-five and probably wearing a corset - always look calm and suave.

One advantage female film-stars have is that they tend to sing more songs than the men. For this reason they are necessarily indispensable. Often it is the music which makes, indeed, justifies a film, and the power and fame of the unseen singers - who are rarely if ever the screen actresses - is gratifyingly great.

The singing is just as popular on the small screen. But at least on television women have managed to make a more positive contribution. Much of the news, together with many of the programme links, is presented by women. Partly this is due to television's obsessive desire to offer visually attractive images; but it is also an indication of the medium's greater liberalism. The women who appear are clearly very westernised, and speak the perfect English of the Indian intelligentsia.

For women of the lower classes and castes, the prospects are not so good. In the country and smaller towns, a woman's destiny is simply to become married and produce children, and to work. Passing them in the road it is hard to tell whether they are fourteen or forty-four. It is very noticeable that you never see young courting couples; any couple is married: courting as the west knows it seems either non-existent or coyly invisible. Yet being married is a totally public activity, as neutral as any other business. Judging by the advertisements in the daily papers for brides and bridegrooms, which detail the required characteristics of body and background, this is almost what it is.

Indian women seem good for only one thing: dying. The greatest building in India is a monument to a dead wife. While the Rajput warriors donned their saffron wedding robes of martyrdom and rode out of doomed fortresses like Chittorgarh to certain but glorious death, the women inside built huge funeral pyres and committed the mass suicide known as jauhar. And even Mrs Gandhi, perhaps the dominant formative influence on modern India, may one day be best remembered for her murder at the hands of Sikh extremists. Whether in life or through death, Indian women are conspicuous by their absence. For them, Indian history is the history of the zenana, the area in a Muslim household where they were hidden from the world.

A Partial India A to Z

U is for Udaipur

Rajasthan is the Land of the Kings, homeland of the Rajputs. Elsewhere in India, where the Moghul influence had been strong, there was a balance between the temporal and spiritual; Islam proved a crucial ally to the expansionist ambitions of the emperors, but it also exacted homage as more than an equal. In Rajasthan, the warrior ethic was all.

This is visible in the massive forts which dominate the towns throughout the region, and in some cases wholly contain them. Like Chittorgarh, once the scene of numerous acts of suicidal chivalry according to the haughty Rajput code. Now the small modern town camps outside the broken walls surrounding the long low hill of the city, as if aware of the disparity between its glorious past and quiet, dusty present.

Most of the cities in Rajasthan have been touched by the Rajput vision; but one of them has been completely shaped by it, and remains its greatest achievement: Udaipur. It was founded in 1567, born of the third and last sack of Chittorgarh, and a monument to its people's indomitable spirit.

The magnificent city has grown up around the lakes and the palaces built by its successive rulers, As if conscious of their standing – the Maharana of Udaipur is the highest ranking of the Rajputs - each strove to enhance an already impressive city with new expressions of their majesty. First came the artificial Pichola Lake, a huge sheet of water which provides the centrepiece of the city's design. It must have seemed paradise for the erstwhile dwellers of the cramped and arid Chittorgarh.

Then, to match the lake, and use its incomparable setting, the huge City Palace was built, an Escher-like concoction of towers, arches, balconies and cupolas. Appropriately enough, it is the largest in Rajasthan. Today it is a museum; its collections are varied but curious in their scope. There are extensive memorials to the region's past, faded delicate miniatures, fragments of ancient stone inscriptions, and a pair of stuffed siamese-twin deer. All are displayed amidst genteelly run-down surroundings evocative of the passing of time. The overall effect is one of Udaipur as a forgotten oasis amidst the bustle of the outside world.

From the City Palace there are impressive views over Pichola Lake, set amidst the surrounding hills, and of the two island palaces. The later and more famous of these is the Lake Palace on Jagniwas, which covers the island entirely. It has been converted into a gleaming white hotel, and looks like nothing so much as a floating iced wedding cake. Less prettified, and more romantic, is the Jag Mandir island palace. It sits at the southern end of the lake, a little apart from the city, hovering like some unearthly vision in the still green water,

The rest of Udaipur has grown in response to these elements. Answering Pichola, another artificial lake was built to the north. The city itself clusters around the great palace on the banks of the lake. Its narrow twisting streets, many of which are steeply inclined, recall the stern hilltop forts of Chitttorgarh and the rest. For all its extravagant glories, Udaipur remains true to its origins.

A Partial India A to Z

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