Jaipur, Rajasthan, Day Six

Hot.
We had buffet-style breakfast on the roof of the hotel under a billowing, bright yellow canopy. There was a little bit of a breeze occasionally, but not enough to entice me to have anything hot to drink. I made myself some tea, but could only manage a couple sips. Kim made a request of one of the staff behind the buffet and I saw a reaction that I've been seeing a lot here. The head waggle.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Does it mean I'll do this even though I don't want to? Does it mean I've told you all I know? There's never a smile with it and it has the sense of being a grudging response. The waggler's head goes left-right-left. Seth Stevenson wrote about it in a series  he did for Slate magazine in 2004, "Trying really hard to like India." Great reading; a coworker forwarded it to me before I left. His description of it as a bobble-head doll motion is absolutely dead-on.

After breakfast, we all piled into cars for a visit to the City Palace, the Jaipur residence of the descendants of Raja Man Singh I, the giant. I got an audio with with my foreigner's entrance ticket, plus and extra set of headphones. Leilah used them sporadically. Deepa got an audio tour, too, and we were off. As a foreigner, I also did not have to pay an extra photography fee (they've got the fee thing down here in India) but I was out of gas on taking pictures of buildings. Photography inside was not allowed, possibly because flash could damage the artifacts, but truthfully, the armour and weapons collection, though extensive, was dull-looking as if no restoration of the metals had ever been done. A display of chain mail on a mannequin was dusty and worn. In the display of textiles, some of the gold threading on a beautiful, rust-colored wedding gown for a maharana was peeling out of the fabric. Some of the other textiles were in better shape and, to be fair, those are not easy to preserve.

We didn't stay too long. Kim and Deepa wanted to get the kids back to the hotel so they could have a swim before we checked out, so they went back in one car with the nannies in Deepa's car and Suresh drove us to a place called the Rajasthan Cottage Emporium for some shopping. As we waited in the the City Palace lot for Suresh to pay the parking, a pig-tailed little girl in a dirty yellow dress approached the car on Deepa's side in the back seat. Something about her face was not right; she had a blank smile showing some teeth missing. Her eyes were set far apart and one appeared to be wandering. She had some bit of something in her hands that she appeared to be eating. She banged on the window, made the mouth-to-stomach gesture, and, though you aren't supposed to give to beggars (you won't get rid of them that way, or more will show up, or both) Deepa relented, rolled down her window, gave the girl a trail mix bar and rolled the window back up.

Response? The girl banged on the window for more. "Tell her you'll take it away from," Kim ordered and sure enough, when Deepa did that, the little girl wandered back to where she had been sitting. From the back, I could see she had a plum-sized red lump growing at the base of her skull. Multiply that little girl by a few million, plus or minus the deformities, and you get an idea of the enormous human problems facing India.

Cottage Emporium is a three-story building that leases space to vendors from Rajasthan. There is one in Delhi, too, with all the states of India represented. I had in mind to buy some jewelry while I was here, but, boy, the shopping mood was not with me, at least for something that would require the decision-making involved in designing a custom piece for myself on the spot. I did buy some pillow covers, a few scarves and beaded boxes. Most will go for gifts.

One of the other things I've seen here, by reason of being with Kim, is racism. On the second floor, two of the vendors saw Kim and began whispering and nodding. She strode over to them: "Do you know who the President of the United States is? Do you know?" One of them finally stuttered out Obama. "That's right! And do you know where I'm from?" One guessed Africa, because "there had been some Africans in here before."

"Do you think you could guess where my friend here is from by the color of her skin? Italy? Spain? France? So why would you make a judgment about me based on the color of my skin?!" The were cowed.

According to Kim, a common reaction among Indians to her skin color is to laugh. Whether that response reflects racism, ignorance, some twisted form or classism or all three, isn't clear. But it certainly isn't pleasant.

After we were done shopping, Suresh drove us back to the hotel. We packed up, checked out, found someplace to eat and got on the road around 4 or 5. Before we even got out of Jaipur, a cop pulled us over because Suresh ran a red light. (People actually do stop for traffic lights.)

He then directed us to pull out of the way of traffic, to a spot in front of some shops. It took about 15 minutes to clear this up and while we were waiting, another cop came by and eyeballed the car. As soon as Suresh got in and started up, this guy shows up and tells us we are in a no parking zone. No matter the the first cop told us to park there. Suresh and Deepa tried explaining but this guy wasn't having any of it.

Suresh had to get back out of the car, pull out his driver's license and give it to the cop. More arguing ensued and finally Suresh came back around to the front. Deepa pulled out a bill and gave it to him. For 50 rupees, Suresh got his license back and we were on our way. That's equal to $1. We had to pay a $1 bribe to be on our way. Why even bother with the pretext of upholding the law? For this cop, it was just an opportunity to squeeze some small fish.

It was still daylight for a few hours of our drive. Rajasthan, despite the trash, the mini-slums, the garish road-side refreshment stands, is beautiful, if forbidding, with its nearly treeless landscape and scrub-covered hills. The colors the women, and even some men, wear here are almost as blinding as the sun. My photography does not do these colors justice, but I've posted one at the top of this entry.