Jhalrapatan

As I sit on the faux-marble porch of the considerably beautiful house that is to be my Indian home for the next two months, a thin cow gnaws at the little grass patches growing on the sides of the alley to my side. I can see its hipbones and ribs. It licks at some garbage on the road. Sitting three feet from it, I notice someone has placed two green necklaces around its neck and an old black cloth on its head in Christ thorn crown fashion.

Suhon asked me if I wanted to go to market with him to get some vegetables. We rode on his motorcycle through crowded (imagine that) alleys and streets and I asked him how old the hilltop fort right next to our house is and he said probably between five centuries and a millennium. I like to think of the fort as Jhalapatan's Dodge House; wondering if they sell stick candy in the basement. The market and streets looked to be fashioned from a scene in Indiana Jones. I talked (hand motions and simple English) with a group of about six boys and young men; asking them for pointers on my cricket technique. One of them showed me the first cricket bat(?) I've ever held and they all agreed I needed more work on my bowling release. I've yet to see any kids playing soccer, everyone is a cricket fan.



Surachi walked Rick and I into town this morning to take some passport photos the IDEX office needed. The shop was staffed by two twenty somethings and two teenaged boys. The older two wore the slender collared button ups and thin slacks/dress pants typical of all guys there age and the boys wore collared shirts. One of them had embroidered jeans, the other a very nice (nicer than my shirts) looking button up shirt that read 'Sturgis' on the back. The main employee used Photoshop to crop our pictures.

Leaving, we stepped down three steps and on a stone someone had placed for walking over the 6 inch wide drain running aside the street. All the streets in the city are flanked by one or two running water drains that constantly flow downhill. I recognize the system from history books. It's the exact same thing the Mesopotamians used in the first human cities, however many millenia ago.

The people step over these little gutters, or on one of the many stones used as mini bridges, whenever they cross the street to avoid cow/people dung or move out of the way of a sheppard and his passing herd or when carefully carrying large pots of water atop their heads. They also step over these ancient public works anytime they enter a store to buy a Pepsi, have digital photos taken/cropped with Photoshop, or buy an American magazine to keep up with the latest (erm, 90's) in fashion. Of course, only the men wear embroidered jeans, collared striped shirts, and western pants. The women all don elaborate cloth garments; often with veils, bangles, necklaces, and other diamond and golden jewelry.



I continue to sit on our stoop, within the three story house's small gated yard, and listen to the music coming out of a car one of our neighbors, sporting a wife beater like shirt, has been working on in front of his house. If not for the little kids playing on piles of rubble and cow eating weeds to my other side, or the fact that the music playing is some sort of Hindi-Arabic dance mix, the scene the same as it'd be in America. Of course, the environment is totally something you could only see in an American film. Our house has two stories of outdoor rooftop built for lounging and makes me believe I am Jason Borne.



And after two and a half days under the Indian sun, I can finally muster a description of what I see:

To picture Rajasthan, simply imagine that medieval Europe was suddenly infused with certain twentieth century technology (cars, some electricity, cell phones, radio towers) and then tried to imitate the popular culture of the modern United States and the traditional look and architecture of Arabia. There are still herds of sheep being moved through town, crowded Aladdin-esque markets in alleys between two and three story middle eastern looking buildings, all the women wear brightly colored cloth clothing (some covering their faces), the men wear slacks and jeans, people walk the streets texting, animals poop in the streets, ancient temples rest on hilltops, shops sell European goods, and hindi/arabic music can be heard from the various loudspeakers of ceremony, SUV, and prayer. Population-explosion, visual-orgasm, social-contradictions, cultural-collage, sensory-overload, India.



Pictures:
The next door neighbors (click it to see a slightly bigger version).
Crowd of people takes a break from the crowded marketplace on a temple stoop.
Random street pic.
Nice guy running a booth at a vegetable market, his younger friends are playing cricket an aisle over.
Young kid named Jai using my shades to be a stunna' like his daddy.
Two more roadside pics.