Jhalawar

"And your name is?"
"Ahh; my name, Gopal."
"Oh, cool cool... are you staying with us now?"
"Two weeks, yes. I stay two weeks, and after going back to Jaipur."

And this is how I met Gopal, the 23 year old IDEX guide born in nearby Jhalawar, at the halfway point of our time here in India. A project executive who'd started working for IDEX only three years earlier and had been set into an arranged marriage only a few months ago (and had also found the time to become a yoga instructor sometime in there too.) Gopal had a sort of sophomoric sense of humor and cheated in carrom (Indian pool) that first night, buut he was always up for a game of cricket and was a lefty too.

Four years his elder and about as many times as mature, Bara Sigfúsdóttir, our new volunteer mate, had ridden the bus with him from Jaipur. The second Icelander I've ever met (both in Rajasthan!), she'd already spent a month in the country, and was on a sort of revisit tour after studying in Bangalore a few summers back. And while she'd also lived a year in Italy and was close to wrapping up a master's in philosophy, it's generally very easy to get along with someone who's a fan of both Muse and traveling, brave enough to travel alone, and able to see the world in a very South Park wise kind of way.

The first time we'd gone to the nearby district capital Jhalawar (Basically: we live in Treynor, Jhalawar is like PottCo's Council Bluffs.. Omaha would be Kota and that's two hours away) it'd only been three of us volunteers. This was on the third day we'd been staying at the house in Patan, and we should've known what was coming when some kids on the bus to Jhalawar excitedly showed us a Hindi newspaper article which featured a picture of us on the front page (headline: "THE FOREIGNERS ARE HERE" maybe?) The picture'd been sneakily taken by a reporter we'd passed the day previous while visiting the Kanjar villages and then printed right there for all in the district to see.

Once in the city, we walked around looking at stuff (oh wow, more tiny retail stores with the same cheaply manufactured things!) and trying to find our way to a fort which the locals were telling us was amazing. We slowly amassed a following of children walking behind us, which then became a mob, and eventually a general exodus of little Indians at our tail; screaming and shouting and pointing out directions to the supposed fort. We got lost in a residential area but walked on. The crowd grew. Fathers could be seen outside their homes pushing their sons towards us, urging them to shake our hands. Cries of "My name is?" (Translation: What is your name?) and "Which country?" and "What hobbies?" (These are the English greeting phrases taught in the schools) suffocated us. We walked by a school house and class was instantly dismissed as everyone ran out to join the march behind us. We ended up just giving up on our quest once to the outskirts of town and the fort still turned out to be miles away and we'd amassed, not exaggerating, a swarm of five dozen child followers surrounding us.

Our failed expedition still within our memories, it wasn't until that first Saturday after Bara and Gopal had arrived that we made a return to Jhalawar. The three of us, Rick, Saroji, Sohan, and Steena, one of the original Patan volunteers who'd recently returned from Denmark to do some writing on India, took a tuktuk to Jhalawar's Gagron Fort. And we actually made it there successfully.

We had a picnic, played some cricket, and generally enjoyed walking through the fort complex enjoying the sights (rapid capped rivers joining a hundred and fifty feet below the outer walls, old ruins, mango trees, shepards guiding their animals and talking on their cells, etc.)





Some other random things:

-We repaired the school roof in our village, Chandya Kehri. Financial backing came from IDEX and a few of the local families, a new currogated steel roof was screwed to a simple rod frame and the whole get up was then cemented to the school. It all made for a nice project and now we can all learn to read even when it sprinkles.




-The national holiday of Raksha Bandham was on a Wednesday a while back. The highways and bus systems were overloaded throughout the week as people everywhere traveled to see family (some of the young married off daughters of Chandya Kehri and nearby Kanjar village Jharel returned from their husband's villages too, much to the delight of their old friends and family). The main ritual here is women giving their brothers and brother like men in their lives bracelets called Rakhis. These are anything from gold to string with foil attached to plastic watches (some of the younger Kanjar children) to elaborate wrist bands (mostly adults). A reporter and three girls came to our house that afternoon to give us a traditional Rakhi and blessing (yes a coconut was involved) and sweets. The reporter, of course, was there to catch the photo op and Rick and Bara were featured on the next day's paper feeding each other the sweets. As Saroji was out that night with family, we celebrated with a pasta (sort of) dinner courtesy Sohan and Steena and made our own holiday traditions.