Jaipur: talk of time and marriage

Our first day train heads east out of Jodhpur bound for Jaipur,  Rajasthan’s capital, and we watch the Thar desert give way to more cultivated land, clearer demarcations of property lines, and greater population density.  Traditional round mud huts with straw thatch roofs sit next to concrete rectangular homes, which gives John great joy as one of his presentations in his ill-fated architecture career was a comparison between the vernacular West African architecture and colonial era buildings of rural Ghana.  No matter what the walls—train metal, mud or concrete—the toilets seem to be a unifying architectural feature.  Indian trains are famous for people hanging from open doors to enjoy the cool rushing air, and we finally get to join in the fun…of course, we have just left our AC car

Much of our time in Jaipur has been graciously orchestrated by our friend and former Avasara employee Saurabh.  We are perhaps the only Americans ever to stay in the SBI transit house—a guest house for bigwig employees of the State Bank of India. Saurabh’s father is one such VIP, and he kindly arranged for us to have a large room with attached bath & breakfast for a whopping 100rupees a night—roughly $2.00.   Perhaps not elegant, but the people are kind, the water is hot, and price is right. Plus, it is very close to Saurabh’s home….if not particularly near the town center, which we discover the next morning is a bit of a challenge as all the autorickshaw drivers are on strike over the early steps taken towards deregulation of subsidized petrol.  The recent hike of 2rupees/litre (4 cents) is threatening to bring down the government—they’re holding a no-confidence vote the moment Prime Minister Singh returns from the G-20. In the meantime, we have no way to get to Jaipur proper.   But no fear, SBI to the rescue!  They call us a cab and we make it in for a day of wandering to see the sights, including City Palace, Jantar Mantar, and the Hawa Mahal.

Highpoint for us was Jantar Mantar, the brainchild of Maharajah Jai Singh II--philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, city planner, king--who laid out Jaipur in a rigid grid and created his own astronomical playground.  In an attempt to divine the future, he created giant instruments from stone that calculate anything and everything.  The 27 meter sundial measures time to 2 seconds accuracy. 

A garden of 12 large stone ramps, each set at a precise angle to cast a shadow on its marble crescent scale below, tells the ascendant and descendent planets of the signs of the zodiac.  Our guide presents a thorough and credible explanation of each one, walking us through--quite literally--how they work.  He invites us to check his calculations--invariably correct--and eagerly answers our many questions;  he seems especially tickled to field a few tough ones from the math guy!  The last megalith he takes us to measures the precise longitude, latitude and azimuths—whatever they are... I may have faded out a bit at this point.  This has definitely raised the bar for John’s proposed construction projects back home at the ranch.

In a never-ending set of ironies that confront us in India, the first time we are truly lost in our two months here is while trying to navigate a gridded city—who thought of THAT one!??  Ah, if only we’d had our 17 meter stone compass!  

 As exhaustion and disorientation hits, we try to make our way to the New City and the Indian Coffee House, but are waylaid by a political parade hosted by some radical Sikhs who believe streets should be clean and Rajasthan is for all.

We’re mainly dazzled by the countless, enormous, high-wattage candelabras that illuminate the procession even as they blind the observers.  Each contraption is carried on the shoulders of a porter-devotee who, in turn, is tethered to a generator that keeps the flood lights burning.  Both the enormous power source and the marigold-festooned float towing it are being pulled by a huge a truck from which young men toss crumpled loaves of wonder bread and hand out little bowls of curry—the Indian equivalent of hard candies tossed out by clowns at the Macy’s Day parade?

 

It amuses us that a procession dedicated to cleaner streets and led by young men and women sweeping as they go ends with celebrants tossing out shredded marigolds by the arm load and a street littered with empty curry bowls.  

Saurabh, a graduate of the prestigious IIT in Delhi, gave up his high-tech and high-paying job in Bangalore to join the first class of Teach for India, then Avasara, a start-up school for girls, and now he is working for a Marxist NGO in Jaipur that partners with the government for school reform. What happened to my son the engineer???  His parents summoned him home last month in part to help care for his grandmother after his father’s SBI promotion relocated him 500km away, but the clear and not-so-underlying goal of getting Saurabh home is to put an end to all his craziness and help him find a real job as well as a wife. 

 

We set aside our discussion of marriage plans to  enjoy one of the best meals we’ve eaten in India to date, cooked and served by Saraubh’s mother who has worked a full day at the bank, is leaving tomorrow for a 5-day trip to see her husband, and only sits down when Saurabh insists that she leave the kitchen and stop making more chapatis for us. She reluctantly sits, but will eat only after we leave.

His mother has given him a gold chain to wear “for sanity,” since it’s evident by his choices that he’s over the edge.  At dinner, his grandmother in broken English eeks out, “he needs new job!”  And if finding proper employment weren’t enough, at 26, Saraubh is also under strong pressure to marry.  And he’s getting the message from all sides, not just from mama and his granny.  This wedding season, which kicked off this past Saturday with over 500 marriages in Jaipur alone, he’ll see seven of his good friends circle the fire—two arranged, five for love—but Saurabh has his own ideas.  He sums up his horror at the bad fit of an arranged marriage of a good friend in this way:  “they’re chalk and cheese.”   


Driving through town, we pass scores of decorated elephants, camels, marching bands, and white horses done up in red silks and sequins bearing grooms in equally ornate costumes, sporting large turbans.  We joke with Saurabh about wanting to be wedding crashers—no, really, we would have done just about anything to get through any of the flowered gates!--but eventually he convinces us we might not blend, so we settle for taking pictures on the fly.

Later that evening we have the opportunity to hear more about marriage customs from a new source.  One of Saruabh’s closest friends, Farah, is a single Muslim woman, who at 27 has completed her masters, become a professor of Psychology at University of Jaipur, and drives herself to work every  day.  Nonetheless, she still lives at home and must get her mother’s okay to join us for dinner.  She is keeping her fingers crossed that her parents will give a much more important nod to the man she hopes to marry.  We learn that he is 28, working in PR in England, loves her, and will meet her for the first time this week when he and his family come to town to negotiate a possible marriage.  If all goes well—that is, if both sets of parents approve, and they can find an auspicious date—the wedding will occur next month.   She’ll quit her job, join him in Liverpool and will no longer be the only unmarried woman in her large circle of friends, all of whom are under the age of 28.  

At the end of the evening, Farah invites us in to meet her family.  Her mother and aunt married two brothers, and both families as well as her grandmother live under the same roof.  When we naively ask whether granny is the mother of the sisters or the brothers, Farah and Saurabh burst out laughing at the absurdity of this query:  she’s her father/uncle’s mother of course!  Saraubh, whose paternal grandmother also lives in his house explains that his mother’s mother “wouldn’t even drink water from our home, if she were visiting” so as not to be a burden to her daughter.  We struggle to understand what he means, and he patiently explains what we've heard many times before: marriage defines the stark separation of a woman from her family of origin.  His maternal grandmother lives in Jaipur with her son (his uncle) but, respecting tradition, she will not eat a meal at Saurabh's house.  Farah and Saurabh say this is changing but ever so slowly...


Farah’s house is undergoing significant renovation in anticipation of the upcoming nuptials.  Never mind that there’s currently no groom;  everyone is confident that a marriage will occur soon—to somebody.  Farah is trying to keep in check her hopes for the Liverpuddlian match, since she already suffered a serious disappointment when her previous true love’s parents nixed the union a couple of years back because Farah’s father is a wine merchant—clearly not acceptable for true blue Muslims!  Farah also introduces us to the two large goats the family purchased for Eid, which starts the next day.  Eid is celebrated by Muslims twice each year, before and after Ramadan, and this one recognizes Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac.  According to Farah, these are the “only two happy holidays in the Muslim religion,” though not so much for the goats, who will be slaughtered in the morning, cooked and fed to 300 guests. She invites us to join in the festivities, and were we not been flying out early, we’d love to be there.  Happy Eid to all!