We had a meeting in the middle of the morning when we were able to thrash out another issue: the prioritisation of the village‘s needs. Top of this list in my report was the urgent need for a road, followed by the need for electricity. Compared to these, everything else is small fry, but Dilip feels that I have concentrated too much on infrastructural problems that are outside Vikas Samiti’s scope, and that the focus should shift towards livelihoods and natural resources. Stall feeding for cattle, for example, or better watershed management - which reminds me I that I owe an explanation: watershed management appears to be a slightly grandiose term embracing a whole range of activities aimed at enhancing water supply, improving water quality and managing drainage. A popular Vikas Samiti example seems to be contour bunding, the placing of stones along a hill’s natural contours to impede water runoff, which both reduces erosion and improves water collection.
What is the point of addressing these problems individually, I asked Dilip, when with a little more flexibility we could really put our weight behind Maal’s quest for a road thereby making everything easier.
“I understand your quandary entirely, Jon, but you have to remember that the purpose of the document is to set out a programme of activities for Vikas Samiti to carry out. It is precisely to expedite such activities that we are requesting funding from the Forest Department.”
“OK, I see that now, but is there any way, aside from the microplan that I can help Maal in its lobby for a road?”
“Actually, I think your best solution would be to approach Rajendra ji [his boss]. It may be possible to organise some petition or other...”
“OK I’ll do that.”
“...but now concentrate on completing the microplan and do it quickly as people are questioning your efficiency.”
Though not meant unkindly, this last point threw me. Until this morning it had not occurred to me that anyone in Vikas Samiti was really aware of me at all. We are volunteers, personae only just about gratae and invisible to everybody but our immediate in-charges. The thought that people might be sufficiently au fait with my work ethic to question my efficiency was all too redolent of the iron grip of authority. Although I didn’t press Dilip for details, I have a strong suspicion that the chief questioner, perhaps the only one, is Sumita. I have passed her twice around Vikas Samiti today and on both occasions her questioning expression was unmistakable.
I probably deserve the criticism. My pace of work has hardly been frenetic, either in Maal or back in Udaipur. In my final year at university, slaving over essays about mammalian jaw structure, I daydreamed about rural development work and imagined long, wholesome, enjoyable hours. In reality these hours, while enjoyable and probably quite wholesome, have been corrupted and diluted by all the other interests that have occupied my time. Naively I thought nobody else would notice.
*
Other interests, this weekend, have featured a lot of exploring. On Saturday afternoon I went to the Gulab Bagh (Rose Garden) south of the City Palace. This is a large, pleasant public garden, also known as the Sajjan Nivas after Maharana Sajjan Singh whose most prominent legacy is the Monsoon Palace (otherwise Sajjangarh) high on a hill overlooking the city. As well as the eponymous rose garden – which boasts such varieties as “Queen Eliza Beth”, “Golden Get”, “Tittany”, “Summer Hokiday”, “Effil Tower”, “First Lone” and “First Prise” – Gulab Bagh contains a library, a zoo and plentiful tree-lined avenues. From here I walked to Dudh Talai (Milk Lake) which I recognised with some surprise as being where we entered the City Palace to get to the garba on my mystical first night. It is a pretty place and the small lake, separated only by a road from Lake Pichola, does indeed have a milky quality, the effect of which is enhanced by colonnades and pink bougainvilleas and the views of the City Palace peeping majestically through a row of palm trees.
Best of all, I went through a gate next to an ugly little temple near the lake into some scrubby forest land, where I saw four or five wild peacocks. After a lengthy ramble through moderately dense scrub, I reached an old stone gate and a long flight of steps. These led precariously to the top of a ridge that separates old Udaipur and the lake to the west, and modern Udaipur to the east. This hill, and the fortifications on top have long intrigued me, as I pass them on the bus on the way to Kherwara. On a map of Rachel’s they are marked as Eklingjigarh, the Fort of Eklingji. Eklingji is a local version of Shiva and is also the family god of the Maharanas. I have so far been able to find out nothing about this fort, even after yesterday, when I climbed up the very overgrown steps to thetop of the hill, to a path of about twenty metres running along the ridge. The superb views on either side of the hill were starkly contrasting: on the one side Lake Pichola, with the toy-like Lake Palace floating within and the City Palace on its shore, surrounded by the crowded old city and the more diffuse modern area of Chetak, Fatehpura and Devali, flanking Fateh Sagar in the north, and the murky, confusing far shore of Lake Pichola with beautiful green-blue-grey layers of hills stretching west; on the other side Udaipur’s eastern urban sprawl: a vast, flat plain covered with busy roads, trees and concrete buildings, a second panorama as fascinating and in some ways as appealing as the first.
The view west: lakes and palaces
The view east: urban sprawl
The fort is not actually accessible from the stretch of wall I reached, but abuts a temple called Karni Mata Mandir, which has a more conventional approach from Dudh Talai. I plan to visit this soon. I saw four young men standing on the fort calling to me to come and join them. In the end, despite my entreaties on behalf of their necks, they jumped down to where I was, so anxious were they to talk to the extraordinary foreigner who had come up by such an adventurous route. They turned out to be students of hotel management in the institute in Udaipur. Their spokesman, Sanjay, spoke good, slightly American English and again and again expressed his admiration at my bravery of stepping off the beaten track, staring at me with disquietingly intense eyes. He also spent quite some time praising the beauty of nature here, only to compare it as nothing to the beauty of North India (north in this case meaning Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Kashmir).
Sanjay (second from left) and his friends
After promising Sanjay over and over again that I would call him and meet them all again (and fighting off his criticism that “I don’t think you have made your mind up about Indian people yet. You are still uncomfortable” and “If you’re interested in meeting us again – but I don’t think you’re interested…”) I walked down, looking back up frequently to make sure they managed to get back to the fort safely. From the bottom I headed to the old city and briefly met Shiv, who asked me if he could describe his mother as a “positive cunning woman”, and if I knew who Warren Buffet was, before joining the girls and some volunteer friends of theirs from Indore at the Natraj for thali and jollity.
On Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast of pomegranate and banana on toast, I headed back to the old town and explored an area around a road called Bara Bazaar, which cuts into the heart of the old city away from the tourist nexus. In the many interesting deviations I made into small gullies, I was offered tea, chapatti and chutney by various people I met. I have realised that up till now my mental image of the old city has been rather inaccurate, as it is far more extensive than I thought, and on the east side extends as far as Bapu Bazaar, the modern shopping street near the Natraj and the bus stand and the town hall. There are numerous old gates – Hathipol (Elephant Gate), Chandpol (the Moon Gate), Surajpol (Sun Gate) and Delhi Gate. In light of this afternoon’s explorations, the book I am reading, Inside the Haveli, which is set in Udaipur, makes a lot more sense.
Before returning to Vikas Samiti I called in on Hari, who was full of vitriol about a nearby business rival whom he considers fraudulent and corrupt. The rival happens to be a Jain, and this led to a general conversation about Jains during which Hari told me an interesting story. Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu and goddess of wealth, was visiting families and distributing gifts. When she came to a Jain household, the owner ushered her in and said “Just wait one minute, I’ll be back” and left the room. He never came back, and Lakshmi, unable to break etiquette by leaving before her host returned, is still there, her presence explaining the fabulous wealth of the Jain community.
On my way to get a tempo from Hathipol I bumped into Bablu, and was persuaded to come up to his roof terrace for a chai and chitchat. He is very likable and has an aura of innocence unlike Hari’s sleazy knowingness. I get a strong impression that they are not friends, maybe because they dislike each other, or maybe because they come from different, immiscible strands of Tourist-ville society that I am sure is as caste-ridden and hung-up in many ways as any section of Indian society. There was a middle-aged Korean man having a late lunch there today and we chatted to him for a bit. He seems to be doing a whistle-stop tour of Asia and reeled off a list of destinations visited like a particularly uninspiring shopping list. I hope he takes something away from his doubtless long-awaited travels.
*
And finally, I have a slight unpleasantness to report. Last night, on arriving back to the guesthouse after an evening walk, I found Priya in the tiny kitchen cooking supper. She had already eaten, she told me, but she was cooking for Amir (the new volunteer with strong views on aubergines) and Yogesh, who were both sprawled out in the next room in front of a film. This was by now a familiar sight but yesterday something in me suddenly boiled over.
“Why are you acting like a slave, Priya?” I asked. “Why can’t they cook their own food?”
“Slave?” she repeated, as if I’d just slapped her. “Slave is a disgusting word. I’m shocked that you used this word.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just... It just seems wrong that you should always be cooking for them. They know how to cook, don’t they? Amir knows how to cook.”
“You don’t know how to care and share. In India this we will do for our friends gladly. That is the difference.”
She turned to give her full attention to the pot of dal she was stirring, pointedly excluding me. I left the room and avoided the three of them all evening. I was furious at the implication that we English might care any less for our friendships, that because we didn’t abase ourselves in front of each other at every opportunity it meant we were somehow deficient. As much as anything else it seemed such a facile generalisation and I would actually have preferred to have been insulted as an individual rather than as a nation.
But I am terrible at rows. As soon as heated words are exchanged I become a little frightened of the other person, and if the fracas is left unresolved I can’t stop myself brooding, however hard I try to shake it off. Today it was obvious all morning that I should apologise for my insensitivity, and in the intervals of having my efficiency silently questioned by Sumita’s death-ray eyes I tried to find Priya, failing with a mixture of relief and frustration. It was only after I’d had lunch that, walking back to the computer room I encountered Priya and Yogesh coming in the opposite direction. My stomach lurched, my skin tightened and for a few minutes I exchanged inane remarks with Yogesh. Thankfully his project supervisor passed by and he chased after him with a question about the market value of honey. It was just the two of us and I took the plunge: “I’m sorry about yesterday, Priya.”
“Oh Jon,” she said with a laugh, “You don’t have to worry about that. It’s OK. Really.”
“Oh, that’s nice of you. I guess I was just in a bit of a bad mood and I wasn’t very sensitive.”
“Really, it’s no problem. I think UK guy-Indian girl is a difficult relationship actually.”
I laughed. “You’re probably right.”
Less than an hour ago, she and I shared a joke about Sumita’s hairstyle. Everything seems to be back to normal.
Next Post - Friday 1st December 2006: Udaipur (will be posted Thursday 1st December 2011)
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