This weekend has mostly been devoted to social life. I had to pay a visit to the Old Town yesterday to change a traveller’s cheque and I took the opportunity to call on my friend Hari in his tiny sculpture shop. “Jo-o-o-nny!” he drawled, flashing a delighted smile and thrusting me a vigorous high five. We had barely had time to exchange pleasantries and dispatch one of his inexhaustible supply of friends or relations to procure chai when two middle-aged Englishwomen paused on the threshold. Immediately the full force of Hari’s charm was transferred, and cranked up into top gear. “Hello Madam! Do you want to see some marble carvings of Indian gods? Just have a look, right?”
They gave each other an “Oh well, what the hell” look and surrendered themselves unto the Litany of Tourist-ville: they were from Leeds; it was their first time in India; they were spending a week in Udaipur; their next destination was Jaisalmer. Sensing that he had covered the preliminaries, Hari moved onto Stage Two and I braced myself for a performance.
“This is Ganesh, the Elephant God,” he said proffering a smooth, pot-bellied basalt structure that fitted into the palm of his hand.
“Unusual, isn’t it? Not like the ones we saw in that shop in Jaipur, is it? What’s this one?”
“This is Lord Krishna, madam. Very special god for Indian people. Very particular.”
“Yes, I know Krishna - with the flute normally, isn’t he? Did you make it yourself?”
“Of course, madam... All the pieces in the shop I made.” [This was a barefaced lie].
“Emma, he made it himself! Look at it... amazing! What’s your name? Hari? My son’s called Harry, but I guess it’s a different spelling! [we all laughed]... Is it marble?”
“Yes, yes - very unique marble from South India.” [False again, it was made from local Udaipuri marble].
“Gosh! Are all your pieces from South Indian marble, Hari?”
“All are from different, actually. Some are from Kashmir marble, some are from Agra, like the Taj... [outlandish fabrication!]... you’ve been to the Taj, right?”
“No... I’d love to one day. So romantic isn’t it? Do you travel there yourself to get the marble?”
“Oh yes. I am travelling around India, picking up marbles and other stones” [Patently untrue!]
“Oh wonderful - how interesting it must be! And have you travelled outside India as well?”
Hari’s face assumed its most seraphic expression as he told them that “People come in my shop from all over the world. So I am travelling this way to London, Germany, Israel... everywhere!” [Ambiguous, to say the least, and in this case misinterpreted]. After such a smooth ride, Stage Three was disposed of in minutes. Her wings by now substantially singed, Emma’s friend was drawn into the flame with ease. She accepted Hari’s very steep price of 700 rupees without a murmur of dissent, and thus became the proud possessor of a South Indian marble Krishna made by a charming, well-travelled sculptor. Result!
Ganesh, by Hari
We persuaded them to stay for chai and the conversation turned to my work which fascinated both of them. They asked some interesting and intelligent questions, and we slowly moved on to other, related topics. They left with an injunction to Hari to “Keep on travelling” and I lost no time in teasing him about his Kashmiri marbles and trips to Israel. He looked solemnly at me: “Jon, if I say one thing to the tourists, don’t say differently, OK?” I nodded and smiled, and he gave me a conspiratorial slap on the back, at which we both burst out laughing.
And so, I have allowed myself to become complicit in a plot that I don’t really approve of. It is not so much the financial element - everybody knows that purchasing in a tourist hotspot is something of a game, and as long as they acknowledge the fact that they will sometimes be ripped off, the Emmas of this world are entirely capable of looking after themselves in this respect. No, it is more the intellectual dimension. If these women derived any particular happiness from the fact that their Krishna had been made from South Indian marble by the boy who sold it to them, then that happiness was unfounded, a sham. But I am probably being absurdly pedantic here and taking an over-simplistic view of truth and its relationship to happiness.
*
Back in Vikas Samiti, the biggest news is that the IRMAns - the Indian college students volunteering here as part of their degree - are back in town. Despite their having fairly blithely flouted their college’s strict injunction to remain in the field for a month without returning to Udaipur, I have seen little of them in recent weeks and, hearing that they were back for good, I decided to seek them out this evening in their nearby hostel accommodation. It was delightful to remember what a decent, intelligent bunch they are. Dhanwant, for example, quirky, intelligent and with an oddly comforting manner; Arun, predictably a little drunk and over-eager to subject me to photo after photo of the IRMA campus and student life, but nevertheless full of hyperactive charm. A little part of me worries that it is precisely because I haven’t seen them for weeks that their company seems so attractive now, and that after frequent exposure a la Karan, they too would grate and fuel paragraphs of unkind vitriol. Most of me simply accepts them as they are.
Deepak, in particular, has become a bit of an idol of mine although like any good idol I’m sure the fact would be matter of lofty unconcern to him. He is the tall, handsome, intelligent Bihari who espoused such odd views on learning and unhappiness in a previous meeting. This evening he held Dhanwant and me in thrall with a brief history of Sanskrit, an account of the life of a later Mughal emperor and a story about the electrification of a small village near Patna, the state capital of Bihar. He also introduced me to the beautiful music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani singer of Qawwali, a Sufi devotional style of Persian origin. Deepak seems to have an obsessive love of the Persian-influenced Islamic culture that dominated North India for most of the second millennium AD and is now utterly entwined into most strands of what we think of as “Indian Culture”. I have come to realise that this is rare, even amongst educated Hindus who surely have an inkling of the extent to which the cultural fabric of Hinduism, such as temple architecture, devotional music and the vernacular languages, has been heavily influenced by the Arab, Turkic and Persian worlds. Indian Islamophobia, however recent it may be as a phenomenon, has rooted itself deep into the Hindu psyche. A wealthy, cosmopolitan Bengali Brahmin acquaintance in Bombay told me that she had recently asked her husband to name all their close Muslim friends. The list was disturbingly short. Closer to home, I have heard casual disparagement of Islam in the conversation of a wide range of educated Hindu friends including Shiv, Yogesh, Priya and even Prakash. I feel compelled to add that through no conscious discrimination, all my Indian friends (so far at least!) are Hindus. Proof and puddings spring to mind.
Deepak
*
For my part, I have become increasingly fascinated by Rajput history, although my grasp on it is tremulous at best. Till now I have bandied the term “Rajput” around, glibly avoiding any attempt at definition. To seriously remedy this defect would require a book, hardly a practical course of action late on a Sunday evening, so I shall merely flirt with the subject here. These sons of kings (from the Sanskrit rajaputra) are a sub-group of the kshatriya, the princely caste one rung down from the brahmana or priestly caste, better known as Brahmins. Their history stretches back millennia to the murky depths of Vedic scripture, where the word rajaputra was used to cover three great princely lineages descending from the sun, moon and fire.
It was in the period we Europeans call the Middle Ages that Rajput kingdoms were established across northwest India, particularly in the area once called Rajputana, roughly corresponding to today’s Rajasthan. The Chauhans, operating from Ajmer, were significant as it was one of their number, Prithviraj Chauhan, who became the last Hindu ruler of Delhi before it became an Islamic Sultanate in the 12th Century. There are numerous other Rajput clans, with wonderful names redolent of past glories - Solanki, Kachchawa, Shekawat, Rathore, Sisodia.
The Sisodias are in fact the local clan ruling Mewar, and claim descent from the Sun. Whether the current Maharana is in the habit of gazing at the sunset with a fond murmur of “there goes Grandad” I’m afraid I am unable to say, although I like to imagine he has some batty relic of a belief in his heliogenesis (the Sanskrit for the sun-lineage is suryavanshi: the vanshi, literally bamboo, refers to the lineage, while surya, sun, is related to the Greek helios and Latin sol and even the Germanic sunna). I have read two theories on the origin of the clan name - one, prosaic, after a village called Sisoda, the other, exotic, linked to the Sassanids, the last pre-Islamic dynasty to rule Persia, hinting at a far less clean-cut clan origin. I know which theory I want to believe and I know which theory I ought to believe - naturally they are not the same!
Despite my craving for sleep, I feel it would be unfair not to explain that Rajputs are not confined to the history books, but are also to be found on the streets. The clan name is usually preceded by Singh (lion) and I often encounter people in Udaipur with names like Anil Singh Chauhan or Rajesh Singh Solanki. I always fancy I detect a certain pride when somebody tells me he is a Rajput, similar to the mild aura of piety that accompanies a Brahmin when he reveals his Brahminhood, however un-Brahmanical his lifestyle may be.
Next Post - Wednesday 22nd November 2006: Kojawara and Maal (will be posted Tuesday 22nd November 2011)
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