Skip to main content

Falling Short

I imagined a Pepto-Bismol pink city when I saw Jaipur for the first time a few weeks ago. Growing up, I had read stories of mystery, adventure and intrigue set there - with the obligatory reference to its preternatural pinkness. Since I had never come into contact with the reality of Rajasthan, everything was highly romanticized in my mind. This is where I would travel back in time, see the India as it had once been. There would be perfection that never made it out to the rest of the country. Our car crossed one of the city gates and into Jaipur - dream had come into contact with material things. Absolutely chaotic traffic, no real pink but the color of sandstone, the impossibility of taking anything in without the clamor of vendors, peddlers, tour guides, scam artists, and rickshaw guys all trying to sell and pitch you things. 

The level of chaos is such that is impossible to focus on anything. You just want a few minutes of peace and quiet to see what is around, savor coming to the place of your dreams since childhood. The City Palace had been rented out for a wedding party. Hundreds of workers were busy decorating the place. A large image of Shiva and Parvati was part of the decor and had been placed in the center of a large pillared hall. Whoever was getting married was obviously rich but lacked good taste - the decorations were very overboard bordering on tacky. Tourists like us were passing by and many took pictures by the papier-mâché idol painted to look like brass.

It is all about faith in the end - so what if it did not belong to a temple of unknown and unknowable age, was made out painted scraps of waste paper not stone. It did not have to lack in divinity for any of that. Our driver took us to the best chaat place in town in the some deep back alley. That was a rewarding experience away from the madness of tourist attractions. I can't claim to have a lot of knowledge or experience with chaats but this one tasted exceptional to me. The city was very far from what I had imagined it to be but the food consistently exceeded expectations including the lassis and the Rajasthani thali. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...