India, fading

Jaipur

Jodhpur blue has stained my retinas and despite the absolute glory of Jaipur pink the blue remains.

Jaipur was reached by train. A five hour journey, uneventful if rather uncomfortable. The delicious samosas from the market in Jodhpur were the highlight. I listened to my book, a story set in Jaipur. Not brilliant but absorbing enough and giving me a flavour of the place I was about to visit. Andrew was sociable and gregarious, the yin to my yang, or maybe the other way round, and chatted amiably with fellow passengers. I listened to my story on headphones, smiled at the baby opposite, watched the sun go down, and did not have to use the onboard facilities (praise be).

We were met by Payal and her husband Amit at the station, which was a very welcome surprise as it was fairly late and we were tired and a bit fazed by the crowds. Payal is Andrew’s person on the ground in Jaipur. He has known her since she was twelve when he started working with her father, now sadly deceased. She lines up meetings with suppliers and prospective suppliers and helps arrange shipping etc if necessary. She hustled us through the multitudes and found us a tuktuk and sent us on our way the hotel that I had booked with great kindness and efficiency, and with plans for the next day in hand.

As we neared the hotel I had a bad feeling about this particular choice of mine, an old haveli or mansion, in an old part of the city. In the movies a sinister sound track would have started very quietly, raising the volume just in time to catch the rats that scurried around fearlessly at the bottom of the ‘hotel’ steps. Now, I know that in most cities we are apparently less than six feet away from a rat at any one time. I understand rats need a home and to make a living etc, but this felt like an omen and indeed it was. In a nutshell the place was staffed by obnoxious 12 year olds, communal areas were filthy and frankly all but asking the rats to come in, the rooms, while clean and the beds made with fresh sheets etc, had no real windows - just holes in the wall covered by bars with inside shutters. Could be quaint, I hear you say. Well it wasn’t. The place is part of a franchise called Bloom Boutique Hotels, the requisite window dressing being yellow crap all over the place and all apparently with automated cleaning systems - ha! I say to that. Maybe this one was the anomaly but I won’t be trying the others to find out. I wrote a very stern email to head office, who apologised florally but did not refund that night’s charge.

We made our getaway first thing in the morning, suitcase wheels rattling over the bumpy street, greeting the cows along the way, beginning to see the beauty of the morning despite having been awake most of the night listening to a dog barking and a 5am call to prayer, followed by some very energetic singing by someone I had no way of seeing from my prison window.

I have never been so happy to see an Ibis Hotel in my life. Bland, clean, respectable (it doesn’t look like the pictures on the website mind you), extremely well priced, staffed by professional and utterly charming people who, intuiting our need for solace, led us the restaurant for a slap up breakfast of dosas and some really good coffee.

From there Jaipur unfolded. Business was done with Payal and Amit’s help. They are an incredible team. Amit would drop Payal off with us and we would go to appointments with suppliers. He would then come and pick up the packages as needed on his motorbike, and also sometimes Payal too, with said packages, all piled up together and off they’d go.

Jaipur is the centre of the ancient block printing industry, once perilously close to extinction but now widely valued once more. Individual wooden blocks are carved with intricate patterns and used to create patterns using natural dyes on cotton fabric with bewildering skill. Each part of the process was a set career for anyone born into that particular family, particularly in rural areas. Obviously modernisation has entered the fray, for better or worse, but the artisans are still very much out there.

I spent a day with Andrew and Payal between shops and a giant, multi floored warehouse. I was given a tour and as we went up to the top in a very posh lift, with music and everything, the floors appeared less and less finished, with massive openings where one day walls or windows may be, but the floors were nonetheless heaving with mountains of fabrics. Above that was more concrete floors open to the elements, dust everywhere - a kind of dreamlike set where it felt if you went high enough the stairs would be simply spiralling up by themselves, floaty diaphanous fabric wafting around you as you climbed to, what, heaven? Maybe not.

Fabric overwhelm; sublime lunch in an unexpectedly fab restaurant; end of day expressions

There is often kind of game played by salespeople (men obv, the women just fold and sew, and it’s not restricted to India of course) where you feel somewhat funnelled into the buying process. A sense of urgency coupled with almost complete insouciance was slightly frustrating and certainly as I left with bags of stuff I wondered exactly what I had bought, and how and why, although perhaps that says more about my shopping style than it does about the customer service. It was all somewhat overwhelming, fabric piled up everywhere in small mountains so you simply could not reach what was on the top, never mind the middle, some on shelves. I wondered if this was normal or if some sort of change was afoot - I shall never know.

Jaipur is big, crowded, busy and noisy, very like Delhi, but somehow less orderly, if orderly is a word that can be used to describe Delhi. It was hot and dusty and I missed our beautiful Jodhpur hotel’s gorgeous shady garden with its tinkling fountain. But it is beautiful, and it is very pink, or perhaps a pale rose terracotta would better describe the soft hues of the buildings. They are painted that colour by law (← read all about it here), a bit like the Nash’s Park Crescent in London, except those are clotted cream.

Jaipur’s most famous building is the Hawa Mahal, or the Palace of the Winds, so named because it uses very clever architectural design features to create breezes throughout the interior. I am not going to go into explanations here because they would be simply lifted from the ‘ternet, and you can do that yourself. It is gorgeous, like a teetering, wonderfully ridiculous wedding cake, with it’s 953 windows for the ladies of the palace to view the parades below without being seen, because, you know, end of civilisation etc if that happened. The front, which is the second most photographed edifice in India (maybe) is actually the back.

After wandering the maze of the Hama Mahal Andrew and I visited The Tattoo Cafe across the road for some much needed refreshment. Tattoos are not obligatory, although if you have the temerity to turn up just to take pictures from their perfectly situated roof terrace you will be shown the stairs in no uncertain way. We had a wonderful view of the back/front of the palace from our table to go with the creamy dahl and deliciously cold lassi bejewelled with pomegranate seeds that was our lunch. Andrew got sunstroke which was no fun, so the Ibis was once more a place of succour and rest.

Other lovely things in Jaipur -

• Buying jewellery for the shop, the magpie in me was delighted.

• Dinner with Payal and her entire family - arrival in a tuktuk containing me, Andrew, Payal, Payal’s mum, Payal’s sister and two nieces and Payal’s daughter - that’s eight people, even two of them were quite small.

• Buying fragrant and wild coloured spices to bring home.

• Watching brass pots being tinned, right there, on the street.

• Being invited to join the guests at a wedding across the road from the hotel and doing clunky western versions of Indian dancing.

  

  

  

My memories of this trip are fading now, despite not really being that long ago. I had high expectations of Jaipur, based on nothing other than a romantic notion of pink architecture and a love of textiles. It didn’t quite live up to them, possibly because I had fallen so heavily for Jodhpur, I am not sure. I would like to explore the block printing history some more so who knows, maybe I will go back.

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For my new readers - welcome and thank you so much for signing up. I imagine you were expecting a food blog or essay, and are a bit confused as to why I am talking about India. It’s a way for me to keep the memories to be honest, and because so many people enjoyed following the journey on instagram.

I will be returning to more food themed subjects very soon - thinking about food security here in the UK and and world wide as we face so many problems with climate, war and megalomaniac politicians. To balance things a bit I am working with a local community kitchen, Ein Cegin, and spending time with small people like Lily here who give me huge hope for the future - lots to tell, very exciting stuff we are doing. Keep the faith - stick with me!