25 Mar 08: Hawa Mahal

Susan and Arvind seemed to hit it off, they've been engrossed in conversation all the time and flirting with each other. Susan has now explained that she is getting divorced, but her hubby has even refused to move out yet saying its really expensive and a waste of money which he doesn't have. I asked, naturally, if they are getting divorced now, how come they were planning this trip together?. She said she'd planned it some months ago, she thought it would be a nice romantic get-away, to “re-connect”! He apparently told her he was dropping out two days before the trip, when she asked why he wasn't packing yet. Half the group was around over-hearing all this when Susan said, “You know, the things he's done, he's such a pathetic desperate f***, I think everybody, even his new “client with benefits”, should know about this. I am going to start blogging about my life with the X, like that woman Welsh-Smith or the other who made a video blog about her X's porn and Viagara.”. I had actually seen it – just you know, browsing, there was even a news report about it -- and anyway the woman looked like she needed a friend, but what was really scary were the comments on her video-log. So I told Susan you can do that, but don't allow dialog on your deolog, the comments are all hateful and even the people who can't seem to keep away from reading it will revile you in the most horrible terms. She should just drop it nah?

This morning, as was the plan, we took them to Hawa Mahal. The way they were pronouncing it you could make it into a joke about the royal families after independence: now you hawa mahal, now you don't. Once the tour members were safely in the hands of the guide there, I sent Salim along with them and sat down in the shade in a corner to read, finding the stones beneath me more cooling than the paltry breezes in the upper reaches.

Before leaving Pune, I'd picked up something at that bookshop in Gaekwad Nagar, a Balkan writer called Slavoj Zizek. Good thing I made it past his reverential reference to Lacan, because other than that his ideas about the causes of current situations around the world seem very perspicacious. OK, a lot of the more philosophical digressions I don't get and some is very tedious going, but on every page or so there are a couple of sentences that are like flak-lights that suddenly pierce the darkness – in a direction you've blindly peered at before – to illuminate an unsuspected construct, that you feel is wondrous, without quite knowing why.

In the afternoon we went to Johri Bazaar nearby to buy jewellery. The guys weren't much interested and since I had to accompany the women to the shops, they'd decided they would be OK on their own. Luckily for me and the women in the group, since I was not at all familiar with the area, Meghana offered to help me out and take us around, show them the “good” shops where they wouldn't be fleeced toooo shamelessly. As she put it, “if fleecing firangi tourists isn't good Friedmanian trickle-down economics, what is?”. When she met us at Hawa Mahal after our tour there, Brian suddenly developed an interest in jewellery and decided to accompany us! What are your rules BTW, about lafdas on the tour and “mingling with the natives”? I swear, by the end of the afternoon, after Brian was done lapping up all the stuff Meghana was very animatedly and flashing kajal-eyes lapeting out about the styles and the historical connections and the meanings of various design elements of the jewellery, his head-waggle was so extreme I thought it would fall off.

When I got back home in the evening, I was told that Ranjan had stopped by looking for me, so I walked over to his parents' home. I'd missed his wedding and was keen to meet his wife too. I greeted his parents, and chatted to them a bit. His father was concerned that I had just given up a job and his mom was concerned that I wasn't putting on weight and when would I come over for dinner, that she would make “wheat gluten curry” (I can never remember what it is called!). Though I had come prepared for the invitation and prepared to decline it, armed with important sounding “so busy, Auntie” excuses, I immediately said OK. It should have given me some pause when she added, “You know Ranjan doesn't like that dish, but he doesn't have to be here, you and I can have a nice chat.”. Naani and my parents are summoning their forces!

Just then Ranjan walked in with his wife, a saree-clad, single long braid-wearing wisp of a thing. I shook his hand, turned to her and said nothing more than “Pleased to meet you.” as I stuck out my hand to shake hers. She seemed to suddenly whisk herself three feet behind Ranjan and out of my sight! Ranjan said, “She's working on her English yaar, why don't we walk down to the paanwallah for a smoke?”.

On our way there, after kicking out of our way random building kids playing cricket in front of the lift, I asked Ranjan about “married life”. He replied that it was good, he was quite settled. I'd been puzzling about this whole thing, so I continued, “So how come you agreed not only to an arranged marriage, but, as I heard it, to a girl basically chosen by your parents, your mom? In college you had all these girls totally fidaa over you!”

I watched our shadows lengthen ahead of us and fade, and new ones arise behind us that overtook us, hurrying towards the paanwalla but never making it, as Ranjan responded to my questions, “I came back from Delhi to see her and all before things were completely pukka yaar, and like that, she is a rishtewali, a second cousin on my father's side, but not from Jaipur you know, a more traditional side of the family. And forget about all those college girls, basically I needed a wimmin.”

“But I don't get it man, it was so quick I didn't even have a chance to get leave and come to your wedding? What big rush was going on? And I thought only Muslims did that stuff about marrying their cousins!”

“Firstly, we Rajputs do it also, for both Hindus and Muslims it is a high caste thing. You couldn't understand, your family is basically farmers made good in business. And the rush. you haven't figured it out? Writing software has softened your brain, you should never have switched from chip design. You know Chintu got married two months after I did? Well he met a girl in college, dead serious from the start, going to have lunch at her house and all that. As soon as they passed out from college they wanted to get married. My parents had no objection to that, but you know in our community the older son has to be married before the younger son. So while I was in Delhi working at TCS, major drama scenes were taking place in my house between my brother and my mom, until my mom sent out feelers through my grand-aunt and only then they let me know what was going on.”.

The red glow of the dying beedi made a lazy arc as Marlow threw it into the open gutter behind the paanwalla.