The morning I arrived in Udaipur, I didn’t think I had the energy to make a re-acquaintance with Ahmed, nor to track down his father’s guest house, so I headed for a rather elegant little higher-end hotel on the edge of the lake, instead.
At $18 a night, it was probably the best bargain I came across in all my travels.
Less known to foreign travelers in search of the exotic, Udaipur was primariily a favoured vacation spot for the people of India, itself.
And the city is a very romantic spot: somewhere to go for a honeymoon, or to take the family to, when one needs a break from the Rajasthan heat.
However, even for Indians, the month of May is not a holiday time. I might be the only guest currently in residence at this lovely hotel. My tiny balcony overlooks the lake. But for the women doing laundry in the mornings on the other side of the water, the entire city seemed sleepy as I settled into the luxurious room they assigned me.
& the heat outside gives me an excuse to enjoy the luxury. Mnn… I bask in the air conditioning of this hotel, the 12 foot ceilings of my room, the antique, authentic colonial four poster bed with its faded silk drapery, the hand woven tapestries on the walls and the Persian rugs on the floors (frayed but surely hundreds of years old), room service, and a television with a 24 hour BBC news channel.
Yes, I am happy to leave the backpacker scene behind me for a few days. I sit down at the cherry wood writing desk and set into some serious work at last. Everything I could wish for was here… all for less than $20 dollars a day, food included.
On my second afternoon at the hotel, I venture out to walk along the small lake’s ancient stone walls. I watch children bathe naked at the pumps; women are washing clothes on a cement edge that gives access to the lake itself. I take in the sunset over the incredible aged marble facades of the buildings, and then wander back to the comforts of a real bed and my own bathroom….
***
A child named VJ latches on to me as quick as lightning, when I venture out again, two mornings later—after catching up on world events, and generally just blissfully sitting in the room, watching city activity from my balcony, or lounging in the comfort of an overstuffed chair, and the pleasure of more uninterrupted writing.
VJ assures me he is the greatest guide among the town’s children, and he will show me around the city.
I am off to find bananas, I tell him, so he takes me down alleys, past children playing and cattle wandering the cobblestones. We pass a woman leading mules carrying baskets of bricks, and finally end up at a small marketplace.
Back in my room, I had been a simple observer, thinking about the beauty and the quiet charm of this city.
Now, the children on the street are all a-twitter when they see me. By the end of our little sojourn, VJ and I had amassed quite a following.
As we made our way back to the hotel, I asked him to take me past the address Ahmed had given me. It was a single dwelling, stand-alone house, not very big, set on a residential street not too far from the lake.
But I didn’t stop to see if anyone was in. Still not sure whether I would bother Ahmed and his father. Still feeling that I lacked energy for conversation, or anything other than writing and observing form a distance, for the next week.
‘Perhaps,’ I told myself, ’I should just bide my time until I have to head down to Bombay, and catch my flight to Nairobi?’
***
This morning there is a beautiful Crested Whit serenading me from my balcony’s ledge. The Indian newspaper I picked up down in the lobby blithely lists reports of “militant” actions and retaliations, numbers of deaths and injuries. There is real political unrest in this country right now, with the rise of the right wing nationalist BJP. I am still trying to understand this land and these people. I think of Jodhpur and the fort and the maharaja’s personal safari tour. The heat and the questions. It doesn’t really matter how many times I go over my notes.
Letters. Fragments. False starts.
I am sitting on this old bed with its dusty panels, looking at the things I have written so far… all the “desires to say” result in more and more blank spaces… I think of the odds of having met Ahmed in Bangkok, and the nagging obligation that I feel has ensued as a result; I think about when the woman on the train had asked about my family and loved ones… I think about the letters that I owe everyone, and remind myself that I should send something to my mother to let her know where I will be going next…
she worries… perhaps justifiably
I think about Michael and Jeff, and Johnny and, gosh, Scott! …and Glenn and Heather (what is she doing now, already a mother with two children) and my friends Jinnean and Trisha too …all left behind one way or anothere, as I wander restless through this life…
fantasy, mere fantasy
here-fantasy
ghosts
The past haunting every attempt at ‘now’
disturbing
I’d never make a Buddhist
not cut out for the complacency:
“Come place yourself in my hands”.
My philosophical cusp:
“The universe looks rather like a thought…”
So:
“Who’s thinking?”
I wanna know…
Good better best, never let it rest
…but my good isn’t getting much better, I am afraid,
and my best is nothing to write home about….
And with that thought, chuckling at the whimsy, I put my writing down.
Stepping out of the hotel lobby and into the late afternoon heat, I enter the picture one more time. Merge with the casual foot traffic and let the flow of the city guide my feet.
***
On Tuesday night, just as I am beginning to get a grasp on context and proportion, Liagat Ahmed, of the Sandal Guest House, shows up.
The children had told him that a strange foreign women knew his address, and it would seem that he sent them scouting the streets to find out where I was staying.
With his best more-than-Indian technique of hospitable coercion, he forces my hand on the move to his father’s place.
“I will pick you up and help you move your things first thing in the morning”
(…as if I were moving in with him and bringing dowry trunks?)
Then he offers me an evening tour of Udaipur on his motorcycle
(Note: at this point, motorcycles tended to be one of the few things that really did scare me!)
But Ahmed is all old world courtesy, and we buzz slowly around the town’s city of lakes district and eventually find a light festival in full swing at one of the big park areas. It is a magical place.
“Oh, five minutes. I forgot…” He stops and runs inside a building to hunt for a phone
“I told my mom… its okay.” He says when he remounts and kick starts the engine.
We are at his house now. His mother awakened at 11:00 p.m., when we arrive after our evening with the lights–awakened simply to serve us!
Ahmed has not had a meal this evening, and I am to sit with him and be gently prodded into eating, even though the bulking agent of the lentils I had three hours earlier means I have trouble forcing even one chapatti with a scoop of dhal down. Tasty though it be.
We are in a smallish, dimly lit alcove set up with a rough wooden table and four chairs. The room is just off the kitchen, with a door open onto the inner courtyard.
He gives up reluctantly when I turn down a second chapatti, perhaps more hurt than offended.
His mother had silently came in and out with the dishes and glasses of tea. She wore a flowing light gray suit set, in a Muslim loose-pants-and-long-smock style. Her long straight gray hair loose hanging down her back. Before long, she had padded into the shadowy nether world of the rooms on the other side of the open courtyard and Ahmed and I were alone.
Tomorrow morning I will join this house and its intimacies, new-found misgivings and all….
[...] “playing chicken” [...]