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Then S took me sightseeing. We started at the Hawa Mahal, a huge palace with a gorgeous facade where some Raja had kept all of his gazillions of wives locked up. The thing is, he built thousands of little windows into the facade so that the women could look out over the busy, pink-hued streets of Jaipur's Old City.
We continued on to the King Jai Singh II's unbelievable astronomical observatory (constructed c. 1727-1734), where the compound of massive sundials and other instruments "for measuring the positions of the heavenly bodies" looks more like an installation in a modern art museum than a scientist's utopia. The gigantic sundial at the center of the compound can still tell the time in Jaipur to an accuracy within 4 seconds. There are twelve mini-sundials, each for a particular sign of the zodiac. There are two crater-like instruments for measuring the positions of the stars. There are countless other structures, none of them properly labeled, but all of them very cool-looking. Finally, there is a little shrine on the edge of the compound.
We then headed to the stylish Anokhi cafe for a tea-and-study break. I had a salad (yes, yes, another salad!!) with bitter arugula (!!!) and stinky bleu cheese (!!!). This was topped with the most delicious slice of carrot cake I have ever had and some organic French press coffee. Why I ever left Jaipur is a mystery to me.
That evening, S and L threw a party in their apartment. We all sat on the balcony under the stars, this diverse bunch of American kids who all happened to share the same interests. I don't think I've ever been to a party where every single guest understood my little obsession with India/Sanskrit/literature/everything. It was fantastic. Even when the group broke into Hindi for minutes at a time, it was fine. We ended the night salsa dancing. Salsa dancing! I learned some slick moves, none of which I remember.
We went back to Anokhi the following day for some recovery food. I had falafel and pita, for which I have been harboring a bizarre craving for the past two weeks. (I think it was that 2AM falafel on the grass of the Wesleyan campus that set it off.)
Later in the evening, S and I went temple-hopping to some of the local temples. We arrived in time for the evening aarti at the gigantic, white Birla Mandir, where we were positively crushed by devotees and tourists alike -- all pushing their way up to the front to receive prasad from the saffron-clad brahmin pundits. There's a lot to notice about the Birla Mandir, starting with the crowds of Japanese tourists who were all praying to Lakshmi-Narayana in the main prayer hall. The place is white and spotless, having been built only in the late eighties. There are two large statues in the front; these depict the main donors, presumably Mr. and Mrs. Birla. The artwork inside the temple reveals an effort to create, as S put it, "textbook Hinduism." The "trinity" of Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva appears often; scenes from the Bhagavad Gita are prominent. I particularly noticed the presence of the epics within the temple. Behind the main shrine was a huge carving of Sita's svayamvara (husband-choosing ceremony, literally "self-choice", but of course she doesn't really do the choosing) from the Ramayana. There were stained-glass windows depicting the sage Valmiki writing the Ramayana, and Vyasa writing the Mahabharata.
But the real treasures were the engraved figures on the pillars which supported the temple from the outside. Here one could find the poet-saints Kabir and Surdas, as well as Guru Nanak and Sankaraachaarya. Things got even better on the other side of the temple, where one could see "JESUSCHRIST", "Moses and the Ten Commandments", and Zarathustra. Hinduism is the best.
We finished the night with visits to three more temples in the area -- seriously, this neighborhood is like a Hindu strip mall -- one Ganesh temple where the elephant-headed god was eating delicious laddoos, one Hanuman-Durga temple where we found an entire shrine to the Ramayana, and one little Shiva temple where anyone (anyone at all!) can come up to the Shiva murtis, give flowers, and pray. Another treasure at the Shiva temple was a shrine to Sai Baba where both the picture of Sai Baba and the statue of Sai Baba had chunks of bread glued to their mouths.
Hey -- I hope I'm eating when I'm dead, too.I'm afraid the journey home wasn't as wonderful as the weekend itself. I woke up at 4:30AM on Monday morning to catch a train at 8:15AM (okay, so I'm jet lagged and woke up 2 hours before I had to), but the train was delayed three hours. I spent two of these hours sitting in the Upper Class Waiting Room, watching Punjabi families eat breakfast and old, fat men change clothes. There was a pidgeon flying around the ladies' room. The last hour I spent on the platform talking to one of the only women there, a principal at a school in Haryana who studied English at university and very much wanted me to join the Self-Realization Fellowship. I finally got on my train--I had been waiting at the wrong end of the platform the whole time, despite directions to the contrary, so I had to run--and I sat there for four hours just looking out the window. The rest of the time I alternated between reading my novel and looking out the window. In other countries I love to walk around and see life; in India it's hard to walk, but I've found that just *sitting* is the equivalent. You can see a lot of India just by sitting in a waiting room for two hours. You can see even more by looking out the window of a train ride across Rajasthan and into Haryana and Delhi. Slum after slum, village after village, town after town: India is breathtaking. With a perfect cup of chai from the chaiwallah who goes up and down the length of the train selling tea, I was very happy indeed.
And so today -- in one hour, in fact -- I move to Pune. I start Sanskrit again. I get an apartment. Oh my goodness.
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