Marionette Strings of Ink: Udaipur, an excerpt
May 11, 2006. Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.
The sun crackled overhead; I walked across a bridge in Udaipur, Rajasthan, and a dog shifted his position and gazed up at me, a headless dove held between its paws - I suppose all the food here is fresh.
The buildings pulsate out below me, all of us underneath the desert sun; light purple bricks flicker white and upward, saris and fabric billowing in the hot winds. It's high noon here in Rajasthan - a time for clothes to dry, when the streets empty and the rickshaw drivers take off their shirts, crawl into the back seat, and doze off.
Amidst the dust and sand and sun is wedged a palpable nobility, earned through hundreds of years of questionable decisions to settle this land. Chants drift up like heat in the distorted air, filling the slums with music when the wedding processions aren't shimmering by in noisy momentary glory.
A writer could get used to this type of life: spreading days like butter across the weeks; carefully sculpting visual and sonic stimuli and playing them off against bouts of pleasantly numbing relaxation.
When one can buy a large mango for less than thirty cents, eat a meal for a dollar from a rooftop cafe, and still have change to catch a rickshaw down to the lake (I stroll, for the record)...Why wax philosophic anywhere else?
Of course, I wish still that the days of the Maharaja were here - that horses galloped from the city gates to meet the enemy - but times change; even the imperial, hubristic romanticism of the Raj has long since been displaced...
...I'm sure the Rajputs, like all ruling classes, were to the same effect: utterly repulsive. That they have enshrined their portraits with violent battles, gory beheadings, and bodies sliced vertically off horses, is seared in my mind...
It's hard of course to write of anxiety...
...bringing moments and people to life with marionette strings of ink; with a bazaar of Indian spices as colours and a Chinese junk of authority...
...In other news, today I rented a bike and explored parts of Udaipur unexplorable without one...It was marvelous - out toward the other lakes it got increasingly lush.
A pack of street dogs chased a monkey as I watched. Several other monkeys sauntered down the side of the road, oblivous and soon one ended up - with the others - atop a pole demarking a driveway, surrounded by snarling dogs; this is unenviable - also, was my creeping up to take a picture and failing to notice another monkey behind the tree.
It turned on me and bared its teeth, emitting something like 50 per cent hiss and 75 per cent growl. I stumbled backward into a man sitting and watching me - he then mimed a pack of monkeys slashing at his own face, and laughed...
..Earlier today one (dog) trotted after me smiling and wagging its tail. I thought it rather quaint but for the whitish-yellow froth dropping from between its jaws onto the street.
The sun crackled overhead; I walked across a bridge in Udaipur, Rajasthan, and a dog shifted his position and gazed up at me, a headless dove held between its paws - I suppose all the food here is fresh.
The buildings pulsate out below me, all of us underneath the desert sun; light purple bricks flicker white and upward, saris and fabric billowing in the hot winds. It's high noon here in Rajasthan - a time for clothes to dry, when the streets empty and the rickshaw drivers take off their shirts, crawl into the back seat, and doze off.
Amidst the dust and sand and sun is wedged a palpable nobility, earned through hundreds of years of questionable decisions to settle this land. Chants drift up like heat in the distorted air, filling the slums with music when the wedding processions aren't shimmering by in noisy momentary glory.
A writer could get used to this type of life: spreading days like butter across the weeks; carefully sculpting visual and sonic stimuli and playing them off against bouts of pleasantly numbing relaxation.
When one can buy a large mango for less than thirty cents, eat a meal for a dollar from a rooftop cafe, and still have change to catch a rickshaw down to the lake (I stroll, for the record)...Why wax philosophic anywhere else?
Of course, I wish still that the days of the Maharaja were here - that horses galloped from the city gates to meet the enemy - but times change; even the imperial, hubristic romanticism of the Raj has long since been displaced...
...I'm sure the Rajputs, like all ruling classes, were to the same effect: utterly repulsive. That they have enshrined their portraits with violent battles, gory beheadings, and bodies sliced vertically off horses, is seared in my mind...
It's hard of course to write of anxiety...
...bringing moments and people to life with marionette strings of ink; with a bazaar of Indian spices as colours and a Chinese junk of authority...
...In other news, today I rented a bike and explored parts of Udaipur unexplorable without one...It was marvelous - out toward the other lakes it got increasingly lush.
A pack of street dogs chased a monkey as I watched. Several other monkeys sauntered down the side of the road, oblivous and soon one ended up - with the others - atop a pole demarking a driveway, surrounded by snarling dogs; this is unenviable - also, was my creeping up to take a picture and failing to notice another monkey behind the tree.
It turned on me and bared its teeth, emitting something like 50 per cent hiss and 75 per cent growl. I stumbled backward into a man sitting and watching me - he then mimed a pack of monkeys slashing at his own face, and laughed...
..Earlier today one (dog) trotted after me smiling and wagging its tail. I thought it rather quaint but for the whitish-yellow froth dropping from between its jaws onto the street.
posted by iain.e.marlow at 7:22 AM
1 Comments:
My math always was fuzzy.
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