I’m writing from Pushkar, where we’ve been since Friday afternoon. We enjoyed four days in sandy Jaisalmer. I was taken in by the romance of the camel safari and the temples, palace and crazy maze of streets inside the medieval fort city. If I imagined away (OK, not an easy task) the tourists and the multitude of vendors selling all the things that tourists want to buy, the city was probably much the same as it’s been for centuries. On Wednesday, we had a one-day whirlwind stop in Jodhpur, renown for its blue-painted houses and the massive fort—no longer inhabited—which looms over the city. The fort is now a national heritage place/museum and featured a really impressive audio tour.
After the blur of Jodhpur, we were really glad to get to Pushkar and plant ourselves for a few days. As you may have read in David’s latest post, the town encircles a small lake and is a Hindu pilgrimage place. It’s a very mellow spot, and it attracts a lot of travelers looking for a rest (it also seems like a bit of a party scene for the younger folks.) We’re staying in a beautiful place called Inn Seventh Heaven.
On Saturday morning (our first morning here), we decided to take a stroll around the lake. As in all the places we’ve been so far, the streets were lined with stalls of vendors selling clothing, crafts and various traveler necessities. Since we were observing Shabbat, and thus not using money (and ideally, not even thinking about money, commerce or work), it was little disconcerting to be bombarded by calls of “See my bracelets!” “Come into my store!” and “Buy water here!”
A woman with mesmerizing purple lipstick and a matching purple mark on her forehead, who introduced herself as Anita, invited me to look at her necklaces, spread out on a blanket. After I explained that I couldn’t buy anything that day, she took my right hand, turned it palm up (me thinking she was preparing to tell my fortune), pulled a tube of henna paste out of who-knows-where and proceeded to squirt a flower pattern in the center of my palm. “OK,” I thought, “She’s giving me a little sample of her design work.” But no: The woman kept going, squeezing thick lines of henna around my palm, up and down my fingers, and even onto my wrist! My interjections of “Thanks, um, that’s really pretty, but I think that’s enough…” failed to deter her in her mission to temporarily tattoo my hand. I was the victim of a henna hijacking.
At last, Anita leaned back, smiled at her artistry (although “artistry” isn’t the best word to describe the mess on my hand), and announced, “Six hundred rupees. But for you, a friend, three hundred.” Three hundred rupees is about $7. I stared down at my gloopy hand; already I’d bent my wrist and turned what might have been a leaf design into a fat brown smear. I reminded her that I didn’t have any money and couldn’t spend any today. “OK. Tomorrow. Three hundred rupees,” she said. David pointed out that we couldn’t even discuss money. “OK. Tomorrow. Three hundred rupees,” she repeated. She reached out and linked her pinky finger with mine. “Promise,” she said. Yes, on top of it all, she forced me into a pinky promise!
David and I continued on our walk around the lake. A little girl noticed my hand and said, “Gypsy!” (as in the woman who did this to me was a gypsy) and a few teenage boys pointed at my hand and snickered. Since Saturday, I’ve avoided Anita’s street. I don’t intend to pay her for staining my hand, and I also don’t want a gypsy curse brought down on me. Yesterday David and I dined with a woman who I noticed also had one palm covered in a messy henna design. She too had met Anita.
That night David and I went to a crazy concert in the town square. Astroturf was laid out for the audience to sit on, and twine threaded with marigolds was strung down the center, separating the women to the left and men to the right. I took my place among moms, kids and other travelers. After much prelude, the band started up—a guy with a synthesizer, one with a drum machine, one with a bongo and one with tablas, all seated on the stage. The musicians were great, and after a few songs, two singers joined in too. Out of the Hindi I noticed a few familiar words: Krishna, Shiva, Surya. I guess it’s a no-brainer that a pilgrimage city would feature religious concerts. At the end of each song, the crowd would shout a loud “Ho!” and lift their arms in a “raise the roof” motion, which I really loved.
At one point, a young man and woman, costumed in gold crowns and regal clothes—I think it was Krishna and one of his wives—paraded down the aisle and took seats on the stage. Then came boys with boxes full of rose petals, showering the crowd, and others spraying water (from the lake?). I and a four-year-old boy next to me collected piles of petals and threw them in each other’s faces. It was all very fun. The highlight for me was when a man who looked like an Indian Urkel took to the front of the stage and started busting a move in exactly the way you might imagine and Indian Urkel would dance.
That night, in the wee hours, I was overtaken by a pretty severe case of Delhi belly. Maybe Anita had laid a curse on me after all, or perhaps I’d ingested a bit of that lake-water aerosol.
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