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Travelogues
The next morning and its time to say goodbye. We wait for a bus at an empty crossroad, surrounded by curious lookers-on. Megha and I finally hire a jeep to Jaipur, a venerable old Mahindra piloted by two aggressive drivers who are happy in each other’s company and make light work of the road. The four-hour drive is hot in the open jeep, and the sun’s heat exacerbated by the dry air whipping around us. Still the landscape remains a thing of beauty; dried keekar coming out of the earth, sand hills hiding mines from where stone is wrought from the bowels of the ground.
And then there is Jaipur town, a big city, the capital of Rajasthan, steeped in history and stories, overlooked by the magnificent Nalagarh fort, Sawai Jai Singh’s capital – the king who took more than a passing interest in the occult, in astronomy and other arts, and whose court attracted the best minds for a time. It is here, of all the unlikely places, that it finally rains, the water drenching the city with a sheet of wetness that makes the pink of the buildings a deeper ochre and orange, and children come out to play. An elephant swings its way nonchalantly across it all. I have a irate policemen to deal with while photographing, and Megha decides to go see a friend. It is the first time we have parted company in more than four days now. There is a little time to reflect on the values of a good travelling companion, and Megha is certainly one, herself bitten by the urge to see new things and talk to people. We complement each other well like this, but even the best company needs to be alone for a while, if only to realise the value of the other. I take a rickshaw through Jaipur, stopping in the rain at the Hawa Mahal, where a man asks me if I am from Spain while trying to sell me a kurta.
So what then is one’s own ‘self’? It seems that it is as much a construction, an image, a reflection, or a composite, if you will, made of pieces that others see. And so there are two selves, the first an external that changes as it is seen through other’s eyes, and the other the inner self, the one that stays the same, the one that says ‘I am me’, or ‘That thou art’ – the ‘tat tvam asi’, the one that is only defined by negation, being everything that everything else is not. What then, is ‘me’? The outer, or the inner, and what and where is the junction between the two? Am I Indian, or something else? These are constructions of reality, mosaics whose only permanence lies in the truth that they will change, constantly and continuously. Here I am, in Rajasthan, a foreigner in my own land, re-thinking not only what is mine and what is not, but also what is ‘me’. This search for the self has occupied the thoughts of the greatest of men through all the ages of Man, thinkers who have spent their entire adult lives in the search for self and reality. The best ones we call Krishna, Jesus and Mohammed, and the worst we call mad. This need of the human race to categorise and attach labels is perhaps still another version of the search for the truth – elusive, hiding and forever changing. There is little time now for more. The bus ride back to Delhi is at night, and we reach early in the morning. Megha’s house is comfortable, but it is not mine. I leave while she is still sleeping. For me there is another bus back to Chandigarh, a circle completing, a journey almost done. Here now once again, six days later, little has changed. The dust is still in the air, the newness of the city trying unsuccessfully to blot out an ancient land. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has. Where does the old end, and the new begin? Where is the line between madness and sanity? Where does the outer self end, and the inner begin? And finally, who has the right to decide these things? I do not know the answers to all these questions, and in the routine of things, do not have the time to think about them. Perhaps it is best that some questions are unanswered, that there is, in the end of all things, another question. For what is a condition – to know that you do not know it all, or to think that you do? One of these is Life itself, and the other is a dead end. And then the bus stops, and I am home, and the certainty of some things is precious in a changing world. October 8, 2006 See Also : Empires and Dust: Travels in Modern India - I
The Week of October 8, 2006
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