The Special Tourist's Holi, Jodhpur

It will probably take a week to completely get rid of all the clots of powdered color and wads of flower petals lodged in every crease of my skin and entwined in every strand of my techno color hair.

Each time I rinsed my hair and ran my fingers from my scalp outward, new bits of petals clung to my face and neck.


"All tourists sit down!" yells the stout fascist woman facilitating this special 'Tourist's Holi Festival.'

We sit as local notables are announced, stand, place their hands over their hearts, palms together, and bow.

"All tourists come forward to be welcomed," Saffron, as she later introduces herself to me, furrows her brows and indicates that Indian photographers should step to the back.

We continue to sit, not understanding what it is she requires of us.  She strides over to us and starts yanking us to our feet and pushing us toward the line up of brightly turbaned dignitaries waiting to place garlands of yellow, orange, and rust-colored marigold around our necks.

As the first garland is placed around the neck of blond-haired, blue-eyed young woman, the drumming starts.

Five young men surround one large flat circular drum.  One beats with a padded tom tom, others beat with sticks - the same primal beat that 's been pounding all through the narrow lanes of Brahmin-blue houses and havelies since yesterday.

Needless to say for those of you who know me , as soon as the drumming starts, my body responds, follows the impetus, and I start dancing.

When Madame Nazi Organizer spies me twirling my hands and hips Rajasthani gypsy style, she immediately rushes over, grabs my wrist, and pulls me in front of the dignitaries. She then extols the rest of the foreigners to "Come and dance!  All tourists come here and dance!"

The four young women from the Uk that I had met earlier in the day and agreed to meet at this happening, stand, and looking from one to the other, slowly make their way over to join me. The rest of the tourists follow suit.

After ten minutes the drumming stops and tourists are told once again: "All tourists sit down!"

A large group of Indian children scramble in front of the tourists and sit.  This seems to arouse the rancor of Saffron.  She yells at them and motions for them to move behind the tourists.  When they fail to respond, she starts grabbing them by their tiny arms, and to the horror of many of the young, new-aged Europeans, yanking them to the back. A group of Rajasthani gypsies appear, their musicians drumming on bendirs and tefs, one man playing a reed instrument similar to a zorna, and two women and two drummers singing. A slight adolescent boy takes center stage and performs an amazing belly dance - the coin belt around his slim hips jingling and janglih every which way. 

He's followed by a stout woman in yards of wide black skirt covered with mirrors and sequins and bright embroidery.  She performs back bends, picking up a one hundred rupee note in her teeth, then shakes and shimmies and twirls - her skirt flaring out around her.  Another woman - younger and slimmer, dressed in the same dazzling outfit joins the first and then of course, Madame Organizer once again rushes over to me, grabs me and pushes me to join them.

To the amazement of both women, I follow every move they do, and soon we're performing as a threesome.

"All tourists, stand, come forward, and dance!" announces Saffron.

When the area in front of the stage is filled with tourists, one man feeds piles of rose, marigold and daisy petals into the gaping mouth of a reverse vacuum cleaner, while another man points the hose upward. A shower of flower petals rain down on us: red, rust, orange, yellow, and white.  I raise my palms and face into the fragrant flower shower.

"Happy Holi!" yells Saffron into the mike.

The children grab fistfuls of petals from the ground and hurl them at one another and the tourists.

"Happy Holi," trumpets Saffron.  "It's color time!"

Instead of flower petals, bags of powdered, colored dye are poured into the blowing machine and it's raining pink, yellow, green, orange, blue and purple.  The air is filled with the perfumed dust of color.  Streams of color create rainbow arcs in the air.

The children go berserk.  They run to the bags of color, dig their hands in, and annoint the faces of everyone they can.  They take handfuls of brilliant powder and hurl it at each other and everyone around. 

Before my eyes people are transformed into a different species - a technicolor tribe of dancing, yelling, frolicking people.  Faces of purple and orange or green and pink.  Bodies splattered with blazes of color.  Hair thick with dayglow swabs.

The drumming grows more frenzied.  Color flies.

"Happy Holi!  Happy Holi!" everyone yells.

And all over India, people celebrate the vanquishing of the evil Holikar.  The world made safe for humans. 

Jodhpur Twilight

Dusk turns the Brahmin-blue buildings a deeper shade of blue.

Pale as morning sky in the harsh mid-day sun, at twilight the buildings and homes seem to suck the last indigo rays of the darkening sky, blazing radiant for a brief moment before night shadows the world and the spotlights are turned on the Mehrangarh Fort.

I"m the only person seated at this rooftop restaurant enjoying the spectacle of light and shade and sound.  And I"m perfectly at peace.  And thrilled.

I remember the sad, anxious, neurotic young woman I used to be, terrified to be alone.  Now I've learned to savor my aloneness.   I sit in luxuriant equanimity, my past left behind in the States.  I think about one of the things I've read about sadhus.  You cannot ask them about their past.

From below me, children beat drums throughout the warrens of narrow lanes.  Their excitement grows as Holi approaches. Already they leap and hop through the lanes, chattering and laughing as they practice with empty magnum water guns for that day when their guns will be filled with paint.

The aroma of mustard seeds crackling in hot oil rises up from the kitchens below.

My waiter and cook emerges from the steps. His name is Sunil.  He stands staring out at the fort as he shares his story with me.  

"I'm from Pokhara, in Nepal," he tells me.  "Not like India there.  Green. Beautiful.  Now it's three years I am in India.  But end of this month I go back for a visit. I miss my family."

He tells me he has six sisters and one little brother who is five-years-old.  "I come here to work. Here I can make money for my family. In Nepal.  No work.  No money."

He invites to come to his home in Pokhara.  "You will like it Madame.  Everyone there very friendly.  Very nice.  You stay with my family."

I thank him for his generous invitation, but explain it's not possible.


"Okay," he says.  "Maybe next time."

road repair in Jodhpur

The morning I arrived in Jodhpur there was a tall stack of rubble and two overturned wheelbarrows blocking the newly paved street to my guesthouse.  The still wet cement was decorated by an array of dog prints, hoof prints and bird-foot prints, like an intricate tribal wood-cut design.

Adding my own marks, I stepped lightly in the pre-dawn dark, making my way to my next stay.

Later that afternoon, one man was filling one of the wheel barrows that had blocked the road at dawn with sand and pouring it atop the now dry cement, creating a street not unlike one long sand box.

Early evening I literally gasped as I turned the corner of the street on my way back to my guest house.

A young man with a hose was turning the entire street into a gloppy river of mud. There wasn't one inch dry enough to walk on without the mud sloshing over the top and sides of my sandals and oozing between my toes.  Adding to the muck was cow piss and shit, otherwise somewhat avoidable, but now ingredients of this street soup.

"What are you doing?" I asked the man with the hose as he continued to add more water to the mess.

"Road repair, Madame," he answered as he sprayed.

By the next morning I sighed a sigh of relief.  The gop had dried and once again there was terra firma. I happily made my way to the clock tower to sip masala chai with the guys on the tiny narrow wooden benches.

But evening brought a new wave of incredulity.

Once again the young man was hosing the street and again turning it into a mass muck of mud.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my mouth gaping open in horror and disbelief.

"Road repair, Madame," he answered without averting his eyes from his task.

All day, tourists and locals alike sloshed through the river of mud and cow piss, searching in vain for spots of dry land.

By the third day of this cycle, I stopped asking.  I knew what he was doing - street repair Jodhpur style.

I've left Jodhpur but can't help but wonder if he's still at it.

road repair in Jodhpur

The morning I arrived in Jodhpur there was a tall stack of rubble and two overturned wheelbarrows blocking the newly paved street to my guesthouse.  The still wet cement was decorated by an array of dog prints, hoof prints and bird-foot prints, like an intricate tribal wood-cut design.

Adding my own marks, I stepped lightly in the pre-dawn dark, making my way to my next stay.

Later that afternoon, one man was filling one of the wheel barrows that had blocked the road at dawn with sand and pouring it atop the now dry cement, creating a street not unlike one long sand box.

Early evening I literally gasped as I turned the corner of the street on my way back to my guest house.

A young man with a hose was turning the entire street into a gloppy river of mud. There wasn't one inch dry enough to walk on without the mud sloshing over the top and sides of my sandals and oozing between my toes.  Adding to the muck was cow piss and shit, otherwise somewhat avoidable, but now ingredients of this street soup.

"What are you doing?" I asked the man with the hose as he continued to add more water to the mess.

"Road repair, Madame," he answered as he sprayed.

By the next morning I sighed a sigh of relief.  The gop had dried and once again there was terra firma. I happily made by way to the clock tower to sip masala chai with the guys on the tiny narrow wooden benches.

But evening brought a new wave of incredulity.

Once again the young man was hosing the street and again turning it into a mass muck of mud.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my mouth gaping open in horror and disbelief.

"Road repair, Madame," he answered without averting his eyes from his task.

All day, tourists and locals alike sloshed through the river of mud and cow piss, searching in vain for spots of dry land.

By the third day of this cycle, I stopped asking.  I knew what he was doing - street repair Jodhpur style.

I've left Jodhpur but can't help but wonder if he's still at it.

My new best friend

Mahiri Dyana looks maybe 65.  She's stunning.

She tells me she is 78.  I can't believe it.  Her skin is smooth except for a little sagging here and there, a few wrinkles. She bubbles with energy and speaks English with a strong French accent and gets frustrated when Indians don't understand her.

She stops a mother on the street whose baby is bundled in heavy clothes and a blanket.

"He's too hot," she scolds.  "Too many clothes," she says louder and more slowly to the uncomprehending mother.  "Look at you - you're not wearing heavy clothes." Mahiri pulls at the woman's sari to illustrate her point.

At first the woman smiles warmly as do most people here in Mandvi, by the Sea of Kutch.  Then she realizes by Mahiri's tone and expression that she's being scolded.  She pulls her baby portectively away from the crazy French woman, her smile turning downwards into a frown.

The people here and in Bhuj are the friendliest people I've ever encountered anywhere.  Everyone smiles and says "Hello." On the street.  In restaurants.  Old people, women, men, children.  It feels incredibly safe and easy being here.

My new best friend's name was given to her by Osho.  As the woman with the overwrapped baby scuttles away, she mumbles a diatribe in French.  We sidestep mounds of fresh cow shit.

A motorcycle swerves past us.

"Polution!" she yells at the young driver pointing to the gray smoke pouring out his exhaust pipe.

We pass the "Movie Star Saloon Men's Barber."

Mahiri has founded a school for girls in one of the slums of Mumbai.  She has gathered sponsors for 130 girls in Calcutta.  Her Indian visa expires mid-June and she's on the chase of a man in Rishikesh who sells 'under the table' visas.

"They don't want me to continue my work here.  But I will find a way."

We walk along an old brick wall.  Two women in red and green saris look up at us from their work.  The saris drape elegantly.  The two women continue their work.  They shape cow shit into patties and press them against the wall to dry.  The wall is plastered with cow dung patties whose surfaces are covered with hand prints.  It looks like a modern art installation.  The dried dung will be used for cooking.  Or for the great mounds to be set aflame on Holi.

"Looks like itshould be in a museun," Mahiri says. "You know, I could die here," she adds.  "But I have too many things to do first."

A man yells at us: "Madame, your money is falling!"

The zipper on Mahiri's bag doesn't close and loose ruppee coins spill from her bag that she has somehow managed to turn upside down.

"Thank you! Thank you!" we call to the man and I bend to help her pick up the coins.

A large billboard advertises:

                      Multi Cousin Restaurant
                      Better than your imagination

The Tribal Territory of Bhuj

If Rose were a rose, she'd be a velvety apricot rose with a creamy center, edged in dark peach.

She's from California, now living in Brooklyn.  A writer and editor.  Jewish.  Smart.  Sensitive.  A perfect companion on this auto rickshaw excursion to the tribal villages North of Bhuj in Kutch.

As we bounce along a small road, we ply each other with question.  I want to know about this thirty-year-old's life in Brooklyn.  After ten years living abroad, I want to know about the states.

She wants to know about my life as a sixteen-year-old runaway in NYC in 1964.

 Our rickshaw driver and guide is Bharat - a tall strand of spaghetti floating in pressed blue jeans and a precisely ironed long-sleeve gray shirt.  He's minus a good bunch of teeth, but makes up for it by sporting huge tufts of hair curling from the lower outside of both ear lobes.  From the back of the rickshaw he reminds me of some sort of mythical goat man. His hair is cropped short - a color usually referred to as 'salt and pepper.' One long strand dangles down the back of his head, indicating that there's been a recent death in the family - his hair just growing back after the ritual head shaving that leaves the head slick and bald except for a strand of hair at the center back of the head.

"Did you ever see The Velvet Underground?" Rose asks as we buzz through country that could be somewhere in America's Southwest.  Maybe New Mexico, or Arizona, or somewhere in Nevada.

Visions of New York's Lower East Side suddenly flash before my eyes.  Long forgotten memories pop out of a dusty file cabinet in my brain like a scene from an old favorite movie.  Only it wasn't a film.  It was my life.

"On the night of the opening of Andy Warhol's 'Exploding Live Plastic Inevitable' I was walking back to my one room, cold-water flat on East 8th St, when I bumped into Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky.  I had met them at poetry readings at Le Metro Cafe on 2nd Ave. Peter kept inviting me over to their apartment.  I showed up on a Saturday morning.  Allen was eating pickled herring and rye bread and asked me to join him. Anyway...Peter invited me to join them for this big opening of Warhol's 'disco', so I tailed along.  Since, I came with Allen, people there thought i must be someone important and let me in for free after that.  It was a great place to panhandle.  I'd hit up a few people here and there before leaving and always got enough money for the the next day's food." 

"Did you get to know any of the Velvet Underground," Rose asks.

"Well, I knew Niko. She was always lamenting the price she paid for her beauty." (I adopt a husky German accent.) "'You don't know what it's like. Women hate me.  Men are afraid to approach me.  I am always alone and lonely.  Heroine is my only friend.'"

Rose laughs.  "Yes, that fits exactly with her music."

The rickshaw pulls into a small village of white-washed mud huts.  My brain catapults forty-eight years forward from the ragged streets of the Lower East Side to the dusty lane of this tribal village in Kutch.

I leave my large purple shawl and sunglasses in the back of the rickshaw and step out into the welcoming smiles of a group of Rabari people.  The women wear a special blouse with brightly colored front pouches for the breasts.  It ties with two sets of ribbon in the back.  Their ear lobes have huge elongated holes from which dangle heavy gold earrings.  Around their necks they wear their marriage necklaces--a gold toothpick, a gold ear wax remover, and a rectangular gold locket containing a special prayer hang from a thick black cord.

Bharat emerges wearing my sunglasses and my purple shawl rakishly wrapped around his neck. He leads us to an open room where one man dressed from head to toe in off-white, sits at a hand-made loom weaving a tapestry. Rose and I watch as he slowly, patiently maneuvers threads and various wooden implements, creating an intricate design.

"All in his head," Bharat tells us.  "Interesting?" "Good feeling, Madame?"

We assure Mr. Hairy Ears that it's very interesting and that we feel good.

He repeats this refrain throughout the entire day like some kind of a mantra.  "Interesting?"  Good feeling?"

This leads me to picture Mr. Hairy Ears in bed with his wife.  I can see them having sex.  Mr. Hairy Ears repeating "Good feeling wife?  Interesting?"

Children surround us.  Smile bashfully. They sit near us.  I sit opposite the oldest and most open.  I begin a patty-cake game and soon each girl wants to play with me.

The day slides between past and present.  Between tales of me, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky marching down 5th Avenue playing finger cymbols and chanting 'Hare Krishna' (Allen and Peter had just returned from India) to tribes of people making hand-made laquered wooden goods, stitching incredible embroidery with hand-cut glass sewed in.

We stop for lunch in another village.  While waiting for a woman to cook our food, Bharat starts massaging my feet.

"Good feeling, Mam," he asks as he expertly presses his hard hands into the right places on my feet.  When he finishes with me, he moves on to Rose's feet.

A women emerges from her hut with metal plates of steaming food.  Rose and I sit cross-legged on a charpoy and enjoy home-made chappatis with dal and aloo.

The day is filled with "good feeling," everything is very "interesting," Rose is a perfect companion, and Mr. Hairy Ears turns out to speak every dialect of every tribe and be a font of knowledge as well as a wonderful foot masseur.







































 

a good luck breakfast

The Cadillac Hotel in Ahmedabad is much more of a rusty old Ford than a Cadillac.  But when i arrived in my bare-bones room, one man immediately came into the room, sprinkled some sort of whitish liquid on the mirror and wiped it off with an old newspaper page.  He was followed by the ubiquitous floor cleaner.  A young man who pours some water on the floor from a metal pitcher and then using his foot, swishes a rag around on the floor.  Everything in the spartan room was very old and very used.  But it suited me. 

When I asked the manager for a recommendation for a good 'veg' restaurant, he directed me across the street to the Kailipa. 

As I approached the entrance, two young Muslim women were also entering.

"This must be a good place if you're coming here," I said.

"Please join us," one of them said as we entered the dimly lit but cool restaurant at the same time.

My two new companions are Ramana and Shabana.  Shabana is Ramana's aunt.  Romana is in Ahmedabad to take her KET English exams.  She has just married an Indian man employed and living in the UK and is in the process of doing whatever she can to get a visa to join him.

"Your English is very good," I tell her. "You will certainly do very well in your exam.  I know because I'm an English teacher in Turkey and I"ve given many KET exams."

"Thank you," she smiles a big beautiful smile. "I hope so.  Yesterday I did the speaking part.  Today, I must do writing.  I teach English to children, so I hope I will do OK."

We order our breakfast and chat. They tell me about the places they've visited: Chicago, England and Zambiye.

"We have relatives in many places in the world," they tell me.  "We are very lucky to travel to many different places."


When the bill comes, Shabana, the aunt, immediately takes it.  I try to pay for my part, but she refuses.

"It will bring me good luck," smiles Ramana.