On our way up to Mehrangarh Fort, somebody commented on how Jodhpur, the blue city, isn’t really all that blue at all. We found out otherwise once we got up to the fort—apparently all the houses have blue paint on only the sides facing the fort, so while you won’t see too much blue throughout the town you’ll see nothing but blue when you’re looking down on the city.
On our way out for the afternoon, I got out the cricket bat and ball and walked out on the lawn with Lili to play a little. As soon as our drivers saw what we were up to, they wanted in, too. We were in an area surrounded by hotel windows, so I told them to go easy, but apparently they weren’t listening. As soon as one got the ball in his hands, he was firing it as the batsman from about twenty feet away, usually sending it through the shrubs and out into the parking lot. I got a chance to throw at one of our drivers, and I got him to swing and miss. Unfortunately, he lost his grip on the bat and flung it all the way to a wall, where some of the bottom of it chipped off. I’m kind of pissed, but I guess it serves as proof that I’ve played cricket with a real, honest-to-goodness Indian.
Jodhpur is the Florida of India—it’s where autorickshaws go to retire. Everywhere else the rickshaws are small, cheap, and spry, but in Jodhpur they’re big, ornate, and slow. They really are sort of like Cadillacs compared to the other rickshaws we’ve seen. You don’t get the feeling that they’re going anywhere with a purpose; they’re just sort of running out their final kilometers in style.
We had dinner at the Taj Hotel. Justin, who must be trying to drop a crore in Jodhpur, was once again spending money like it was going out of style. He must have spent about a thousand on his prawns. But the best part of the dinner, even better than Justin’s prawns, was the sitar player who sat and played right next to us.
As soon as I saw a guy climbing onto the platform next to us with a sitar (he had a partner who played the tabla), I was giddy. I immediately asked him if he knew the Beatles. He said yes, and I requested “Within You Without You”. He said he didn’t know that one. I asked if he knew “Norwegian Wood” (the Beatles’ first sitar song), and he said he could play that one. Well, he could sort of play that one. All he did was play the first line over and over, with his own stylistic interludes to transition in between. I would have liked to have heard the whole thing, but what he played was really great.
After getting one request played, I started getting a little bolder. I requested “Boris the Spider,” which elicited a confused look, not only from the sitar player but from the people at my table, and later on I requested “Moon River” and “Mack the Knife”. He didn’t come close to knowing any of those. Justin requested John Denver and “Purple Rain,” and not only did he get shot down by the sitar man, but he also got his requesting privileges revoked by the rest of the table.
What the guy was able to play was half disappointing and half enjoyable. Sick of trying to guess what he could play, I asked him what he knew besides the Beatles, and he said he liked the Eagles. So he played “Hotel California,” which was again mega-truncated. He made what I think was an attempt at playing the Spanish guitar intro and then went right into the chorus, which he played over and over. The only other Western standard was Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” which I’m sorry to say he say he knew all the way through. So apparently there’s an inverse relationship between how good a song is and how much he knows of it. Except for songs that are actually from India. The indigenous songs he played were fantastic, I thought. He was able to play them with a greater richness than the Western songs (which makes sense—they were probably written for the sitar) and the songs themselves were very good. I don’t know that Indian music qualifies as “catchy,” but these songs definitely had pleasing melodies and were great just to be exposed to.
Professor Konana said that it would be easy getting around India because the people here speak English. Yeah, they speak English (most of the ones we interact with, anyway), but they don’t know English. I had the following conversation with a waiter recently:
“Do you have Fanta?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll have a Fanta...”
“We don’t have Fanta.”
Several people have had similar experiences. I’m not sure “yes” means what they think it does. They will often say things to acknowledge that they’re listening to you, and these things aren’t intended to be an answer to your question.
The food of the day was my main course at the Taj Hotel. After a disappointing French onion soup, they brought me something that might as well have been served for breakfast at Pete’s Place in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I forget what Indian description they gave it, but it was essentially hash browns (real hash browns) covered in cream gravy, mushrooms, and carrot slivers.
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