photo post: qawwali, the famous pigs, and Teej

I’ve been working on getting some photos uploaded and compressed for web viewing. This first batch is a bit old. Tomorrow I’m hoping to put up photos of the three forts we visited yesterday, but for that I need a faster computer than I have today. Unrelated to any of this is the dance party music that is blaring from the park across the street. Which just started playing a techno version of “Caliornia Dreaming” which is very, very weird. Two months I’ve been here and this country continues to surprise me.

Also in unrelated news, I bought a beautiful white saree that has incredible embriodery on it and I’m going to have it made into a wedding dress!

Here is a photo of the qawwali w went to. The two guys with microphones are the ones who did most of the chanting and singing.

Here you can see the pigs eating garbage off the slimy, wet ground. The public urinal is in the back right side of the photo (the pink and white building).

Last week some housemates and I and Aunti-ji went to the local arts center which was holding a celebration for Teej, a local Rajasthani festival.

My housemates (Mariel, Chelsea, Shilpa) and Aunti-ji

They had food and a small baazaar. Kind of like fairs in the US.

Here you can see cots that people are sitting on–it’s common to see people sleeping on these everywhere: the sidewalk, in front of a restaurant, etc.

The trees were all done up with christmas lights!

gg

I’d hate to see what the Harlem of Jaipur looks like

First, an apology: I managed to get sick. AGAIN. No stomach problems this time, just an intense fever and general aches. It’s passed now, but it kept me busy for a while. (Meaning: it kept me buried under multiple blankets in 84-degree heat for a while.)

Second, some appreciation: Last week I received a care package from Matthew and some letters from my mother and it was wonderful. Both of them sent pictures and cards, and in the box from Matthew there was home-baked cookies, lots of dried fruits, Nutella, and SOFT TOILET PAPER. Now I know I am loved. And as Matthew pointed out, I’ll think of him every time I wipe my butt with the plush goodness that is American toilet paper.

On the afternoon that I was walking home from school with that package, it had just rained and the streets were wet and puddley. There is a corner by our house where there is a community piss pot, I think I’ve mentioned this, the olfactory nightmare in which men pee at all hours of the day and night. Next to this is a dumpster, whose trash is more often on the ground than in the dumpster, and around which dogs, pigs, and people tend to gather, picking through the trash. As I walked pass this corner on the day that I received my present in the mail, I saw a puddle from the recent rain nestled in the midst of a rather wide pile of trash.  And in the middle of this filthy puddle, with garbage floating all around it, an enormously fat pig was wallowing gleefully. The scene was perfect: the heavy stench of urine and waste and largest pig I have ever seen wallowing in filthy water surrounded by garbage. I thought to myself, This is India. My entire trip can be summed up by this one scene. And I still regret that my hands were too full to get out my camera and take a picture.

In one of our dinner conversations about how we don’t really have to worry about terrorist bombs, someone pointed out that our school and our house is in the “Fifth Avenue” of Jaipur. Or the “Upper East Side” of Jaipur. We apparently live in a classy neighborhood. Who knew? From the harassment, stench, filth, garbage, human waste, poverty, beggars, dirt, dust, trash, and sewage, I would not have imagined our neighborhood to be one of the upper-class neighborhoods of Jaipur. I will never, ever, EVER take for granted again my nice clean street in Madison, with its functioning sewer and water, electricity that runs consistently, and a notable lack of livestock roaming the streets. Never.

Is it really pig-napping if the pigs don’t belong to anyone?

At dinner last night we got into a lively discussion about whether the street animals are owned. The consensus was that cows and goats generally have owners, dogs generally do not, and pigs inhabit a proprietary no-man’s land somewhere between private property and public garbage disposal. Cows and goats are good for milk and sometimes meat, but what are pigs good for, in this heavily muslim town? We couldn’t figure it out. Also, how do people keep track of who’s animal is whose? And where do the animals come from? And where do they go at night? And why are they here, in the middle of the city?

Mathu, one of the Hindi students who lives at the Gandhi house with me, mentioned that she witnessed a pig-napping the other day as she was walking home from school. Apparently, two men had taken the back seat out of a rickshaw and when she walked by they were busy stuffing a pig into the rickshaw where the seat used to be. She thought maybe the pig belonged to them, but then why were they taking only one pig when there were many nearby? Which made her wonder…was it a pig-napping? And if it was, It begs the question: WHY?