Any trip to Rajasthan has to have few
essentials- dust, turbans, street chai and devotional ring tones, in no
particular order. And my trip was no different. Over a period of 5 days, I
travelled to from Jaipur-Jodhpur-Jaisalmer-Jodhpur-Jaipur, and it was full of
surprises and upsets, both very memorable, much like the ring tones.
8 am 2nd Oct Bombay Motors,
Somewhere outside Jodhpur
Phew. Waiting at makeshift boarding points
at the wrong end of midnight. Boozed out hopefuls for company, dusty hostility
of the road playing mildly offensive passenger on a night that never ends.
Turbans popping out 2:30 at night. Schoolboys stepping in with a meeky face and
nonchalance that could chew and not spit the bus out. Rattling bus, rattling
windows, out of nowhere a religious rock star belting out prophecies to
inanimate living objects, something about the presence of Mahakaali indicating
that there must somewhere be a Mahakaal?
Jodhpur- all dust and yellow, the lonely
planet-friendly aasmaani color nowhere to be seen. People at the mercy of buses
or buses at the mercy of people. Snores all the way in the blue neon light, and
out in the faint proximity of the skeletal bus, a feedback box of all the
things. And a list of things the driver should not do. The apparent irony seems
to have the better of me.
As I familiarize myself with this strangely
comforting yet painful(on my body) posture and begin to nod off, one business
class traveler halts the bus in the middle of nowhere for a package from a
confidante. Sure, I am not the only one who is having a sleepless night here.
He collects the package, and returns to his rear seat, cursing all along the
way and kicking all sorts of packages lying wrapped in white village clothes,
there could be bodies inside or there could be a late monsoon’s harvest.
The big orange semi-dream of the private
bus takes forever to depart. Guns next to me, smiles and utters some alien
compliments. I take them for what they are worth and return the smile with a
warm gesture, all I can muster after the night on road.
One disproportionate
lady’s need for seat overweighs the need of an easy on trigger semper fi and a
city slicker . 3 people die each time you hear the bus make that sound, there
is a black hole at the rear end , mahakaal mahakaal…
He swaps the seat with me and gives me the
window, probably after looking at all the things I am carrying. The bus seems
to have a monster of a heart, accepting villages upon villages in its already
crammed passage. Suddenly the excess baggage slips on to the seats, like an
unsaid rule. And me and Guns get a middle aged local woman, with ornaments
equal to her body mass. Now I have Guns, ornaments, my camera, and Anthony
Bourdain pulp novel, and a travel journal on one humble seat. I look out of the
window, and there is wind like no other wind ever. Ornaments assures us it will
be a small inconvenience, and I can’t quite make out what she refers to as part
of that- is it her constant calls to her relatives back home (which is somewhere
between Jodhpur and Jaisalmer I am guessing), or life in general. May be she is
aware of an apocalyptic event that we are not. Nonetheless, I wait eagerly for
either to happen, as anything would be better than a working military rifle
rattling next to me.
Her fated village never seems to arrive.
She leaves the seat to us in what turned out to be a momentary burst of
ecstatic relief, as she comes back in seconds shrugging her bejeweled
shoulders, its gonna be a little longer!
To
look at the metaphysical, for all the pain she has caused us, I am sure she
makes a mean curry back home…
Each time the bus pulls the brakes, a
village dies somewhere. May be there are sacrifices being made, bodies being
offered. Who knows what exists beyond this mass of human bodies, all in good
colored clothes and a million pieces of silver jewelry.
We stop at villages, and the multi-tiered
passengers buy water, and I almost feel like a watcher, water bottles and money
being thrown in front of me, bottles go up, money comes flying down. Sometimes
if the buyer is not happy, the reverse happens. I almost forget that I haven’t
eaten anything all night.
But the wind makes me forget it all. It is
true, when you travel to Jaisalmer, you inherit much more than the wind.
