Geetanjali Krishna: Backpacks for the head

Whilst wandering around in the narrow alleys of Jaipur’s walled city, I chanced upon an interesting conversation. A bunch of tourists were engaged in a spirited dialogue with a shopkeeper selling local turban cloth. They seemed to have become quite enamoured with the couple of readymade turbans on display, but the shopkeeper was mystifyingly refusing to sell them any. “What will you do with them?” he demanded truculently, “these are for local people, not you!” The tourists, undeterred, kept looking at his wares and one of them said, “That maroon cap should go well with my complexion — shall I try it on?” The shopkeeper exploded with rage: “People wear that colour for mourning! Is that what you want it for?” The tourists retreated, and the shopkeeper sat back with the satisfied air of a job well done.

I tried to tiptoe past the man, certain that he had a screw loose somewhere. So imagine my surprise when he invited me in courteously. “Who were the people that just left?” I asked gingerly. He snorted: “My grandfather and his father tied the turbans of noblemen, my father Sasaram and I, Asaram, have proudly sat on this gaddi (local term for small business) — but when ignorant tourists call our magnificent safa a ‘cap’, I just don’t feel like entertaining them!”

To a proud Rajasthani man, said Asaram, his safa defined his identity, his pride. You can tell, said he, whether a man is a lowly animal herder (Raika) by the vibrant, unadorned red of his turban, whereas a man wearing a white turban is likely to be a Bishnoi. “What’s more, each colour denotes something — saffron safas are worn for weddings, blue, white or maroon for funerals,” said he. Rajasthani men also wore different coloured turbans for different festivals: “We normally wear a red and black tie-and-dyed turban for Diwali, while brothers traditionally opt for a mothra (diamond-patterned) turban on Rakshabandhan. My head was reeling — if what they say is true, that in Rajasthan, the colour of men’s turbans changes every 15 kilometers or so, my friend here seemed hell bent on telling me about all the turbans he’d ever tied. “Nobles always wear a yellow turban for Basant Panchami (spring festival),” he went on, “which was also the colour of the turbans worn by warriors long gone, who’d ride into battle preferring death to defeat!”

Days later, when I was chatting with some nomadic Raika herders from near Kumbhalgarh, I had reason to remember the talkative turban maker. They all wore red safas, loosely coiled around their heads and so voluminous that they shielded their faces from the harsh desert sun like parasols. At breakfast, one herder unwound a portion of his safa to unearth a large packet of food. “A turban is the most useful part of our attire,” said Bhanwar Singh, one of them, “when we travel, we use it to strain drinking water. During the day it offers sun protection, at night, it makes a good pillow! Unravel it, and you get a long rope which you can use for drawing water from a well, or tying bandages.” A cellular phone rang within the folds of his turban. After he hung up, he grinned: “We never carry bags or suitcases when we travel across the desert in search of pastures. Everything we need is right here … in our safas! Some say that a man’s status can be ascertained just by his safa — but for us, a man’s worth is determined by what he carries in it!”