Even a native becomes a tourist in Jaipur

The city's colour and traditions enthrall visitors and residents alike

There is a human tendency to take home for granted. But sometimes when seen through the eyes of a wandering traveller, the familiar often yields unexpected surprises. This happened to me when I recently visited Jaipur, the closest a nomad like myself has to a hometown. To me, Jaipur has always been the garden of my memories, the place where summer afternoons were spent in front of a humongous desert cooler and evenings grew into dusk with family on the freshly watered lawn. Jaipur was never an exotic tourist destination — it was just home, long after the grandparents died and the rambling old family home was replaced by modern flats.

Recently, a friend and I went to Jaipur for a wedding, and she, the sister of the groom who’d lived all her life in Dubai, was thrilled at the chance to visit the Pink City for the first time. “Will you come with me to choose safas (turbans), for all the men in the wedding party?” she asked. As a quasi-local, of course I was expected to be the guide. When I was in college, all my clothes were tailored from block-printed fabrics bought in Badi Chaupar at the end of Johri Bazaar, Jaipur’s incredibly buzzing market famous for its specialty jewellery. I remembered seeing safas festooned on their parapets all those years ago, so that’s where we headed first.

Johri Bazaar was as chaotic as I remembered it, and we arrived there in a rickshaw, clinging on to it for dear life amidst impossible traffic. Towards the end of the bazaar was the katra, a covered market, which had shops that only sold safas. “Why is it that shop after shop here sells exactly the same wares at exactly the same prices? There’s no point in window shopping here,” murmured my friend, who loves to browse through the products. “All of us have the same wares, Baisa (local term for elder sister),” said one shopkeeper, “but we have different customers. For generations, the same families have bought safas from my shop. Now with tourists we do get some new customers, but our bread and butter still comes from traditional patrons.” We selected some tie-dyed turban cloths while he agreed to send a man to tie the safas on the eve of the wedding.

Safas on the parapet

Mission accomplished, I decided to show off the sketchy knowledge of my hometown to my friend. We walked through Johri Bazaar where an enamel pendant caught her eye. The shopkeeper welcomed us in like we were old patrons, and insisted we had some of the Old Town’s spectacular lassi even before he took out his wares for us to see. “Does he even want us to buy anything?” my friend whispered. Much small talk later, he eventually showed us trays upon trays of trinkets and we ended up buying quite a few. Perhaps his unhurried shopkeeping style was good business strategy after all. Meanwhile, the old jeweller told us how Jaipur became such an important centre for gems and jewellery. “Did you know, this bazaar has stood here since 1727 when the city of Jaipur came into being,” he asked. He pointed to Hawa Mahal across the road, from where, he said, royal ladies used to observe the goings on of the bazaar while remaining unseen.  “The royals of Jaipur loved their gems and made sure to extend their patronage only to local jewellers. Over time, this gave them the opportunity to flourish,” he said.

Ushered out after an hour of enjoyable shopping, we just had to walk up to Hawa Mahal to experience the bazaar as veiled royal ladies of yore had once done. Hawa Mahal opened to tourists only a few years ago, so like my friend, I too climbed the winding ramp of this curious Palace of the Winds with a growing sense of wonder. Like a movie set, Hawa Mahal is all about the façade, there’s little else inside it but jharokhas or windows. But these are no ordinary windows — some are latticed, others inlaid with coloured glass which casts jewelled shadows across the floor. We peeped at the havelis, temples and shops of the Old City through the jharokhas and then turned around to enjoy the views of City Palace and Jantar Mantar, the royal astronomical observatory, from the parapet.

Emerging from the Hawa Mahal, I saw Maniharon ka Rasta across the road and flash-backed to my schooldays, when we loved to visit this magical lane where lac bangles were made and sold. Of course I had to walk in, and we did, immediately losing ourselves in the glittering wares displayed so abundantly around us amidst the strong ammonia vapours issuing from the open urinal at the entrance. Strangely, even that smelled familiar. We sat on rickety stools, while the Manihari women customised bangles for us, twisting coloured ropes of lac into dream-like ripples, ornamenting them with beads, stones, crystal and other embellishments.

View from Hawa Mahal

“Are you sure you want yours plain,” asked the stout shopkeeper in a tent-like burqa. “I can do so much more with them!” But I found myself in love with the smooth quirkiness of hand-rolled lac and was loath to dilute it with glass and crystal. As I sat there, arms full of bangles, I smiled thinking about how my Jaipur relatives would laugh to see me transformed into a tourist, so excited over something we’d grown up seeing.

When we emerged into the sun, blinding after the cool dimness of the katra, my transformation was complete. I found myself taking pictures of camels, minarets and people, almost as if I were seeing my hometown for the first time. Somehow, unbeknownst to even myself, in the company of a tourist, I too had become the ‘other’ in the place I regard as home.