Australians
After their very pleasant dinner, they decide to go along to the hotel terrace where four other guests are already drinking and chatting under the stars. Their neighbours, in the lounge-like setting, are four friends, two older couples from Sydney. They welcome the younger couple enthusiastically, offering them a drink.
Jennifer accepts a gin and tonic and Bruce will have a scotch and water. As the night goes on the bottles empty. The young couple protest that they have nothing to share. But they are told not to worry, that spirits and mixers are cheap in India, unlike the wine.
From the comfort of their wall top eyrie, the party look out over the floodlit walls adjoining, swooped, in the brighter areas, by moth hunting black swallows; or are they bats?
As they relax, their eyes drift across to the desert horizon and down into the town below. It's a perfect night. And almost so beautiful that Jennifer could cry.
One of the men recalls the incredible wealth of the Indian princes, who built this fort and its palace and so recently ruled these kingdoms. The other Sydney man adds:
“It's hard to believe the wealth of the Maharaja of Jodhpur. Around 1920, he wandered into a firm of London architects, apparently on a whim, and ordered the largest private house ever built: the Umaid Bhawan Palace, about, 230 kilometres, over there," pointing east.
“Over 340 rooms and galleries were fitted out in gold; silver; precious woods; marbles; and ivory; to house both the public galleries, used by visitors and for the affairs of State, and the Maharaja’s private zenana (harem). They still have separate entrances for each. You can see the place for miles, it has a huge dome."
Jennifer asks if the present Maharaja still lives there. The man, who is a lawyer or something, confirms that he does.
“But the lives of the dynastic Princes fell apart in 1950, when the Dominion of India was created and the new, Russian-leaning, government turned on them. So, I suppose that they regret lending their support to Partition. They lost a lot of their hereditary wealth."
“So now, for financial reasons, the latest Maharaja shares his house with the Taj Palace Hotel. The Maharaja's domain has been reduced to a few dozen state rooms, where he still lives. And with just one wife, because the new government also outlawed polygamy."
"But many wealthy Indian men seem to find a way around that," comments one of the wives.
“He's in a similar position to the Maharaja of Udaipur, who also shares his home with an hotel and whose Rolls Royce fleet and collection of European sports cars is much diminished," adds the other man with a smile. “A small museum at the Taj Palace Hotel explains that Maharaja's project was a pre-Keynesian way of stimulating the local economy. He was using his local expenditure to offset the economic impact of the depression that would not occur until a decade later."
"Amazing foresight," comments Bruce, sharing the cynicism.
"This ability to see a decade into the future was no doubt due to his being able to communicate directly with the Gods," explains the man. "In the event of drought, and other natural disasters, the Maharaja is still prayed to, for mystical intercession, by the local people."
In the same sarcastic vein, one of the wives remarks: “Obviously his god-like wisdom led him to the view that building an enormous personal palace was a far better work creation project than say: clean water and sewerage; the provision of public housing; or building schools and hospitals."
“I suppose,” says the other woman, “that given his upbringing, that persuaded him that he was a demi-god, just like the European Royal Families and their divine-right to rule, he had no qualms or sense that he was doing anything untoward.”
“Compared to things his ancestors did - and the wealth that they took for themselves - and the way they treated their people - he was acting as a modest and enlightened ruler, like Prince Albert and Queen Victoria - embracing the latest science and technology,” agreed the first.
They all agreed that the Princes of Rajasthan were once far more ostentatious. These virtual warlords had travelled from one fortified, gold encrusted, palace to another with retinues numbering in the hundreds, their numerous wives and other women carried in palanquins, some of which are still proudly on display.
Someone claimed that their two main concerns had been to fight amongst themselves for wealth; and, collectively as Hindu Princes, to keep the Muslim Mughal Empire, then based at Agra, at bay.
They fell back into silence, each to their own thoughts. More drinks were poured.
In comparison to these past riches, Jennifer realised, the travellers’ present enjoyment of the small luxury, of a drink in pleasant circumstances, was infinitely less outrageous by comparison.
Yet, why did their present wellbeing and their general worldly advantages like: their freedom to come here; and go back to another world, make her feel guilty?
Was it the people she had seen sleeping in the street, even on the garbage-strewn median strips in the centre of divided roads? Or was it the urine and the neutralising lime that skirted almost every public wall? Was it the faces that suddenly appeared - shrunken hands tapping on the window - when the car stopped in traffic? Was it the not-yet-crawling baby that she had seen, naked and apparently abandoned, in the dirt; or the little girl begging with her child, who pulled aside its swaddling to reveal dreadful burns that had been made down it’s arm, to make her case more pathetic; or the deliberately, and uniformly-maimed, beggars? Or perhaps it was the vast areas of primitive housing accessible only on foot, with no services that they had seen from the plane? Or was it the people bathing in puddles, in the street after rain?
“The wealth of the rich is amazing," she blurts out. "But the poor are so poor, I can't help feeling guilty."
One of the older women agreed wholeheartedly and recalled her initial impulse to help in some personal way, by buying milk for a baby, only to discover that this was a scam, run by the men who ‘ran’ the beggars.
“And then we were followed and harassed by girls with babies for the rest of the day," the other woman went on: "The girls even waited across a road, when we had lunch and then attacked us again. They were like seagulls after you feed them once," the other woman confirmed.
“Another day we went to a museum and there was a girl outside attempting to sell trinkets. I looked at her stuff but didn't want anything she had. Then we saw her called over to a car where she was yelled at and slapped by a man for not selling me anything, It's a tough place if you're born poor."
By accident of birth, some Indians have become abject, abused beggars and some princes, beyond all reasonable wealth, she realises.
The Australians' lives have not been those of princes and princesses. But they feel no jealousy, or longing, to have led the life of an Indian prince or one of his wives. They have been even more fortunate. They have had good educations; and first world awareness; and the freedom to travel; and sufficient wealth to be themselves.
In Mumbai, the Sydneysiders had dined one night in an up-market restaurant frequented by middle class Indians. They said it featured dishes similar to any restaurant in the World. There was no curry in a hurry. It served haute cuisine dishes that included beef.
“Restaurants like this are thriving because, as well as a few people who are still obscenely wealthy, India has a growing well-off middle-class that outnumbers Australia’s," explains the lawyer fellow. “And it's we visitors who feel guilty," he adds. "Maybe the middle-class should take a little more responsibility for the half billion or more desperately poor: unskilled and illiterate. Those people who are so superstitious that they will murder each other for a deviation in caste; or minor religious infringement.”
"Yet many of the younger ones we've seen in the better restaurants, and in up-market shopping centres, seem happy to eat a beef; and for couples to hold hands; or even kiss in public," comments one of the wives, "while in much of more traditional India, only the men can hold hands or embrace each other, because heterosexual affection, in public, is frowned upon as lewd."
So as all travellers must, they each put personal guilt aside; and fall back to just enjoying being here. The exotic difference and atmosphere; the new things learnt each day; the satisfaction of surmounting unusual challenges; and at this moment, their mutual company.
Soon it was time for bed.