My Love Story With India (Part 7)

LEAVING JAIPUR for AGRA

The first town you meet outside Jaipur reminds you of the Lekki-Ajah axis in terms of scattered ongoing housing development, on-going construction, partially completed buildings and old structures all in the mix.

Indian Oil, like Conoil is a common petrol station located in all the cities and states I visited. A stretch of open land filled with disperse trees are begging to carry structures and buildings on it. Cows can be seen grazing silently, unobtrusively around the edges of shrubs close to the kerb as we drive. Trees, shrubs and foliage decorate the median and other parts of the road.

Right from Jaipur into its outskirts, I noticed a long line of terracotta-coloured slab, the shape of a tomb slab, line the median all the way (perhaps to prevent cars and other higher vehicles from crossing over without taking the proper U-turn).

Several kilometers away, just about a 1,000 kilometres before we reach the toll gate (Rajadhok Toll Plaza), the slab is now replaced with green shrubs that bears bright red and white flowers, forming a long hedge along the length of the median.

Mountains in Jaipur, unlike that of local traditional villages, say in the Himalayas, the mountains are called dry mountains because only sparse trees and perennial shrubs mostly can be found on them when compared to those of the Himalayas where the mountains bear healthy, fruit-bearing trees. The father south of India you travel to, the difference in time zones become more apparent.

As I sit in the car, I couldn’t help but wonder about what makes India thick. And I realize as I go over the past events that the magic of India is in the Hindu Religion.  While some may have moved on, many remain in the past century, yet all coexisting harmoniously together as a single whole. The dread of God and electricity seems to be the driving force behind the scene that has taken India to the enviable height they currently now enjoy.

The father we move from Jaipur, I noticed that the Tuk-Tuk (what we call keke napep in Nigeria) is very different: more metallic, more contraptions and not painted in the usual green colour. It’s less aesthetic colour makes it even more interesting to look at. A few conventional tuk-tuk can be found but the colour black and grey is common. Sometimes, the slabs and shrubs along the median can be really annoying as they interfere with my picture snapping excitement. Guess it’s doing its job just as I am too, right?

Specially designed farm tractors for the peasants for agricultural purposes are quite ubiquitous. When finally get to SIKANDRA TOLL PLAZA. Toll plazas are a common on India highway roads, serving ass gateways introducing you to new states. On both sides of the road, just after the toll plaza, stone carving, stone dying seems to be popular in this town. This must be the ‘The Land of the Stones’, my coinage as I have never come across so large a number of stones cut into precise shapes and forms. I’ll have to make another visit to this town to find out more about their stone carvings.

As we drive on, I noticed billboards are not a common sight on the highways in between cities. Rather, a complete square or rectangular arrangement of built stones, bricks or blocks raised about 6 to 8 feet above the ground has imprinted on it the logos of companies and their taglines beautifully painted on it.

Vehicular contraptions of every kind can be found in India, with each state, city or village adapting a particular model to fit their specific needs. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach in India: every man to himself seems to be the underlying ethos. Yet you can’t fail to observe the harmony that each and all still live together in the same space. 

Villages here seem to be closer in distance unlike Jaipur where the next village is father apart to the next. Every 200 metres to a 1,000 metres, a new village pops, with signage announcing their names: Mahua, Baratpur, Agra, Hindaun, Mahwa.

I observe too that most Indians are law abiding to the best of their ability. At work they keep to the rules and job specification required of them. And I can’t help but feel that this nation is built by the dread of an Indigenous God and electricity. The dread of God in this case is something inbuilt and innate it is spiritual. The fear is not the fear of breaking the law and going to jail! It is rather something that has long been instilled in them which now becomes part of their character and behavioural tendencies. Dread is an unquestionable fear. You don’t think about it. You just see the thing and simply move or act – the most generic of all human instinct.

India is a concomitant continuum: a mix of the rural-urban continuum that harmoniously glues the past and latches on to the present – the old and the modern; the rich and the poor; the beautiful and the ugly – each respected in its own right: right to assert, yet aware of the need to remain in harmony. An English-Italian walked by me and said, “There’s a madness about how they go about what they do only they can understand”.

The same dual carriage-way all from Jaipur takes us to Agra, until it begins to taper off into a single lane. That’s quite some civil engineering accomplishment.

Several tall columns of huge four slabs that taper to the top like chimneys greet us. These chimney factories are for brick heating, a common feature in Bawsl Town, Shirv Mandri. Brick making is the central business here and they are famous for their bricks. The kind of soil in these towns makes their quality of bricks a much sought-after. The town is also famous for their cultivation of honeybees.

SCHOOL UNIFORMS

As we head towards Agra, I noticed that school uniforms are white in many towns are we past: girls in suits and India-styled trousers and the boys in shirts and English-styled trousers with a belt. 

Finally we enter the last state in Rajasthan, Bharatpur as we now head into Uttar Pradesh the state that is home to Agra, home of Moguls, home to the Taj Mahal.

STOP-OVER RESTAURANT

From the hotel to the restaurant, you’ll find every indigenous brand of tomatoes ketchup but never Heinz! A very subtle but powerful way to encourage local production and use of tomatoes in other forms rather than allowing a big brand name like Heinz to take over such a huge market – a loss of job creation, industry and brain drain of many Indians should this happen.

“Palau” – rice, cashew nuts, vegetables, raisins, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, onions, chili, green pepper, green peas make up a delicious food platter. With your palate so wide awake with such variety of flavours and tastes, Aniseed seeds, more like a n after-food cleaner with a minty taste is chewed to diminish any after-food taste like onions, garlic and sugars in your mouth. The cutleries, especially knives and forks are very thick-edged and blunt, making the joy of eating with cutlery a little arduous if not tedious. This may explain a little about how Indian foods are really best enjoyed eaten: with your hands. Guess if they were cutlery-inclined people, the cutleries would be a bit sharper on the edges and pointed at the tips.

The Woman:
Bodo tribe is among the few early settlers 
of Assam and is one of
the largest ethnic group of Assam.

In summary, India is where you find GOOD FOOD, GREAT CULTURE, BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!

Limbu Woman: 

Although a primary tribe of Nepal, 

a significant number of  Limbu people 

can be found in Sikkim, India.

It was while at the Royal Artists Centre in Jaipur, looking at the array of ancient paintings, drawings, water colours and paint brush depicting Indian life in the olden days as the work of the artist draw an elephant for me with a single hair fur from a rabbit, that I had an unbelievable OMG moment. When you watch Nollywood depict ‘water spirits’ or ‘Mammy Water’ in Nigeria parlance, it struck me like a blow in the stomach how much these so-called Mammy Water Spirits actually look like old pictures of Indian arts depicting their beautiful women dressed in saris! OMG! 

Now join me as we travel the last and final part of this 8-series to the land of exotic lasting romance! The Taj Mahal. This architecture simply blows my mind over again and again! Click the link below.

Part 8: http://ladyechannel.blogspot.com.ng/2015/11/my-love-story-with-india-part-8-entre.html

Attribution- India women: http://olga-mir.blogspot.in/; http://www.newshopper.sulekha.com/