A little about Jaipur

 

When over a hundred of us were herded and segregated into the chaotic compartments that awaited us on the Pune Railway Station, little did we know that the experience we had signed up for would alter innumerable aspects of our lives forever. For someone whose comfort levels are intricately woven with an idiotic hybrid of awkwardness and bad humour, I went into this trip with zilch expectations, but made a very important promise to myself : I was going to experience the tastes, sounds, shadows and the flesh of an alien city limitlessly, bravely and intimately. 

The promise remains fulfilled, so here I am, despite the fact that my pen is a little overwhelmed by all the experiences it has been designated to describe. Nevertheless, it's going to attempt to do so. 

in my element

Indian train journeys have always fascinated me because of the exclusive tenderness that they come with. On one hand, you fall short of paper soap and are dying of the biting wind that ruthlessly sweeps your berth – on the other, a batchmate willingly sacrifices his last stock of toilet paper when you need it the most, and the girl you smiled at once during your college orientation is lending out her sleeping bag to you before you can even say “I’m cold”.

New friendships are blooming as you breeze past excited pockets of different people, a twenty-two hour train journey making them all revel in each other’s quirks, distinctiveness and similarities. And as I’m surrounded by people who make me laugh a little louder into the quieter hours of the night, I tuck a very excited myself into a happy sleep- every jerk of the train a little reminder of all the memories that this beautiful ride came with.

In the midst of rushed brushing and the folding of impossibly unmanageable sleeping bags, we arrived in the Pink City. A city where an amalgamation of art, history and culture seeped like tea from a tea-bag. A city that welcomed us warmly despite the cold and chaos. As we meandered deeper into the knots of rich monuments and eager baazars, we managed to find little nooks and corners that felt like home. 

slightly obsessed with jhumkas

one of the moments of our first rendezvous with this magical city Three days progressed to finally lead us into the laps of literature, viz the Jaipur Literature Festival, one of the biggest literary events in the world.  If you were to ask me about the one emotion that JLF left me inundated with, I would blurt out “conflicted” without blinking. As someone who is avidly obsessed with documenting every experience and the magic that it came with, I found myself so torn apart because words wouldn’t shape out to serve justice to how inspired I was in the moment, the picture wouldn’t respectfully capture the rawness that I observed from the naked eye and the recordings of the session were almost always marred by an unneeded idiot guffawing in the background.

There was simply so much to see, learn, and rightly unlearn that I wasn’t ready to subserviently depend on my memory- I knew for a fact that I would want to vicariously live through my journals, photos and videos when the festival would close in on me, only leaving me with moments of it packed in my phone.

a little overwhelmed during JLF

I’d find myself reclaiming a sense of static in a world of chaos-be it a quiet conversation with a friend who’d admirably grin and talk to you like she’d known you for years or a nonsensical sputter of witty puns and spontaneous pelvic thrusts (you’re allowed to judge me now). Each day crinkled into an exciting adventure that always spiralled into a beautiful story to be told for years beyond any of us.

An entombed sense of inspiration had been revived in an ocean of influence, inspiration, grit and passion; a universe of knowledge had come to your feet, selflessly asking you to walk through the brilliance that it came equipped with. Poetry led to rediscovery and conversations assumed a rhythm that I found myself dancing to. As we walked kilometers exploring tiny dhabas and unnoticed bonfires, it hit me how the bonds that so cohesively connected all of us with the city had now become bolder and stronger.

a bad picture of a very beautiful evening

Needless to say, I'm going to remain enraptured by the unfathomable magic that this place came with for a long, long time. Until next year, Jaipur.  we look like a movie poster in this one, i love it