CHAPTER VI
JAIPUR
In our travels through India we met comparatively few of our own countrymen and women. The English (or the British) have not as yet taken much to touring in the Empire of which such a proud boast is constantly made. The English in India are usually residents connected with civil or military posts. They go out to take up their official duties, and directly they get leave they rush “home”—England is always spoken of as “home,” even by residents in India of long standing. It generally happens that the officials and their families are quartered at some particular station in a particular district, and may remain there all their time, so that the English resident in India generally does not see any other parts of the great peninsular, and is not acquainted with the country beyond his own district. A tourist, therefore, in a few months may have a more complete general or even particular acquaintance with India at large, as regards its great cities and famous monuments, than many a resident who has spent the best part of his life in one station, and who always takes his leave at “home.”
French tourists are occasionally met with, but Americans are the most numerous, and they are met with everywhere. The early morning train we had taken from Ajmir to Jaipur was invaded by a party of no less than forty of our Transatlantic cousins, who overflowed it and filled our compartment with an incredible amount of hand baggage. They seemed to be, as far as one could make out, connected with some mission. They reminded me rather of a gathering in one of the cities of the United States at which I was present (Philadelphia, I think), where one of my American friends remarked, “Now, all these you see here are types, but none of them are worth studying”!
The country traversed between Ajmir and Jaipur is mostly plain, and very desert-like in places, with distant mountain ranges beyond, not unlike Arizona in general character. Green crops under irrigation are, however, occasionally seen, and among them not unfrequently may be noticed a pair of large, grey-plumaged cranes, feeding in the young corn, which do not take to flight at the approach of the train. We reached Jaipur about noon and put up at Rustom’s Hotel, a comparatively short drive from the station. The hotel stands in the middle of a large enclosure divided by a low wall from the high road. Tents are pitched along one side of the building to afford extra sleeping accommodation, and a sort of bungalow annexe is prepared to take overflow guests. From pleasant rooms on the terrace we had a view of the Tiger Fort and the road with its constant procession of natives, ox-carts, and camels and horsemen trooping into the city about a mile off. A row of tall acacia trees screened the late afternoon sun, and barred-like fretwork the golden light of afterglow, and we often watched the peacocks flying up to roost among the branches, their beautiful forms silhouetted against the orange sky between the interstices of the leaves.
HOTEL ACCOMMODATION (JAIPUR), “FOR YOUR EASE AND COMFORT” (OR RATHER FOR THE EASING OF YOUR RUPEES?)
The native proprietor, or manager, during the preliminary ceremony of taking our names, and in getting a form of application to the Resident filled up for permission to visit the Maharajah’s palace and the palace at Amber, made polite speeches, expressing himself only anxious for “our ease and comfort”—of course without any thought of prospective rupees. Clusters of native huts built of mud with thatched roofs occur at frequent intervals around Jaipur outside the city walls; from our terrace at the hotel we could see several. There was apparently a small village within a stone’s-throw. One evening the strains of what sounded like a native chant or song in chorus were wafted to us from this village, and we heard that a native wedding was going on there; but the illusion was somewhat destroyed when we learned that the supposed native music proceeded from the mouth of a gramophone! It is said that special ones are now prepared for the Indian market with popular native songs and music—another boon from the West.
Jaipur is a city within high crenellated walls, built of rubble and plastered with cement. The same form of palisade-like battlement crested the walls here as at Chitorgarh, and is the common form in Mogul defensive buildings. Among the native huts which cluster outside the walls, I noticed some of wicker; many of the huts, too, had wicker screens—a sort of lattice-work made of bamboo—covering the otherwise open fronts.
Jaipur is known as the rose-coloured city. The Maharajah must be very fond of pink, in fact he may be said to have “painted the town red.” The whole of the main fronts of the houses facing the streets are distempered in a kind of darkish rose pink—really red—the rosy hue being largely due to the luminous atmosphere in the full sunlight, and it becomes still rosier in the flush of evening. It is dark enough at anyrate to show a decoration of lines of floral devices and patterns painted in white upon the red walls. The whole scheme, no doubt, was suggested by the red sandstone buildings inlaid with white marble which are the glory of Delhi and Agra. It is not a sort of imitation calculated to deceive any one, however, but clearly a scheme of painted decoration emulating the effect of the solid materials mentioned. The city has, owing to this treatment, a very distinctive scenic aspect of its own, and is very striking, the brilliant and varied pattern of vivid colour in the costume of the natives in the bazaars, with this roseate background, producing quite a unique effect. One has, however, after a time an impression of unreality and unsubstantiality, as of stage scenery which will presently be shifted. The Maharajah of Jaipur has the reputation of being very advanced and modern in his ideas. He has at anyrate set up gasworks in his city, which also possesses a large public garden laid out in the European manner, and is both horticultural and zoological, and contains a museum and a bronze statue of Lord Mayo.