Travelling INDIA with CRICKET

by Michael Roberts

This is a tale about touring India, with cricket as a footnote. It will disappoint those who expect a story about cricket buffs, with all their eccentricities, on a tour of this great land in order to watch, say, the English battle it out with the Indian cricket team.

The India I speak of is RAJASTHAN, though Aurangabad, Ellora, Ajantha, Fatehpur Sikri, Agra and Delhi also featured in the travels that my wife and I indulged in during the winter months of January/February 2002. So our story begins with Udaipur, as magnificent a starting point as anyone could wish for.

The centre of Udaipur is Lake Pichola with the princely islands of Lake Palace and Jagmandir adorning its waters, verdant green terrain on one bank and ranges of dusty hills all around. The old city nestles along one side. It is dominated by the Maharana of Udaipur's City Palace and enlivened by a maze of narrow streets bustling with people and energy as well as a temple cluster of some consequence.

This is the heart of tourism. Our abode was Kankawar Haveli, a small family run guesthouse along the lake. As with most such hotels there was a rooftop restaurant that provided scenic views as one enjoyed Indian repasts and basked in the winter sun, such welcome warmth after chilly nights.

The term "haveli" is both architectural and social in its meanings, encompassing the substantial urban mansions that were built by rich Rajasthani families in the halcyon days of Rajput power during the 16th to 18th centuries. A haveli generally has at least one stone-paved inner courtyard and at least three storeys.

It is a complex building with many rooms and passageways. Its stonework is marked by intricate designs on balustrades, doorways, capstones and facades. Some walls may be adorned with frescoes.

It would seem that the building form is directed towards retaining coolness during the intense heat of the summers. But it also serves the needs of extended patriarchal families where several brothers, their wives and their progeny may share the lineage house with their parents.

Its now time to move from elite abode to its environs.

Hustle and Bustle

Our move is to movement. The narrow passageways of heartland Udaipur capture the essence of urban India today, its tumultuous movement, it's intense hustle and bustle. Three-wheelers, motorbikes, scooters, cyclists weave, scuttle or jab their way through. Pigs scurry, pedestrians stroll, dogs meander, cows stand immobile or lazily wander, forcing more weaving and adjustment on bike and pedestrian alike.

The sounds match the hustle and bustle. Beep, beep, toot toot, the buzz of many human voices, the piercing announcements of hawkers and peddlars. "Come look, no buy" from smalltime shop owners or their touts. This is India, kaleidoscope India, seductive India, sometimes even grasping India.

It is also colourful India. Rajasthani women in their bright, gaudy and striking garments, men with headgear in orange, red and yellow as the case may be, shops with a wide range of textiles that have been skillfully woven from a range of material in a land famous for its skilled craftspeople.

And carpets, yes, carpets hung out on display with their striking tapestry and rich mosaic. So, we have the original mosaic within a land that expands into a terrain that is metaphorically mosaic in its best sense.

There is a seamier side, of course. There is dust and grime, lots of dust and grime. And with cows come cowpats, lots of cowpats. Cowdung competes with all sorts of rubbish: rags, discarded water bottles, the flotsam and jetsam of massed urban life. Loads of rubbishy-rubbish. Jarƒ.

These effects are compounded on occasions as bad odours assault one's senses. The polluted scent of drains that carry sewerage and serve as loos, the waft of stale urine, yes that's part of` kaleidoscope India.

Craftmanship

But such warts within the urban scene are more than recompensed by what kaleidoscope India provides as feast for the eyes. Rajasthan has for centuries been a blossoming centre of exquisite craftsmanship. Such efflorescence surrounds you. It is inscribed into building form, from balustrade to archway, to frescoed walls and embellishments of roofs with cupolas and other artifacts of shape.

And such sculptured skills extend to all forms of material: stone, terracotta, iron, brasswork, pottery. Whether small or large, oftentimes these products contain such intricate detail that they provide too great a repast to absorb as neophyte without trained eye. Truly, the craftwork is a feast that gathers surfeit.

Their expansive effects even urge me to put pen to paper.

These effects are also filled out by the grandiloquent exuberance of the large palaces and forts that dominate some urban skylines, centres of royalty around which the crafts developed in the pre-capitalist era.

Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur, Kota, Bundi, et cetera, those sites of Rajput power and magnificence, in individual part as well as greater sum they add to India's marvel. Whatever their failings, these royal families also functioned as patrons of the arts and crafts as well as the martial art of wrestling. They were apical inspirations of excellence.

Though artfully sustained as semi-autonomous states by the British colonial power, these royal dynasts were sufficiently Indian patriotic to jettison much of their political power in 1947 in favour of the Indian federation, while yet promoting the eventual emergence of the provincial state of Rajasthan.

They retain their wealth, however, through entire capitalism as well as entrepreneurial activity as hoteliers and businessmen.

They also remain at the peak of social status in their territorial domains. None more so than Gayathri Devi of Jaipur, the second wife of the Maharaja of Jaipur who was widely reckoned to be among the most beautiful women of her time during her adult prime. The leading men continue to serve the interests of state, the great Indian state. In keeping with their Rajput martial traditions, many serve as military officers. The present Maharaja of Jaipur is High Commissioner for Brunei and, in keeping with his honour, works for the princely salary of Rs 1/ per month. Noblesse oblige.

Thank you, Sanath and Company

The joys of our Indian journeys were also embellished by the amiable networks of cricket. At least three trishaw drivers told me they admired Sanath Jayasuriya immensely. These unsolicited remarks occurred after they discovered that I was Sri Lankan. Indeed, to say "Sri Lankan" was often enough to draw a warm smile (and perhaps a comment "I thought you were Indian").

In brief, "Sri Lanka" carried the potential to open doors to lighten our paths. It certainly produced a few small favours such as free telephone calls purely on the strength of kin sentiment. But more than these pragmatic benefits what it brought was a common point of interest and a focus of conversation: CRICKET. One could while away an evening or night debating the merits of this or that cricketer with young well-spoken shopkeepers or travel agents.

I could lounge lazily in their little shops and watch India play England or Australia, New Zealand and South Africa contest each other.

Cricket then was cream on the sumptuous Indian cake. Its ready availability added the sort of spice that is not available to a tourist in, say, Turkey, Malawi or USA. It was available too in the excellent English-media newspapers of India and within the admirable Sportstar.

So it was that I could follow the Under 19 World Cup in New Zealand and the ODI series in Australia with the sort of narrative detail I require. To cap it all, the Times of India gave me access to Rohit Brijnath's crisp and exuberant accounts, in cultivated brilliance, of the Australia Open tennis engagements. We travelled India with yet another jewel to crown our tour.