It is the India time of year again when a flood of post-Christmas tourists abandon the gloom and January sales that will continue until April to rush towards the chilly north Indian winter.I would often rather sweat it out in summer heat than freeze in unheated heritage hotel rooms at this time of year but, most people appear to disagree. First time visitors are often taken unawares by the bone deep cold at night and the need for more hot water bottles in bed. In Jaipur for this year's Literature Festival the weather was glorious until nightfall when my bedroom heater lit the whole room with a welcoming glow that produced enough heat only to dry socks draped as a fire risk over its frame. Luckily I have been cold enough times in India and other so-called hot countries in winter to carry socks, shawls, jerseys and endless layers of Uniqlo down, the cold weather travellers' friend, and to know that vests were invented for a reason.
I was in Jaipur to launch, after years in gestation, the edited version of Mary Minto's Indian Journal under the title Vicereine. Mary's husband Rolly, 4th Earl of Minto and Viceroy 1905-10 shared the honours with John Morley, Secretary of State for India, for the introduction of the Morley/Minto reforms that were one of the first pebbles thrown into the pond of imperial rule in India,legitimising the election of Indians to legislative councils. Mary herself was an imperialist to her bootstraps and her views were those of a woman of her time and class but her sense of humour, sharp eye for place and person and ear for dialogue make her irresistible nonetheless. The people she saw and met from a ringside position included the glamorous Maharajas who she greatly admired, especially the remarkable Ganga Singh of Bikaner and other well known historical characters like Lord Kitchener, described unexpectedly playing parlour games at Simla as well as in more conventional style .
There are details of tours all over the country including the NW Frontier and Burma and a wealth of photographs covering five years including Mary's own 'kodaks'; unique images of Habibullah, the Amir of Afghanistan learning to play croquet in the gardens at Barrackpore near Calcutta; Dandy, Rolly's pet Dandy Dinmont, being carried in his own litter on the frontier; an ADC playing with a diabolo on a railway station platform where the viceregal train had stopped. The book is beautiful if not quite an ideal size for bedtime reading - I hope the paperback version with fewer photographs will eventually appear for easier reading rather than just looking. Mary's opinions may shock our PC sensibilities but they make excellent entertainment.
And so to the extraordinary Literature Festival where nearly 400 speakers from India and the rest of the World, led by Margaret Atwood, spoke to audiences from six different stages in the grounds of the Diggi Palace, a miraculous venue which somehow stretches to accommodate over a third of a million visitors during the five days of the Festival and somehow recover to do it all over again a year later. The biggest treat of course is to have access to the writers' room where the starstruck, most definitely me included, rub shoulders with writers who include well-known journalists, historians, novelists, biographers, actors with plenty to say, politicians likewise, the informed, the informative and those enjoying their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. This is a truly democratic affair where getting a cup of coffee or a glass of whisky, a whisky company is a major Festival sponsor, may mean a conversation with anyone from Stephen Fry to a 15 year old first time novelist completely undaunted by the company he is keeping. At the opening night party, a massive event where the gardens of the Rambagh Palace are turned into a sort of literary fairy land, everyone talks to everyone and I talked, yippee, to my delight to Alexander McCall Smith, inventor of remarkable characters especially the glorious 'traditionally built' Precious Ramotswe with her Botswana Ladies' Detective Agency. He must get very fed up with besotted readers quoting his people back to him but he puts a very good face on it as does his wife who must have heard it all before ad infinitum.
The fears of sitting on a stage myself for an hour on the opening day of the Festival to discuss Mary Minto were quickly alleviated by an amazing event at the Jaipur City Palace which may have been less of a pleasure for those without their vests on underneath their finery. Imagine, a great lit court of white marble, arches on one side leading to summer drawing rooms, on the other the view over the pink city, approached by a winding staircase from an inner entrance reached by carriage from the outer gate and guarded by two elephants in all their finery and a platoon of tasseled camels. On top of that, a delicious dinner, plenty to drink to keep the cold at bay and an impossible choice to make of which conversation to join.
During the weekend of the Festival numbers attending become extreme as children and schoolchildren join others for whom week day visits are impossible. Still people are patient and polite in general and somehow it all works without a riot although with artist friends in town in search of hidden villages and new scenes I absented myself for much of Saturday and Sunday, rather mistakenly I suspect as I missed evening events taking place in the splendour of the Amber Fort that stretches along part of the Aravalli range of hills on the outskirts of Jaipur. During Sunday daytime opening hours the Fort is to be avoided, it is treated quite reasonably as a local leisure amenity meaning that it is crammed with people, mostly busy taking selfies or group photographs against every square inch of view or decorated pillar. My old memories of the massive complex include my youngest son falling and slicing his head open on a marble step
Our weekend magical mystery artist in search of a subject tour out of Jaipur had originally included Bundi or Kota via Tonk, a place I have an unwarranted desire to visit due to Mary Minto's description of its then ruler who took her bear shooting. Bundi is known in particular for its stepwells but idleness encouraged a visit instead to a suprisingly sparsely visited stepwell in Amer, close to the Amber Fort and to the Anokhi Museum of Handprinting, its cafe the purveyor of delicious fresh lemon and ginger drinks and homemade cookies.
Salt lakes being good in theory for painting we drove further out of town to the Sambhar Lake, a huge area dotted with not particularly scenic salt workings but fringed by little visited villages of considerable attraction. The lake is said to have been a gift by the goddess Shakambari to the local population.Originally made of silver the people feared battles over the precious metal and asked her to removed the gift which she instead changed to the salt that has been been worked here for over a thousand years.The settlement round the temple of Devyani.where the beautiful holy tank was refilled in 2012 due to a local youth initiative to divert flood water from the lake after 25 dry years is like a miniature Pushkar and is a highly important pilgrimage site. We hit off a festival day, How many festival days there are heaven knows but we found mainly women, mostly of a certain age, engaged in energetic ablutions followed by prayers in the temple. On a roof top nearby, the ground was being thrashed with great force by both men and women beating out devils - Devyani was the daughter of a Rishi who had a fall out with her friend, the daughter of a demon who by divine intervention became her slave. Who needs to beat the demons today and to what precise end I have not yet discovered but it's probably better to keep them in their place well all's said and done.
Onwards, attracted by a distant view of a hill fort, to Bichun Village also possibly called Dudu, at least it is in Dudu tehsil but.....The village is traditional, unvisited and very friendly. To our surprise on arrival drummers immediately appeared and started drumming in the village street but we never quite discovered their purpose - weddings were out, practice possibly or just a most unexpected greeting. A short walk up to the fort ended in rather ignominious retreat although I maintain I would have got there but might not have survived the thorn bushes and rocks so successfully on the way down. Thereafter I think we met the whole population, several generations of village families and most particularly the newest baby who, once gathered up in foreign arms, instantly peed into foreign handbag and everywhere else besides to much general hilarity.
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