By Catherine Marshall
Dromedary delights: A cameleer and his charge at India’s annual Pushkar Camel Fair.Credit: Catherine Marshall
whirling ceiling fans he orders pizza and a fizzy fruit drink called Mazaa. I order roti and a bowl of ice-cream. He tells me about the French woman he once met who now pays for his education. "I call her mama," he smiles.
On the third day I meet Rahul again, on the other side of the city. His eyes sparkle with recognition. "Come and meet my mama!" he says, and he takes me by the hand and leads me to an encampment that's sprung up on the edge of the fairground. There sits a woman, her head covered in a green and yellow scarf, her nose studded with a gold trinket, her strong jaw and cleft chin – just like Rahul's – marking her out as the boy's mother. The woman smiles and reaches out both hands in greeting. "You have a wonderful son," I say.
A group of camels forms a circle at the fair.
In the hours and days in between, this is what happens: Rita the gypsy is pulling my hand and dragging me into the chai tent. "Come, come!" she calls, her voice trilling across the fairground. A scarlet dupatta frames Rita's beautiful young face; her eyelids are traced with pink kohl, her lips stained orange. She pushes me into a plastic chair inside the tent, orders tea with a flick of her fingers and sets about decorating my hand with henna. Her confidence is electric.
Rahul waits outside, annoyance flickering across his face. All around him the fairground is taking shape like some time-lapse construction – Ferris wheels rise up against muddy skies, lengths of embroidered cloth morph into shelter for horses, steaming kitchens manifest beneath sheets of corrugated iron. And camels flood the fairground: they've come from all over Rajasthan, from Gujarat, from as far away as Madhya Pradesh. They've come in their thousands, by truck and by foot, their orange-turbaned herders cajoling them along the dusty routes that converge on this sacred desert city of Pushkar. It's early November, the Hindu lunar month of Kartika Purnima, and Rajasthan's most famous festival is about to begin.
Rahul is waiting for us when we emerge from the tent. But Rita sings: "Come meet my people – they live in the dunes!" She and her gypsy friends pull at my sleeves: Rita and Sunita and Reka, Saba and baby Sanum who lies swaddled in a cloth-and-wood bassinet that's slung across her mother's bony shoulder. Is it safe to go? my eyes inquire of Rahul. He rolls his head noncommittally then follows as I skip down the hill behind Rita.
Rita the gypsy.Credit: Catherine Marshall
Tucked between the dunes is a grass-and-tarpaulin structure demarcated with a fence of twigs; even in the desert some order must be maintained. Rita sets out a quilt and I sit cross-legged on it, surrounded by toddlers and women and young men who take turns trying on my sunglasses. Saba lays the baby on the ground and lights a beedi; one of the men disappears into the house and returns wielding an alarmingly large knife. I flinch, but my fear is unfounded, for it's merely a prop for the clown-like dance he now performs. Laughter bubbles up around me.
These gypsies come to the fair each year with their folk dances and tribal music and tubes of henna; they're led by a woman named Gitar whose front teeth are embedded with precious stones, and they make enough money from visitors – about 400,000 of them over a fortnight – to buy flour for chapatti for months to come. Rita is begging me now to bring a party of fellow travellers to this house for a show. But the fee she mentions is a king's ransom, even by Indian standards; besides, I'm travelling alone. I press a wad of rupees into her hand and hug her goodbye.
Back at the fairground vendors are setting out their wares of harnesses and decorations woven from showers of bright wool, camel bells and bridles, saddles and nose pegs. Camel caravans file past us with their sloping, languid gait; horses gather in makeshift stables and traders recline on Rajputana benches, snoozing away the midday heat.
Rahul leads me away from the fairground and into the city, where pilgrims sluice through the warren of alleyways surrounding Pushkar Lake. "Welcome to Pushkar, today is Lord Ganesh's day," says a man dressed in white. He presses a marigold into my hand and pushes me back into the stream of people headed for the holy waters. I'm swept along pathways so narrow I could stretch out my arms and touch the buildings on both sides. At Poonam ghat a man instructs me to remove my shoes, and directs me to the Brahmin sitting beside the lake.
"I am asking for your husband's long life," says the Brahmin who, having eyed my wedding ring, now dips his finger into a pot of red puja powder and dots it onto my forehead, signifying my marital status. He lifts a tray scattered with marigold and rose petals symbolising a successful journey, grains of rice for nourishment and sugar for sweetness. He scoops water from the lake and pours it over my head, then knots a loop of thread around my wrist.
"This is a blessing for your life," he says.
Rahul is waiting for me at the top of the ghat. He leads me through the throngs, down the steps at the southern edge of the lake and along its shore to the Sunset Cafe, where we have lunch. Back at the fairground he hails a young rickshaw driver, orders him to deliver me to my camp, and waves me goodbye.
The Royal Heritage Camps and Safaris abode is a pop-up miracle, cushioned like an oasis amid fields of gooseberries. Outside waits Suwalal the cameleer and Raju the camel, ready to pick up passengers for an evening ride. Inside, an old man named Mangal Nayak stands beneath an ancient mango tree and coaxes beautiful tunes from a Rajasthani string instrument. Gooseberries are not the only plant to defy this arid landscape: roses grow so prolifically here that a nearby factory turns them into rosewater, jam and incense. I taste traces of the blooms at dinner – strictly vegetarian and alcohol-free in respect of Hindu beliefs – when I eat blissful spoonfuls of gulab jamun, dumplings drenched in rosewater- and cardamom-scented syrup.
My tent is its own oasis: block-printed canvas, dark wooden furniture, hot shower and flush toilet, a chain of marigolds strung across the bed. As I drift off to sleep laughter and music are carried to me like magic from the fairgrounds.
On the last day, Nayak wakes me with his melancholic music. I eat aloo and paneer parantha and pickles and curd. Hemant from the camp drops me on the outskirts of the city, so bloated now with animals and people the air seems to have been sucked right out of it. Cows nose the litter, shopkeepers call, "Special price for you!", sadhus march through narrow streets with hippies following in their wake.
I enter the fairground. Standing across from me is Rita the gypsy, hennaing the hand of a tourist. She flashes me a businesslike smile. "No chai today," she seems to say, "I've a living to make." I wander the fairgrounds dejectedly, feeling strangely bereft. And then, like some apparition, Rahul appears, smiling blindingly and imploring me to come and meet his mother. Mama takes me by the hands and pulls me down beside her. There we sit in her own pop-up camp – ragged but love-filled – and we laugh and sing and speak in a jumble of Hindi and English, two languages that only the sweet Rahul can fully grasp.
The writer was a guest of India Tourism, Royal Heritage Camps and Safaris and Taj Hotels.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Air India flies daily from Sydney and Melbourne to Delhi and onward to Rajasthan. Flights operate Delhi-Sydney-Melbourne-Delhi (four times a week) and Delhi-Melbourne-Sydney-Delhi (three times a week). Low season fares start at AUD$950 return, including tax. Nonstop flying time to Delhi is about 12½ hours. See www.airindia.in
TOURING THERE
The 2014 Pushkar Camel Fair takes place from October 26 to November 6. The Classic Safari Company's nine-night/10-day itinerary including Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan, highlighting a stay at Royal Heritage Camps in Pushkar, costs from $3245 a person, including breakfast throughout except at Thar Camps where all meals are included. Accommodation is based on two people sharing, internal economy-class flight from Udaipur to Delhi, transfers and sightseeing. See classicsafaricompany.com.au
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