Jaipur - Festival for the Women

March 2007

 

Here we are in Jaipur, the beautiful ‘Pink City.’  The many pink buildings date back to 1876, when the Maharaja Ram Singh had all the buildings painted pink, the colour of hospitality, in preparation for the visit either of Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward and the Emperor of India.  Many buildings are more ‘naturally’ pink, being constructed of pink sandstone.  

The varying shades of pink in the city – which are in part due to the original pink colour (varying from rosy pink to amber to orange) of a building, and in part due to how recently painted, or repainted, a building is – all look fresh and clean in the bright morning and mid-day sun, and are slowly transformed, as sun begins its descent towards the horizon, into rich, warm, glowing sunset colours.  This makes Jaipur one of the most beautiful, and photogenic cities in the world – often referred to as the ‘Paris of India’. 

When we got to Jaipur the city was preparing for yet another Hindu festival day.  (There seems to be at least one festival or “holy day” a week, ensuring that no one works more than three or four days a week, except of course the rural poor, who comprise over 80% of the population, and work nine or ten days a week.  We were told this festival was ‘for the women,’ and that there would be a big parade, with elephants and camels, in the old city.  

Our hotel was a fair distance from the old city, so after an hour of walking in what was becoming a very hot day, we flagged down a bicycle rickshaw.  I immediately felt badly for the “driver,” who was working hard and sweating profusely within the first five minutes.  This was no ‘holiday’ for him.  We didn’t bargain about the fare: the least we could do was pay him well.

 

The rickshaw driver took us to the main entrance to the old city, where the parade participants were congregating: people in elegant traditional dress, smartly turned-out members of several marching bands with their feathered turbans and shiny brass tubas, and of course the big and beautiful painted and bedecked elephants, camels and horses.  

We were vaguely “rounded up,” along with throngs of other tourists, and herded towards the main parade area.  Here, rather than the squash of too many people and too much traffic, as we had experienced at other Indian parades, we found an orderly line of tourists (foreign and Indian) being directed up a flight of stairs to a balcony overlooking the parade street.  There were even a few dozen plastic chairs set out, although by the time we arrived these were all taken.  Still, we managed to have an unimpeded view of the proceedings.  Furthermore, the police actually stopped traffic on the parade route, so we didn’t have to watch the parade in glimpses through passing buses, trucks and motorcycles as we have had previously to do.  This to us was the height of good organization.  

 

But there was more!  Before the parade started a fellow came around with a glossy colour brochure explaining what the celebration was all about.  It was in English, and it was free!  Clearly Rajasthan is light-years ahead of much of the rest of India in terms of its tourist trade.

Reading the brochure we learned that the “just for women” celebration was in fact more for their husbands than for them (no big surprise).  

The female deity that was on display, the name of which I have conveniently (contemptuously?) forgotten, is one that single women pray to to give them a “good” husband (whatever they think that is – one who doesn’t beat them every day?), and that married women pray to to give their husbands good health and prosperity.  

 

I guess, indirectly, that benefits them, but for me it also highlights, once again, the extent to which Indian women simply do not exist, in their own right.  They are daughters (to be married, as quickly as possible), wives, and mothers.  The assumption of any roles beyond these is not well tolerated anywhere but in the larger, more “westernized” cities, and even then only by the educated upper and upper-middle classes, who represent such a small percentage of the population that they must be considered an aberration, rather than a norm.  

I sat beside an Indian born Israeli woman who was doing some volunteer social work in India.  In the 20 or more years she has been coming to India she has seen very little change, although much proud and nationalistic discussion of it.  She, like so many others, is concerned that India is destined to be overcome by ever increasing population growth, and all the insurmountable problems it engenders.

For more information on Jaipur go to:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaipur