HDR

Now that I've found a decent enough program to stitch together the photos, I'll begin taking more HDR photos on my travels. (Although, sad to say, the heat has put a damper on most of my enthusiasm to get around India. Hopefully I can make it down to Mumbai this trip, at the least.)

Sumitra, Daya Ram, and the dream of Dharohar

One of the major projects of the JVF recently has been the band Dharohar, a group composed of musicians from all over Rajasthan and one from the UK, Jason Singh. The band's members span all India's socio-economic strata; The band combines musical themes and traditions from across Rajasthan, but most notably it also seeks to harmonize and find shared ground between musicians who, before Dharohar, were separated by caste and geographic region. With funds from the British Council and the Annenberg foundation, Dharohar has toured all over India and hopes to break into the European festival circuit.

Last week I took a trip with John about three hours west of Jaipur to visit Sumitra and Daya Ram, two of the band's ten members. John pays regular visits to musicians in Rajasthan to find out more about their townships and the circumstances which surround (and consequently affect) their art. John isn't particularly involved with Dharohar, but he came along to interview Sumitra and Daya Ram for a film currently being made by documentary filmmaker Elizabeth McKay.

Sumitra's town, Jaitaran, was our first visit.



(to see more photos from the trip, visit the flickr set)

Bikaner

Last week I went to the birthday party of Mary-Noelle, a frenchwoman who lives in a beautiful music and arts center on the edge of Jaipur, called Kawa. At the party, I met a spaniard named Maria who was a middle(wo)man in the carpet manufacture and export industry. I liked her; she had a kind of good humor and charm which isn't common in the professional and mercantile classes. She had an affable smile and seemed to have no consciousness of the (all-too-Anglo) idea that at some point in life you have to "get serious." She divides her year into stints in Valencia and Jaipur, working on one of her own businesses as well as helping a Spanish company source rugs from Rajasthan and Varanesi. Maria was heading to Bikaner this week and invited me to come along. I'm still wet behind the ears when it comes to India and eager for new experiences, so I happily agreed to come along.

The trip began at 4:30 a.m. on monday, when I woke up to drive from the farm to Maria's hotel. We left at 6:30, heading for Bikaner via the local freeways.

An aside about Indian driving (I know I've already addressed it): Our driver, whose name I now forget, should be 1) commended for getting us to Bikaner and back without major incident, and 2) warned that his current choice of occupation will result in a seriously shortened lifespan; if not from a car accident, then the stress and anxiety which inevitably arises from having semi trucks speeding towards you at 100km/hr with nothing to do but hope they can overtake the slow-moving tractor carrying an enormous load of cotton in the back traveling at 10 km/hr.

If I were tasked with disproving deductive logic and reasoning, I would do nothing else than point to Indian roadways. It is a classic trope of the Western experience of India to say of the chaos which apparently governs the country, "yet It somehow works". But this is to ignore the fact that social mores and customs have replaced the roles of law and order. Where chaos apparently rules (because of the noticeable lack of any police or government authority), the emergent order of the Indian street proves that much more than mere formality composes the everyday affairs and exchanges between humans.

But I digress. Our trip was filled with close encounters, adrenaline bursts, thoughts of god, &c.

I try not to take photographs through car windshields, but some things are too hard to pass up:

We arrived in Bikaner at around 11:30. The carpet factory had sent someone on motorcycle to drive us into town. As we entered Bikaner, the traffic became more heavy. we had to wait for a train to cross the main road, so I stepped out of the car and snapped a few photographs.

this was our guide.

at the crossing

We arrived at the carpet factory half twelve. Maria set to work immediately castigating the owners (cousins) Inder and Krishanpal for not getting the samples out in time and screwing up the carpet she was supposed to get to her employers (they wanted it in three pieces; the brothers hadn't separated the carpet).

women separating fibres.

We toured the area with the large foot looms where the rugs were woven:

We went to lunch at around 2, across the street from Junagarh fort. Maria had some more business to attend to, so I went into the fort and took a tour with a spanish-speaking tour group. (Oddly, my trip to Bikaner probably involved the most spanish practice I've had in years).

'Round about 5 I returned to the factory, my tourist mission complete. Maria and I stayed at the "Halaheera Business Hotel and Restro-Bar" in Bikaner. It was a strange plastic edifice in the international style; It's amazing that, 100km from the border with Pakistan, you can still get the stiff sheets, prickly AC, ESPN, and shiny fake wood accents which define hotels from Phoenix to Bangalore.

The next morning we left at 6:30 for Jaipur, and the only notable thing to report from the drive back was hitting a dog square on at 100km/hr (the sound of bone making contact with fiberglass is unique).

The Village of Pinan & Siliserh Lake

Yesterday I went to the village of Pinan, near Alwar with John, Jason, Georgie, Som, and Joe. We were visiting Jumma, a member of the band Dharohar who is now very dear friends with Jason.

Some background: Jason is a beat-boxer from the UK working with the Jaipur Virasat Foundation to raise local and international awareness of traditional Rajasthani musicians. (I am currently working for JVF to redesign their website). For the past few years Jason and another UK artist, Bex Mather, have been traveling back and forth from the UK to Jaipur to perform with Dharohar at festivals across India. They are planning on a summer tour of Europe.

Djouma lives in the village of Pinan, near Alwar. Since most of this blog's readership is from the United States or the UK, a map might be useful:

On the way, we stopped at a Baoli (the name of which now escapes me, as do the names of so many people and places I encounter here). Baoli are commonly called 'step-wells'. They are highly-wrought pits with ascending and descending sets of stairs. Baoli were fashioned to trap the inundation of water that came with the monsoon season, and to save it for drinking and irrigation in the dry months. It's quite an extraordinary experience seeing one; imagine a mayan step-pyramid inverted into the earth: