Tripping Out Alone

Nizamuddin was a Sufi Master and his lover Khusra wrote devotional songs to praise him. Each evening in Nizamuddin West at the temple members of Nizamuddin's family, relatives of his sisters progeny gather to sing the songs of their ancestors lover and to dispense advice to those who petition them. Prayers for love and acceptance are chanted around the tombs of both Nizamuddin and Khusra. Crowds sit and listen to the songs, gather together in harmonious community and celebrate life and love through prayer... This is where Cushla and I headed last night, into the crowds and smells of 'old' India and it was so good.

Standing on the roof top of the haveli in Neemrana with the fort behind me..feeling sort of heat and dust in it all..the evocative chaos of the past and the fulfilment of the present and all the growing up in between and that's me , not India.

My friend Cushla is studying silversmithing under the tutelage of a grand master, Shashi..he inherited the gift from his uncle who while awesomely talented died early due to alcoholism. His father took on the craft but was never really comfortable with it, preferring instead the craftsmanship of building. Fortunately for the lineage it was Shashi who was able to develop his craft into something more and with the help of his enterprising brother, Balua, has developed a business that allows for grand artistic expression and market expansion. Cushla now not only learns from Shashi she assists in the promotion of the shop and brings the jewellery to her friends in Delhi and beyond to admire and acquire. Having had some experience in the marketing and retail side of jewellery I was eager to lend a hand myself and spent a really great morning amongst the rings, bangles, bracelets and earrings creating the sort of displays that had been taught to me by Fani in our days at Love and Hatred in

The village around the Fort Palace has benefitted in some way from the renovation of the Fort into a world class resort. People from the village are employed there and the owners have built a hospital for the village as well as contributing to the general economy through trickle down tourism. However the village is rustic and crumbling, and still clings to ancient traditions, women do not venture out uncovered, if at all and it is the men who do all the business, all the time.

There is one site outside the Fort for toursits that winds through the village, the Step Well, an enormous structure, at one time built to deliver water to the fort and village during the droughts so regular in Rajasthan. Fallen into disrepair and with very little water the structure is a testament to the architecture and political sensibilities of the previous rulers of the area. Moghul and Roman influences in the arches are blended with a traditional Rajasthani tier system of steps and corridors. Today it is a cool place for the young ment to hang out and home to flocks of pigeons..There is no safety rail, no danger signs, no take care notices...no liability signs..nothing. Just boys, pigeons and goats...

It turned out that our room was directly beside the main walkway for staff, on our first morning I was greeted by a parade of waiters making their way to serve breakfast.

We are given a room in the old harem quarters..it is pretty, set between the courtyard and the modern addition and with a small efficient bathroom in which to wash off the layers of dust. The Fort is magnificent at night, dripping with vines, cracked and worn with age and set far above the highway there is a momentary peacefulness as a sliver of moon cruises across the silk soft sky..words of poetry and the silent notes of ancient love songs hang in the air until shattered by the commencement of the village festivities below..entering the ninth day of a festival that culminates in Diwali the excruciating pain of Rama, exiled, is megaphoned into the night through a shrieking public address system that drives the sound into the ancient walls of the fort with more success than many previous invaders... It's night we have arrived and our hosts await us in the village.

India confronts..that's for sure..life -death- weirdness and wonder, it is all out there and on the Jaipur Highway at dusk it crowds in on you as in the gloaming approach to darkness wraiths of nothingness and shapes of living scuttle across the path..Dust moulds ghostly shapes that hurtle alongside the moving vehicles..trucks of extra ordinary length and maleable fragility trundle ahead blinded by oncoming beams and deficient in lights of their own, their true size and shape only apparent as the car you travel in squeezes between and on and through past articulations of carriages that wobble and wander across lines and margins. Then out of the darkness real humans cross traffic lanes on unlit bicycles, with bales and baskets piled on heads, wrapped in constricting saris they cross their rural plain bisected by the nightmare of mechanised mayhem that India refers to as progress... Oh the terrifying nature of it, the joy of survival against the odds, the carcasses of upturned an

Images from my first morning in Nizamuddin East...