Day 8 - Jaipur, Pink City Blues

Day 8 - Monday 8 November. Jaipur 

Happy Eid ul Adha. For the Muslim (minority) community, this is the feast of sacrifices (recalling Abraham and Isaac). The goats tethered on the street are looking worried. Over my breakfast porridge I read in the Hindustan Times that camel may (illegally) be on the menu for the Nawab of Tonk, but he is "unavailable for comment" (too busy sharpening the knife.) We wander into town, calling in on a couple of Hindu temples on the way. This is truly a "pink city" (see picture) and worth all the hyperbole. It's also cleaner - or a little less filthy - than Holy Varanasi, so I'm off my guard and manage to step in something nasty down a dark alley. We join the tourist hoardes to visit the Jantar Mantar, the observatory of giant stone instruments built in 1728 for telling the time and observing the planets. The largest sundial is 30 m. tall and accurate to within 2 seconds. From there, across the road to the Palace Museum. The currrent maharaja still lives in part of the complex and may be watching us from a high turret as we have a beer and eat lunch off crested plates. It's decent of him to let the plebs in. There are an awful lot of plebs by mid-afternoon, mostly being herded round by their tour guides like so many sheep. Or maybe goats.

Wrong way rickshaw ride

I have an errand - to find the Indira Bazaar where I'm told I may find a shop which sells transformers for laptops. So we take a cycle rickshaw, having negotiated hard for a keen price. Two none-too-slender Englishmen, one rickshaw walla. We set off, but our progress seems unusually irregular, and I at first think we must have a puncture. Then the awful truth dawns. The rickshaw man is lame and can only press with his left foot. I feel deeply ashamed of my hard bargaining and offer to step down when he struggles as the road gets rough, but he will have none of it. He gets his own back on the final stretch, though, conveying us scarily up the wrong side of the road (maybe its smoother), dodging between the honking cars.

"The Lads"

Raisa Plaza, it turns out, is not just one shop, it's a mini-mall complexx of 150 small shops on 3 floors. Mobile phone emporia on the ground floor, more phones, cameras and accessories on the middle level and laptops on the top floor. I'm directed to unit 138 where Ashun, a plump spectacled lad not long out of school, is directed to look after me. Yes, they can get me one in half an hour. No, they can't find one with the right size plug. Yes, they'll try and repair the old one instead. So Ashun takes me to meet his mates Ravi and Rajiv (it's a very male world) in a little workshop whose walls are entirely covered with computer guts. Rajiv is the expert, equipped with a surgeon's long thin fingers and a soldering iron, and tinkers with the insides of my little power source removing the burnt out bits and soldering in replacements. Meanwhile, they seat me on a stool, ply me with tea, and entertain me with much laughter and general "horsing around". I am there for over an hour. Ashun tries to teach me to count in Hindi, then suggests I go to a movie. There's a new "super hero" movie the lads think I'd like (how do they know?). Alas, the transformer is dead beyond repair. The replacement is produced, prized apart and the old lead and plug soldered in. Bingo - it passes the test, "Sorry, Rich," he says with a broad grin, "That's gonna be 1200 rupees. New plug and many workers, you see." We settle for 1000. It was almost worth it for the entertainment.