King for a day
A lieutenant in a Moghul army, crosses a high pass in the
Himalayas and descends onto the Indo-Gangetic plain, sometime in the last thousand
years or so. As his feudal warlord and patron moves on to other conquests, the lieutenant is left to his own devices, with a small band of troops, in command of all
territory visible from some vantage point. The
lowest rung of the new feudal order: below him, his soldiers, and the locals
and their malleable submissive hierarchy.
In Rajasthan, the lieutenants oversee the building of forts
on the hilltops and plateaux rising irregularly above the
landscape. The patrilineal order they establish becomes the Rajputs, the ‘sons
of kings’. From their hilly forts, they rule the plains below. Periodically they descend, to rape, murder, pillage and plunder,
to enforce their rule.
As time passes, and the lieutenants’ status as Rajputs
becomes more secure, their residences move down from the hilltops, and
the fortification declines and the residences within the walls rise ever higher. As the invaders become landlords they and the locals forge better
relations, with the Rajputs guaranteeing peace and protection (from other
Rajputs!) and the locals guaranteeing the Rajputs income and status.
Eventually, the forts descend to the head of the valley
and become palaces. The Rajputs’ mini-kingdoms are integrated by the
British with their own Indian holdings. With their wealth the Rajahs build
city houses in Jaipur, the Rajput capital, and
elsewhere.
Patan Mahal, above Patan village in Rajasthan, is one such
palace, situated at the head of the valley in the shadow of a millenium of fortifications. Still in the hands of the family that built it, a family re-located
mostly to Jaipur and Mumbai, it became a hotel a decade ago,
offering guests the opportunity to sample Rajput grandeur at a reasonable
price.
Today, it’s a conundrum.
Much about the palace is still grand, and while members of
the extended ‘royal family’ do drop in for a night or two now and then, perhaps
enthusiasm for the place as a going concern, a commercial venture, has waned.
The manager seems more actor than manager, cast from some British period piece set
before the old order crumbled, with his blazer and cravat still in place,
pacing the courtyards and the balustrades, hands clasped behind his back. Of
the rooms, perhaps sixty or more, only five were occupied on our first night,
and only two on our second, with the other party tucking themselves away and
leaving us to make out like kings. Once the focal point of the afternoon,
the ‘High Tea’ served in the highest courtyard of the palace today comprises an
electric kettle filled with recently boiled water, teabags, a small jug of
milk, and a packet of biscuits. The traditional welcome, rose petals tossed
into the air around the arriving guests, is conducted more in hope than conviction
of a ritual maintained. Many things have been put away, many practices too,
misplaced, set aside. Half-baked construction of a new wing, to
accommodate hundreds more non-existent guests, sags like a skeleton on a
stick, forlorn and forgotten, windowless, doorless, roofless.
And yet, the palace remains a palace. Facing the
steps leading up to the grand residence is reminiscent of many great European
houses. The attending lobby is filled with great paintings and photographs of
the family, decked out in royal splendour, hereditary, ready for battle, or
meeting with grandees of the decaying Empire, even as those same grandees
cornered them into dissolving their mini-kingdoms into the greatest edifice of
the post-colonial era, the not-so federal Republic of India. Multiple floors,
levels, wings and gardens create space for the would-be overlord to pace the parapets
and crenelations, to ponder the fate of the commoners below, whose lives are so
easily considered from on high. The morning sun warms us in the late Indian winter
as we breakfast overlooking a courtyard built for horse and carriage rather than
motor vehicle, and the village and fields beyond. And in the evening, we
recline on another, more private verandah (we had booked the ‘Royal Suite’), to
watch the sun descend into a valley of foliage, hemmed in by high cliffs and
crags upon which remain the battlements of our (I’m getting carried away
– not ours, someone else’s) warlike antecedents. In peace and quiet, a
pleasurable quiet unknown in Delhi.
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Travel to Patan from Delhi meant a couple of hours on NH8 –
high speed dodgem cars with trucks, potholes, speeding drivers, and in the left
lane, tractors, tuk-tuks, buses without brake lights, barriers, pedestrians,
and religious processions of waving banners and ecstatic dancers fervent and freed
from fear of finishing this life cycle as roadkill. Then exiting the national
highway the wrong way down an on ramp after missing the exit (with company –
perhaps there was no exit to miss). Cutting across a dirt-floored multi-function
space below the highway overpass, dodging holes, homes, washing, sport, traffic
traveling every which way, children at play. Through a crowded marketplace,
and west towards Patan, with just one more misdirection, across a yard filled with heavy
machinery, before the village rises to meet us.
We settle in at the palace, with the manager helpfully
giving us a tour of the large photographs of now and former rajahs adorning the
walls of foyer, courtyard and lobby. The family try the pool (it’s too cold I
think) and ping-pong table (we know to bring our own paddles and
balls – experience has taught us to expect not to find them in hotels
that advertise table tennis amongst their facilities). I walk into the village.
The Indian festival of Holi happens two days hence. Anticipation
is running high, especially amongst the young. Holi marks the end of the brief
cool and start of the long hot season. It’s matched at the end of the hot by
Diwali. At Holi, people throw colours and water at each other. Images of Holi
often promote India as a colourful, lively and joyous place.
the village mill |
My don’t-mess-with-me demeanour also disturbs a
dog eating a used nappy. It runs off clenching the refuse in its jaw.
A small group of teenage girls take turns to ride new
or almost new bicycles. Not a lot of English between them, and I don’t have a
lot of Hindi, but they grant me a turn and we chase each other in circles and
figure eights until I feel I’ve overstayed my welcome.
A backstreet mill grinds wheat into flour for one rupiah a
kilo – and the stream of folk wheeling sacks of wheat draped over their
bicycles reveals the livelihoods that sustain the village – most village folk
have small holdings, and turn their wheat to flour as they need it, or need
cash. The going rate for a kilo is twenty-five rupiah, about half an Australian
dollar.
A grand old tree stands guard over the most unusual house on
this narrow street. A wide doorway opens from a blue façade decorated with
sculptures and I wander in to an empty three storey complex of rooms, their padlocked
wooden doors facing onto small courtyards. Out back a turnaround driveway
passes under a foyer that juts from a home of distinctly late sixties or early
seventies suburban style. An old caretaker, tending a well-kept garden, tells
me the owners have moved to Mumbai.
On the street, Rajasthani women obsess over plastic bangles
and jewellery, and crowd the small shops and kiosks that ply the trade.
Through a doorway I watch a tailor making shirts on a
pedal-powered machine. Hanging above are the shirts he’s already made. I ask
him to sell me one, and he refuses, says they’re not for me. I ask him to make
me one and he acts dumb, tells me I should buy one that’s already made. Are we
going in circles? I press my case and he starts complaining that I’m wearing
shoes in his shop. I stand my ground – I just want a shirt after all, and he’s
the tailor. He redirects me to a muslim tailor, thirty metres away on the other
side of the road.
A little further, the centre of town. Not much happening
here I haven’t already seen ad nauseum. A store is selling metalwork
reminiscent of the early years of highschool, before we were
streamed and those who best worked with metal left to apprentice as
boilermakers. I buy a wrought iron ladle, its spherical metal spoon beaten into
shape by a village smithy using hammer and anvil. My purchase seems to confirm
for the local men what they already suspect – that I’m completely bonkers. Why?
Is it the ladle, or the way I bought it? I have no idea, and I don’t really
care much either. Just another little mystery.
An after-school English tuition class, filled with four to ten year olds,
sitting on the floor, perhaps 30 of them jammed in a room, with complicated home-made
textbooks in their laps, all parroting the
English spoken by the teacher. I try talking with the children. I try speaking
to the teacher. No-one of them understands a word.
Throughout India, parents send their children to tutors,
because the quality of public education is appalling. It’s hard to imagine
education more worthless than this tutoring.
On the first floor verandah of an eminent house, a young woman and her younger brother are doing homework. Sankriti speaks English, even better than the draper. She should: she’s studying English at university in Jaipur and is home for the holiday. Her parents are astrologers from the Brahmin (priestly) caste and as such own one of the village’s finer homes. They’re outsiders, from the north. Sankriti has no interest in following her parents into the fortune-telling business. It’s big business in India – identifying the fortuitous days on which to be married and so on – and one that pays. But it might grate on the sensibilities of a young woman growing up in the information age.
Back at the hotel, the giant hound kept chained by the
gate is being walked around the compound, led with the same chain that keeps it
to the wall all day. I imagine it unchained at night, roaming freely within the walls, attacking
anyone or anything foolish enough to sneak in. Is it friendly, I ask. No! Emphatically
no.
Clearly visible from the hotel, the highest of the castle
ruins overlooks ruins in several valleys, ours and others. Reaching it is a tough,
steep climb, with trails unclearly marked, and aggressive vegetation bristling
with thorns. The fortifications ascending
and at the peak, interesting and great fun for kids to climb on and explore,
are dangerous, unmarked, lots of big drops, holes in floors, and decay and collapse
ongoing.
Within the confines of the topmost fort, a single,
mysterious olive tree. Olives are not native to India, and attempts to
introduce them, most recently in Rajasthan, have failed. Yet here, on this
hilltop, stands a single, mature tree. Where did it come from? From the Middle
East? Was it, or its antecedent, brought back as an exotic gift? How did it
persevere here, untended, unwatered, unpruned, when other olives, nursed and
tended, have frustrated attempts to bring them to fruition?
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Next morning, from our vantage point in the palace, we watch the Holi
festivities, paint and water throwing, though we can’t see the main action in
the village square. Staff gently and respectfully daub my face with colours,
and, having submitted to the ritual, we’re otherwise left alone. We depart Patan for Delhi. Out of the village and along the roads,
strangely coloured men.
The holiday roads and highways are near deserted, and the
trip to Delhi takes just two and a half hours. The regal mantle we assumed for the
weekend dropped and abandoned again on the empty palace floor.
Patan is nice, away, relaxing, peaceful. The locals, hindu
and muslim, friendly, though English is not a lingua franca. Some fascinating architecture,
the palace and the grand house, and the archaeology too is worth a look.
And the palace, the lonely palace of peace and imaginings.
----------------------------------------------------
Beaty from Csar Tours is a generous font of knowledge. To be
thanked for recommending Patan and negotiating our stay.
Entertaining and enjoyable. Thanks, Rick, for this wonderful account of your latest adventure.
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