A fantastic journey offered by Valigia a due piazze.
I remember the fires burning along the streets of the residential neighborhoods of New Delhi, where sleep open-air the outcasts, the untouchables, the Dalits. Arriving late at night, our car ran into the hotel, dodging the slow-moving shadows, and in my eyes are set forever those fires in the dark. The next day we started with a dawn flight to Jodhpur and our plane raised in the compact and cool mist of Delhi. And we have traveled hundreds of kilometers through the oasis of Osyan towards Jaisalmer, The Golden City, where the Rajasthan borders Pakistan.
The air of the desert is cold. It was here that we had the first contact with the untouchables. They can not enter the sand fort of Jaisalmer, they sit at the entrance, waiting for a handout or striving for a show that will bring them a small gain. Sometimes they sell trinkets and await squatting. In an awkward position. This is a thing is left to me deeply impressed from the long journey in India: Indians are resting and waiting bent over the legs, with only the soles of the feet resting on the ground and the bottom sank backward, low shot.
I remember an old woman, elegant in her purple, turquoise and orange sari, sitting on the uphill road leading to the fort of Jaisalmer. I was still far from her and I smiled, she looked like a lady who soon would return home to prepare a meal to the family, to the grandchildren – with the uniforms all the same – get home from school running, gesticulating and speaking too high. I approached and she was a leper. I focused unkempt hair, the sight without hope of those who expect to die hoping that the next life is more benevolent.
She was an untouchable, an outcast. She missed the fingers of the hands. Maybe I stepped back, I do not know, I was not prepared. From that moment I realized that I was indeed arrived in India.
The incredible Jaisalmer Fort is made of sand and merges with the flat dunes of the desert on which it rests. After nearly collapsing due to moisture infiltration, it has been restored and is now the only fort of India still inhabited. Inside, its lanes are narrow and tortuous and you have to dodge cows (sacred), bulls (fortunately meek), scooters (circulating at too high speed) and groups of wild pigs rooting in the dirt. Yet, amidst catch-tourist signs and scraped walls, the elegance and sophistication of the buildings is astonishing.
Each door has its own color, a different decoration from nearby. And you would lose hours, in the maze. When illuminated by the sun, it becomes really the golden Jaisalmer City.
From Jaisalmer I brought home four stories. I learned that the first son of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha, the Hindu god depicted with the head of an elephant with one tusk and four arms, always in the company of a mouse, his vehicle, is the protector of marriage. So, at Jaisalmer is easy to discover in which house a marriage has just been celebrated, because Ganesha (or Ganesh) is sitting on the doorstep to watch over the new family.
I found that marriages between different castes are seen badly and those with non-Indian people or, in the same way, non Hindu in the most conservative parts of India, such as Jaisalmer indeed, are even prohibited. If you marry a foreigner, you do so at your own risk. The family no longer wants to have anything to do with you. And if one parent or relative meets the one who has chosen this path, he usually does it in secret to avoid being seen by other citizens, because the whole family could be excluded by the community activities.
And so we learned that a young man was in love with a foreigner woman who had bought a building at Jaisalmer that was collapsing to put it back in order and make there a bed & breakfast. The two were married and today the couple, who currently live abroad, would like to return in Rajasthan to start their business, but no one let them come back at Jaisalmer and they are still opposed by everyone, after years.
In Jaisalmer we met Prakash, a guide who speaks Italian so correctly that it is a pleasure to listen to him. Prakash belongs to the caste of Brahmins. In India, the caste system is rigid and clear and establishes, at birth, the fate of a man for his whole life. You can not move from one caste to another during the life, you must wait for the next. The apex of the pyramid of the Indian castes are the Brahmins, representing the priests, who have the gift of speech, so do not involve in manual labor.
The step just below is that of the Kshatriyas, the warriors. Then the Vaishya, who are farmers, merchants and craftsmen, and support the two upper castes with their work. The lowest caste consists of Shudra, the servants, the least pure of all but the most numerous in India.E then there are the impure, the outcasts, the untouchables: those who belong to a caste refuses to touch them and they are unworthy of being considered.
It’s very unlikely that a Dalit raise his eyes to look at you in the face. And here we go back to the previous one: if a child is born from a man Shudra (a servant, not a slave!) and a Brahmin woman, that child will be untouchable. Among them the outcaste call each other “Dalits”, the oppressed.
But back to Prakash. Women usually are considered inferior to the servants, although born from Brahmin families. Their fate is linked to the dowry that the family gives them for the wedding. Only a good marriage can allow them to live a secure life. If in fact the women are widows, it is then the community to have to take care of them. Until a few years ago not to fall in disgrace women preferred to throw themselves alive in the pyre of the husband rather than live a life unworthy as beggars. This custom, the ultimate sacrifice of the wife, is known as Sati, and makes the woman a “holy” for the community.
Prakash has three daughters. The youngest is of an extraordinary beauty and his concern is to be able to grant a worthy dowry to all three. With great sadness, but also pride, he told us that, because of her beauty, the arranged marriage of the younger daughter might require a smaller dowry because – in addition to the economic factor – even the beauty of the bride has a weight.
Then when we went with him on the hill of cremations, which offers an extraordinary view of Jaisalmer at sunset. He then showed us the ashes of the last pyres that extinguished recently. Prakash told us that even his grandmother, of Brahmin family, when widowed she thrown self into the flames, like a Sati, to die with her husband rather than be a burden on society and to be excluded from all.
And the last story is about a little girl of seven years whose I don’t know the name but whose black eyes have stuck in my heart. The travel to India, as I have already told you, steal something of your life, but in return gives you a new perception of reality, if you come prepared, if your heart is not hard.
This little girl is the first of four children and is an untouchable. She cannot enter the fort of Jaisalmer because it’s forbidden for her, and she maintains all of her family doing the tightrope walker under the walls of the old city a few meters from the ground and without any protection but the quick reflexes of the father who does not remove the eyes off and is a few steps away from her. I gave her some sweets and a box of crayons. (We bet they would have preferred rupees? Ed)
The little girl continued to twirl the rope, she just folded the corners of the lips upturned in a sad smile, but touched by the joy for a moment. I do not know if the brothers have left for her any candy. I do not know if she ever had time to color or draw a picture with those crayons. I do not know if from that rope she ever slipped. Often I think about her and I know that today and tomorrow she will be there waiting for the next life, like all the untouchables.
Let rest the ears tired by the traffic of the city. Leave the old city and the Golden Fort of Jaisalmer. Climb on the roofs of one of the old cafes just outside the walls and enjoy the landscape flooded with light.
Inside the fort there are seven Jain temples in yellow sandstone dating back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
It needs a driver to get to Sunset Point, the hill where cremations take place. At sunset, the sand city of Jaisalmer becomes golden.
Avrete bisogno di un driver anche per arrivare a Gadisar Lake, a pochi chilometri da Jaisalmer. Arriva anche qui al tramonto, come tutto diventa color pastello.
On the road between Jodhpur and Jaisalmer make a stop in the ancient town of the Thar Desert, Osiyan, for Mahavir Temple and the Sachiya Mata Temple. In the latter temple women who express a wish, tie a red lace to the statues.
