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As I write, I'm sitting in the most beautiful garden I've
ever seen. All around me, roses bloom, chipmunks dance and
parrots squawk, demanding my attention be re-focused onto
feathers of emerald green and yellow. I'm in India, in a place
called Samode Bagh, about 40km from Jaipur. Of course, there's
no Internet connection here. Most of the staff have never
even seen a mobile phone; they live next door in a camp of
concrete huts, surrounded by milking cows. They are some of
the happiest people I've ever encountered.
 This
garden is a world away from Dubai. It's a reminder of
mother nature's sweet existence - something I think
is blocked, paved over, built upon so much in Dubai
that sometimes we forget it was ever there at all. Even
looking out at the ocean at home doesn't seem natural
anymore - they're building on that, too.
Of course, part of it is beautiful, watching a city grow
and develop, rise up out of nothing and turn from desert sands
into so many people's homes. But, watching the butterflies
chase each other round a hedge, frightened away by an approaching,
inquisitive cow, I'm thinking that perhaps it's all a bit
too easy these days, to exist in a concrete, five star jungle
and lose ourselves in technology.
Here, the birds sing, uninterrupted by the sounds of cranes
and diggers. The dinners are served around a campfire on individual
tables decorated with candles, and there's no ice-sculpture
necessary to make your lunchtime buffet on the lawn any more
beautiful. As darkness falls once more, the live band sit
cross-legged on the grass, their heads wrapped in turbans
and their voices painting the night with Bollywood colours
- classics, so we're told, although most of us wouldn't know.
"People come here to escape the craziness", the
proud and hospitable manager tells us. He's just given us
our room for an extra eleven hours, free of charge, because
we tell him we can't bear to go back to the city any sooner
than we have to after check out time. And he nods in a knowing
fashion. There's enough craziness around the corner in Jaipur
to put any naïve explorer into a straight jacket, should
they stay too long. After four days there, my group was ready
to leave.
Jaipur, to our Dubai trained eyes was a smelly, filthy, rude
city, whose train station doubles as a homeless shelter. Most
of its people are riddled with poverty and view each white,
walking Westerner as a walking ATM. We were ridiculed by passing
strangers, scammed into paying more than necessary for meals
in local restaurants and denied a trip to the Taj Mahal, after
we refused to pay a greedy train conductor who tried to charge
us more than five times the price of a ticket to Agra.
Riding on the tuk tuk - our main mode of transport whilst
there - to me was like climbing onto a death cab. With no
road system to speak of, the people of Jaipur drive without
lights at night. They cycle on ancient bikes with barrels
of hay and ladders strapped to the back, and they weave through
traffic on motorbikes like a needle knitting a death certificate.
A journey down a main road could quite easily be halted by
a passing wedding procession. A herd of goats could come running
at you from the sidelines, or a lonely, lost cow could rear
his head in front of you, spiking your ever-ready camera with
its horns. The whole thing was a dangerous adventure that,
whilst there, we swore never to repeat.
But looking back now at the photos, I've never seen so many
colours. The fear I felt is now overridden by awe - was I
really there amongst such fascinating chaos, with a perfect
Kodak moment around every single corner? Sarees, all the colours
of the rainbow blur into roadside stalls of fresh fruit and
vegetables. The eyes of random, bewildered animals shine next
to wrinkled men making shoes, right next to piles of drying
cowpats. The forts we climbed look even more beautiful set
against the hazy outline of rolling hills, and the smiles
of local children seem brighter and far more innocent than
our cynicism would allow them to be when we were actually
there.
The structured, predictable existence I call my own might
be safe and co-ordinated by a strict and sometimes irritating
rulebook, but in retrospect, it's never as exciting. I'm safe
in this garden. I'm happy and relaxed, just as I wanted to
be on holiday. I'm lucky. Back in my fake, five star Dubai
I might not be as relaxed, but I know I won't be robbed on
the street by a child with no teeth.
Back in the confines of safety, it's suddenly quite clear
that life in these places, for all of its frightening poverty
and awe-inspiring beauty, is real. This is the real world.
The rest of us I guess, wrapped up in our spoilt, Starbucks
version of civilisation are just either very, very lucky,
or not really living at all.
Posted: 10 Feb 2008
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