We celebrated Ross’ 16th birthday at (Not Just) Jazz by the Bay, a restaurant belonging to my classmate Sanjay, along with fellow alumnae Yuti, Chinmayi, and Farah. The birthday cake was one of the restaurant’s famous gooey brownies, specially decorated for the occasion. Ross wore a garland of fresh jasmine (bought from a street vendor outside) and new earrings (a birthday present).
Afterwards we hired one of the horse carriages on Marine Drive to take us back to the Gordon House.
Having arrived late at night on the Shatabdi Express from Jaipur, Ross and I crashed at the Connaught Hotel. We were both tired and cranky the next morning, and I had a hard time convincing her that we had to check out of the hotel by noon, even though our night train to Mumbai wasn’t leaving til 5 pm.
Kishore, our driver from Uday Tours, suggested that we go hang out at theImperial Hotel, which turned out to be a good idea. The Imperial is gorgeous with old paintings and memorabilia of the Raj, and has several good restaurants, including the much-acclaimed and very fine Spice Route, where we had a pre-birthday lunch for Ross.
After lunch, my classmate Nitin met us for coffee and, in the course of a rambling conversation, gave me one of the finest compliments of my life. He told me, based on my writings, that I’m a very keen observer of India. Since Nitin is Deputy Press Secretary to India’s President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, I value his opinion in the matter. And he’s not given to idle compliments, so I was extremely flattered.
That night, on the Rajdhani Express, I had another great compliment: Ross asked me to tell her the story of my not-quite-completed fantasy novel, Ivaldi. The telling took a couple of hours (it’s a complicated story), and she listened raptly throughout. Now she wants me to finish it and get it published.
Various forms of transportation in Jaipur. Missing: horse tonga (carriage), horse cart, donkey cart, human-pulled cart.
Few shop signs in Jaipur are written in the Roman alphabet, even when they contain English words – all the words are transliterated into Hindi. This is not a rare phenomenon in India, but I’ve never seen it on this scale anywhere else. I amused myself filming a few and pronouncing the words as written. English subtitles provided for those who can’t understand (or hear, given the background noise) my accent.
In the evening we saw the Teej parade.
