I had been here only once before.  I was eight then.  All I have is a fragmented retention of how it was.

Rasmalai. Bangles. Umaid Bhawan. Blaring horns and hawkers. The fort.  Bright, animated aunties. Chintu and pyaaz ki kachodi.

Trivial but vibrant memories.

There is chaos. Everywhere. But a chaos so welcoming, it makes you want to be a part of it.

Exactly why I nodded when asked to attend my cousin’s wedding. Obviously, I made a negotiation with my parents – one extra day they would let me stay alone and explore the vibrance of the blue city, Jodhpur.

I drove down from the pinkness of Jaipur to the blueness of Jodhpur, savouring the coruscating hue the highway and broken roads offered. It was a seven-hour, stimulating ride.

Propitiously, it was the gangaur season and there were two days until the wedding, which meant I had enough time to attend the festival, look around and eat. Yes, eat. That’s exactly the first thing I did on reaching Jodhpur. Scrumptious pyaaz kachori from Samrat along with Jodhpur Misthan Bhandar’s chilled and creamy lassi made for a perfect welcome meal.

I stayed at our ancestral haveli in the old city of Jodhpur. The narrow lanes couldn’t accommodate a car, therefore it had to be parked outside the walled city and I had to walk up till my dwelling. This walk was the best warmup drill I could ask for, a catchy trailer before the film I would watch the next day. A beautiful pandemonium,  the streets were humming with life. Bangle-sellers, jalebiwallahs, embellished cows, carved doors, traditionally painted walls, howling children. Clutter. What a beautiful clutter!

Absorbing as much as I could, I reached the haveli. The housekeeper escorted me to my room, which was, believe me, splendid.  Wooden four-poster bed, old wooden ‘takhat’, my great-grandfather’s armchair and a rusted table fan on the ground. The broken window overlooked the Mehrangarh fort under the dawning sun. I didn’t ask for this much!

Tinkling bells of the temple adjacent to my room woke me up the next morning. Post my bajre ka daliya and chaas breakfast, I left for the Mehrangarh fort, which was not more than a 15-minute walk away. 

The massiveness of the fort and the history attached to it left me awestruck.  Burnished red stone marvel on a perpendicular cliff. I spent hours just relishing the gigantic beaut and the surrounding blue view, post which I also attended the aarti in the fort temple.

The gangaur procession started from the fort temple. Gangaur is a festival celebrated by all women, married and unmarried, in honour of ‘Gauri’. Bejewelled women, in their best red and pink  kurti kaanchlis, singing and dancing to Marwari folk songs infused energy in almost every passerby.  I gaped at them in awe for as long as I could, until they disappeared in the bylanes of the old city, leaving behind a fleeting charm of their music still playing in my ears.

To digest all of what I had witnessed since morning, I drank a chilled and tingy keri chaas outside the fort and decided to have the lunch that the cook at the haveli packed for me at Kaylana lake.

Kaylana lake is in the west of the city, a cool and silent oasis in the warm blue city. I drove till there. I spotted a comfortable bench and sat looking at the radar on the cliff across the lake. I had never seen a radar before, it was so fascinating. Also, I soon realized it was not only me eyeing my own food, but a clan of red faced monkeys too. I didn’t have the courage to have a food war and lose my tempting gatte ka pulao and pyaaz raita to them, and so after a while I went back to the car to have my meal.

While driving back to the haveli, I realized the tricky brilliance of the Indian cities and culture.

There is always an effortless balance amidst all the madness.

The chaos is always synchronized.