The Winter Sun, Jaipur!

Have you ever left a city, turned around, and in your head looked at it and said, I’ll come back?

I have, old habits die hard, they say. And believe you me, the number of places I have looked back at and promised to see again, I have. While I was still growing up cotton balled, steering through the snowball effect of being the only and the youngest girl child in my family, there was love (a hell lot of it) and the superpower of never getting ‘no’ as an answer (Sad, I know!). Whatever!

This was my erstwhile adventure of stories, tales, superstitions, and of course casual mental braiding into the mold of a perfect woman by my mother. So now that you have a reference point, my mom is the predominant reason for most of my beliefs (Even if I do not agree with them, I kind of always end up experiencing them, I do not even know how. Moms, I tell you).

So, my mother used to tell me every time we traveled, do not turn around or you will have to come back, and I would exasperate and say -what are you saying, I am turning around! Is this a superstition I love or what (Very animatedly, I am speaking this out loud while typing, you would believe me if you knew me personally)?

Jaipur! I have strange but soft memories of this place. My reasons to travel have changed but not the love for this dusky, very raw city that tries to add pink to practically everything. I mean what is it! But it’s nice. It was a wedding, for the first time I witnessed a multicultural union of two very different backgrounds, and the fact how beautifully hypocritical and sweet can we be at the same time to people we don’t know but love to judge.

I would want to see it on 70mm maybe with a black coffee and a walnut muffin (I’m not a coke and popcorn person, oh how I hate it). From one fort to another, from one place to another, from Bar Palladio to basic flatbread meals -I don’t know if there is anything I wouldn’t want to see again. I loved the winter sun of this city (and in general ,too), who wouldn’t.

I have witnessed sunsets of several cities, from mountains, palaces, ruins, camps, and the most luxurious hotels around the world, not one has matched what I have experienced here, to date (I’m yet to travel to a lot of places, can’t promise for the future). The sun in this city sets in its hue of quintessential orange and pinks, as stunning as the bride’s face. It is prepossessing!

So, when I left this time, did I turn around? Now that’s a story for another time!