Today is Sunday and our one day off in a week. I only returned from Rajasthan on Friday morning, having left for Jhunjhunu, a Northern district bordering the neighbouring state of Haryana, on the Sunday before. I caught a late sleeper train, the Gari Braith (‘Chariot of the Poor’), from Kalupur station to Jaipur where I met a colleague and caught a cramped local bus heading north. My four-day stay in Jhunjhunu was so I could help the team there prepare for a meeting with our first major donor, a billionaire-businessman and head of a family-run pharmaceutical company. We put in long hours and I at least was exhausted when the meeting took place on the Wednesday evening.
Jhunjhunu district is hot, dry and largely flat. In the summer the temperature can reach 50 degrees. Outside the towns the land is sandy, semi-arid plain and dotted with monkey-puzzle-like trees, thorny shrubs and tall, slender grass. The effect of irrigation is visually stunning, turning a sandy field into a vibrant green crop. In places beech-like trees line the road and occasionally hairy goats can be seen rummaging around in the verge and in the alleyways between small habitations spaced along the highways. These are hamlets or isolated houses, where the concrete dwellings are painted white or beige, or unpainted altogether, and thatched huts stand nearby.
Jhunjhunu town itself is small, with three roads named One, Two and Three. These are wide, well surfaced and sandy at the edges. The nights are quiet apart from the bark and reply of dogs who have marked out their territory and guard it jealousy against interlopers. Walking down one of the streets at night the sky is clear and the stars bright and visible. During the bright day you can see a high mound, rocky and boulder-strewn, rise out of the plain in the distance. On the walls of the town are blue and white BSP posters, Mayawati’s chubby face smiling out from the top right-hand corner. Elsewhere are hammer and sickles, inexpertly daubed in red paint on low walls and sides of buildings. On the way out of town in an AC taxi on Thursday, I saw a slogan that read ‘Democracy, Freedom, Socialism. Long Live’.
Jhunjhunu district is hot, dry and largely flat. In the summer the temperature can reach 50 degrees. Outside the towns the land is sandy, semi-arid plain and dotted with monkey-puzzle-like trees, thorny shrubs and tall, slender grass. The effect of irrigation is visually stunning, turning a sandy field into a vibrant green crop. In places beech-like trees line the road and occasionally hairy goats can be seen rummaging around in the verge and in the alleyways between small habitations spaced along the highways. These are hamlets or isolated houses, where the concrete dwellings are painted white or beige, or unpainted altogether, and thatched huts stand nearby.
Jhunjhunu town itself is small, with three roads named One, Two and Three. These are wide, well surfaced and sandy at the edges. The nights are quiet apart from the bark and reply of dogs who have marked out their territory and guard it jealousy against interlopers. Walking down one of the streets at night the sky is clear and the stars bright and visible. During the bright day you can see a high mound, rocky and boulder-strewn, rise out of the plain in the distance. On the walls of the town are blue and white BSP posters, Mayawati’s chubby face smiling out from the top right-hand corner. Elsewhere are hammer and sickles, inexpertly daubed in red paint on low walls and sides of buildings. On the way out of town in an AC taxi on Thursday, I saw a slogan that read ‘Democracy, Freedom, Socialism. Long Live’.
1 comment:
Mr. Joe Whitaker, good to see your comments on small town Jhunjhunu, i want to know what project you are working on and how it relates to the people around.
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