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Rabari Women [contd]

There were three walking up and down the short market street buying up things as if for an expedition.

Grocery, buckets, pans, kerosene, potato, onion, tools... Soon they were haggling with a transport driver before they hired him.

I recognised them from my bookish learning: they were Rabaris from north-west India. What are they doing here?

The slight, tea-shop owner with a salacious disposition offered: "Oh, they are bold women from Rajasthan. They fear no one, not even men! Our government gives them a lot of money to rear a rare breed of sheep up in the hills. They come down now and then for shopping." And, he added with admiration, "They are rich!"

I never found out the real story, not even from Royina Grewal's "Sacred Virgin", a fine guide though it is, to life on the banks of the Narmada.

They were certainly very far from home'. Practically from across the breadth of India.

One never realises how lives and livelihoods are inventively put together in India. It is never obvious from the cities and is no clearer when seen at close quarters. Nomads, migrants, adventurers, hopers and micro-entrepreneurs are criss-crossing this vast land, fuelling the economy. India is a huge engine stoked by little known people. I saw more Rabari women when I returned to Pendra Road about a week later.

It was a dark evening on the verge of a storm. I had a few more hours before my train arrived. I sat in a restaurant, whose owner contracted to serve me beer if I ate a meal there. Even as the beer arrived, he switched off most lights. It was a wide open small-shop really, staring into the bazaar. "Police", he said. "I must be careful."

Four Rabari women walked into the darkened chow-shop. Not the ones I had seen before. This was another group. One, an achingly beautiful young woman, with glowing brown skin and light eyes made more alluring by fire light.

They sat across the narrow aisle, eating a simple meal, the young beauty facing me. I caught her eye, one dazzling moment,

and smiled a greeting. She, for a second, seemed inclined to respond. But then I heard a hissed instruction from her elder: "Don't talk to him!", and the girl lowered her eyes!

"Right they are!", I told myself in a euphoric mood. After all, the hard-working Rabaris gain nothing fraternising with an idling city guy - one of those confused men who didn't know where he belonged; and wouldn't know how to deal with a woman who knew where she did.

Basque on a bike

...riding free and silent

Many Indians presume all westerners to be wealthy or incapable of handling India's difficult spaces or impatient with its unpredictability. Yet, between the westerners who never venture beyond the comfort zones of expensive hotels, and the dispossessed of the West, that descends to an entirely different world of comfort, is a steady stream of travellers from everywhere in the world drawn to middle India.

Patxi Axpe is one such! I met him in Jodhpur and we visited several Bishnoi villages, together.   [NEXT PAGE]