Octopussy

So Udaipur, city of Octopussy, yes thats right, just get the James Bond 007 (An old and tired looking Roger Moore) film Octopussy and you too can visit Udaipur, for over an hour of the film is set here, in the City, Lake and Monsoon Palaces, even the Octopussy boat is still here, moored just offshore, it is a corny film but hey the scenery here is superb.

Udaipur: City of dreams, floating lake palaces, gleaming whitewashed buildings on the shores of the magic (although of course polluted) ghat lake, Rajasthans largest palace with incredibly beautiful rooms, the spectacular sunsets across the Araveli ranges (the worlds oldest mountains!!!!!- seriously). The Mewar people who built the forts of Chittor and Udaipur claim to have the oldest undiluted royal lineage in the world.

Although i have been here for nearly a week i had little inclination to write, perhaps i thought that here the intensity of tourism may be inversely proportional to my inspiration, fortunately a good exploration of the local markets helped right the balance a little today, 3 rupee chai and one of the best ever, fresh ground spices!, and a good 45 rupee thali, with never-ending refills of delicious vegetarian curries, oh i love those places, i am really enjoying the organic process and sensations of eating with ones hands (right mainly), conducive to appreciation of food i think, tip the small curry bowls into the rice and mix with fingers, then tear the chappati and soak up curry and yummo!, use 3 fingers as spoon for the rice mix.......

6.30 am awoken by mindblowing psychedelic jazz trumpeting and ultraloud amplified feedback-distorted Hindi vocals, mixed with crazy indo drumming and accompanying tuba and rhythm section outside my guesthouse.....the trumpeter is amazing, like Chet Baker on acid....they play for 1/2 an hour, then peace again, and the sound of laundry being thwacked on the ghat steps returns....i later see it was all just a rehearsal for the next evenings wedding through our local streets, i guess they had to rehearse before work...

Next day a large Hindi festival 100000 villagers parade through the city streets of Udaipur, elephants and camels, but mainly lots of local folk shouting i am glad to be Hindu, they are fed by a donated meal from city folk in a local park

" The Inheritance of Loss" - faded a little at the end, i think loss both for the culture one comes from when it is ravaged by colonialism, and for that which one can never be accepted into fully as immigrant, is a common theme for many Indian writers...

A more remarkable book is "The Hospital by the River" by Dr Catherine Hamlin, an Aussie doctor from an age gone by, trained pre WW2, pre general anaesthetics, she spent half her life in Ethiopia helping women there. Ethiopia - post Italian independance before the Erytrea war and the droughts/famines/regimes of the '70's and '80's, she frequented circles of the likes of Sylvia Pankhurst, Emilia's daughter - the famous suffragette, and was close to Emperor Haile Selassie (King of kings, Lion of Babylon, who was originally named Ras Tafari...now i understand where the whole thing comes from), and the whole Ethiopian aristocracy- i think she delivered most of their babies, now all executed or in exile, and met many famous and ground breaking surgeons and doctors of the 1940's and 50's.
It is a story of the terrible heartbreak of the life of Ethiopian women when their childbirth goes wrong, and the baby dies "in utero" and what happens to them, (thousands of them) from there in....she kept an immaculate diary of all her life and despite her old fashionness, being an old fashioned Christian and ardent royalist which does occasionally come through in her personal opinions in the book- she portraits the years of life their in vivid detail and it must have been an incredible time and country to be in before Ethiopia and Africa in general went to Hell...i guess i dont feel sqeemish at the fairly blunt descriptions of some of the medical disasters she had to deal with, but i doubt i could have coped with such endless tragedy as she did, and there are many parts in which sadness just pours off the page both for a lost Age and for the women there.... British stiff upper lip may have been an advantage for her i think.Highly recommended, deeply affecting, only published in 2001.