Word: rajasthan
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...details of their lives and customs are remarkable, and all Dalrymple has to do is let his voice recorder run. In Rajasthan, we learn, traditional singers, usually illiterate, can recite texts 626 pages long and, in the process, it is believed, cure sick cows and exorcise the possessed. Their illiteracy, Dalrymple explains, allows them to hold lines in their heads as readers never could. In a fire-lit cremation ground in Bengal, we see politicians, even communists, coming to a woman regarded as a witch to sacrifice goats in advance of an election. The woman, who lives among jackals...
...Razdan is old enough to remember what Lake Pichola used to look like. "With so many ghats [steps] and temples lining the lake, and buildings limited to single-story development, it was more beautiful even than along the Ganges in Benares," Razdan, a surgeon who lives in Udaipur, Rajasthan, says. "To see it now, I am weeping. That is the pain...
...million liters of raw sewage were dumped into the lakes each day. Now, he says, those numbers have been reduced by 60%. But the local government has made an impact too: a drainage system, built by Udaipur's Urban Improvement Trust (a district regulatory body) and the Rajasthan government's Public Health Engineering Department, now diverts sewage downstream, though a treatment plant has yet to be installed...
...area's huge tourist potential could also be part of a solution. In July, Udaipur earned the "world's best city" rating in a Travel & Leisure poll. Last year 1.2 million tourists visited the city; Rajasthan officials estimate tourism here jumped 10% last year. But when water levels drop so low that you can drive a jeep to the two hotels that are built in the middle of the lake - as they did as recently as July - so does the appeal of the destination. Deforestation around the lakes disrupts the flow of water, and waste dumping has caused "hot spots...
...makes up the "India Landscape," part of the British Museum's "Indian Summer," a five-month celebration of Indian culture. The exhibition's centerpiece is "Garden and Cosmos," a collection of 54 bold 17th and 19th century paintings from the courts of Jodhpur, in the modern-day state of Rajasthan. Never before seen in Europe, the pictures draw on Rajasthani artists' varied approaches to color and form as well as the miniature techniques of the Mughals. While some subjects are classic - scenes from the Ramayana, or maharajahs daintily sniffing roses in marble palaces - the most spectacular pieces attempt to capture...