Rickshaws in Gujarat have been largely upgraded since I last visited - the engines run quietly and cleanly on compressed natural gas. However, a few of the old-style rickshaws remain - they scoot along making a distressing smell (it's like they run on kerosene) and an odd putt-putt noise as they move along.
If it has wheels, it's used to move goods. This old rickshaw has been converted for use as a truck to deliver bread.
Bicycles are also a common mode of transporting goods - I saw quite a few of these bicycles with a large tray and axle on the back. Note the complete lack of gears - I saw quite a few riders sweating and pedaling with difficult strokes on uneven, bumpy roads with a huge load of cargo on the back.
Complex, beautiful modes of dress were no obstacle for determined bicycle riders in Rajkot.
Scooters and motorbikes seemed to be, by far, the most common mode of transport on Rajkot. You'd see as many scooters with two or more riders as you did with one rider; again, they seemed to be yet another way of getting people and goods around. The sheer volume of them and their sooty exhausts let me to wonder if they were a big part of the pollution problem in the area.
Honda Heroes were the most common type of motorbike that I saw over there. The roads were chaotic (traffic driving in both directions on a one-way road, general multi-way chaos when it came to roundabouts) but, in the end, accidents were few and there was a bizarre sort of logic to it. The driving algorithm went like this:
1. Start the vehicle, honk your horn. 2. Head in the direction of where you want to go (doesn't matter if you're moving against the direction of traffic). If there is someone where you want to be, honk your horn. 3. If there is someone bigger than you, give way.
It's completely insane, but it seemed to work even with the insane combination of pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws, cars, trucks and cows on the road.
There are plenty of family-carrying motorbikes out on the highways.
As I mentioned previously, cows are an extremely common sight in Rajkot. They're an ancient part of the system here, and aside from blocking traffic they really are used to produce milk. Secondarily they also consume refuse, which frequently seems to be liberally thrown out into the street.
The brightly coloured house opposite my grandmothers place.
There are occasions where, wandering around, you can almost imagine that you've stepped back a hundred years in time.
I'd occasionally stumble across temples - some stood on their own, some nestled in laneways. Of these, some were lavishly decorated - sparkling clean and strewn with flowers amongst the surrounding grime. I'm not sure, however, how to feel about this - overseas, many of organisations will ask for donations to build temples, and while they are beautiful I'm reliably informed that they don't really give back to the surrounding community. I could chalk it down to just another example of the gap between rich and poor in India but there's something insipid about using religion as a front for accumulating wealth.
This is the interior of my grandmothers place - it's a small, square courtyard that's open to the air that's surrounded on three sides by rooms. It has three levels; the top one is the roof and the water tank. The middle floor became unsafe for living in after the earthquake in 2003; you might also note the yellow stripes painted on the step edges - my uncle, who visits often, is a safety engineer in New York.
This is the exterior of my uncles place in Ahmedabad, the state capital of Gujarat, which we visited in the couple of days of the trip. The small houses like my grandmothers place are long gone, replaced by high rises and tall apartment blocks.
There are parts of Ahmedabad that are quite wealthy - investment and just general economic development means that it's a fast-growing part of the world. There are shopping malls there that, when inside, are indistinguishable from malls in the rest of the world. The only giveaway to indicate that you're not in the western world are the shop assistants that constantly hover inches away from wherever you are. While the wealth is great for those who have it, there's also a certain blandness to it - local flavour is gradually being replaced by what seems to me to be a generic sameness.
One way to pass the time in Rajkot was to levitate objects using telekenisis. It's not as easy as it looks.
Rajkot is a city of 1.5 million people, having rapidly expanded in the recent past. I remember lying on the rooftop of my grandmothers place and sleeping out under a blanket of stars; nowadays, it's difficult to see more than a few points of light on a clear night due to the haze and pollution that covers the city. The city is one of the world leaders in manufacturing diesel pumps, but the success has come at a high environmental price.
The Aji dam collects water from the river and supplies Rajkot; poor planning, however, means that some parts of the city (notably the large quarter where my grandmothers place is) sits above the level of the dam. As such, after industry has taken its (fairly hefty) share of the water, there isn't much left for residents in these areas. The dam is about as full as it's ever been - the drought has been broken here for several years and heavy rains means that the dam is nearly overflowing.
In this part of town, water runs for 20 minutes a day. When the water is running an electric pump runs the water up to a storage tank on the roof - a fixed amount that is carefully used during the course of the day. If the pump is out or if the water runs at another time of day, the water is lifted out using buckets from the small well in the house where it collects for pumping. This picture shows my awesome cousin, Jagrut, doing just that.
Rajkot is an industrial town; near my grandmothers place, there are a few motorcycle repair shops just like this one. Often it's too hot to work during the day, so a good chunk of the work gets done after the sun has set.
Stray dogs are sometimes looked after by local shopkeepers.
The local bazaar sells fresh produce; it's a rickety old building with high ceilings and it stays cool during the day. My mum went along to get a few vegetables and I snuck about unsuccessfully, noticed at every turn.
Gujarat state is one of the world's centres for textiles - a lot of cotton is grown here, and much of the chemical industry needed to dye the fabrics is also well established. Bright, vibrant textiles are a staple here, and are easily and cheaply available.
This guy: rolling tobacco in his palms.
The market district in Rajkot seem to consist entirely of narrow laneways, light filtering down between three-story buildings and the rats nest of wiring that seems to accumulate on every street corner.
Archways and ancient doors hint at the remains of the old city, which is being (very gradually) replaced by neon shop fronts.
I stayed in a poor part of Rajkot, far removed from the spectacular success and riches of other part of the country. There are impressive stories of runaway success and prosperity in India, but this isn't one of them. Here in the industrial heart of Rajkot, water runs for twenty minutes a day, and there are parts of town where closed sewers have only been recently introduced. It's polluted, its noisy and at times overwhelmingly difficult to comprehend.
Despite the obvious difficulties, there's this relentless sense of pride and dignity. Across the road from my grandmothers place, every day I'd see a group of kids playing outside in the street. Their hands and feet would end up covered in grime, but setting out they'd always be neat, hair combed, faces washed and clothes pressed.
This is all far removed from the reality that I'm used to. When dinnertime comes around, parents weren't asking kids to peel themselves away from the television - they had to be recalled from wherever it was they were playing outside to come in and eat; a sort of fifty year old inversion on the way of life I'm used to. There was a simple joy to the way they interaced that I sometimes think is missing from the world I commonly live in.
Kite-flying is a common activity for kids; from the rooftops you can often see kites hovering over the city or tangled up in power lines.
I didn't think it would still be the case, but a camera seemed to be a cause for genuine excitement for some kids. At one point I was just watching general goings on in front of my grandmothers place when the group of kids playing outside spotted the camera, and there was a mad scramble to get in front of it. Whenever I'd be able to get one framed on their own, they'd sometimes have an awesome, rigid camera pose - not unlike this fellow just here.
Cows are still a common sight in towns in India. They're considered still sacred; if cow decides to park itself in the middle of the road, traffic will cheerfully route itself around it. They're also the garbage disposal for parts of the city; often they'll cheerfully eat up rubbish thrown out of windows.
In Rajkot it wasn't unusual to see kids working during the day. Here a young chai-wallah is bringing tea to shopkeepers.
