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Nicole's
Travelogues and Budget Travel Tips..
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JAIPUR (CONT.), INDIAAfter walking a bit through the market area, we wound our way to Hawa Mahal. Hawa Mahal, or the "Palace of Winds", is a palace in Jaipur, India. It was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh, and designed by Lal Chand Usta. It forms part of the City Palace and extends the Zenana or women's chambers, the chambers of the harem. Its original intention was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen.
Hawa Mahal has five stories and is constructed of red and pink sandstone, highlighted with white quick lime. The side facing the street outside the palace complex has 953 small windows, and the breeze (hawa) which circulates through these windows gives the palace its name, and keeps it cool even in hot months. The entrance opens onto a courtyard with a double-storied building on three sides, and one on the eastern wing with three more stories, which is just one room wide. There are no stairs to reach the upper floors, only ramps.
The first one was Mother Theresa's Home where we met with a nun who showed us around and talked about her experience with Sisters of Mercy. It was REALLY interesting. They serve about 200 men and women at a time and have 7 nuns at the home in Jaipur. I think it was the cleanest place I've been to in India (seeing as though I haven't gone to any posh hotels)! When we visited the women's dorm, the women were so friendly and had huge smiles and shook our hands. None of them spoke English and my Hindi couldn't get us through a conversation, so we didn't stay long. We, then went back downstairs to speak with another nun about her work there. She had just come to Jaipur 5 months prior from the Mother Theresa home in Delhi. We, then, went to visit the Ladli Program. It served 70 girls (homeless and from brothels) teaching them math and english and how to make their own jewelry. It was a great program which was funded by UNICEF, the government, and private donors. The girls set up their own bank accounts and get to keep 100% of the money they earn selling their jewelry. I bought 2 necklaces for myself and some earings for mom. Unfortunately the day we went was Ganeshes birthday so most girls had gone to the celebration but we did get to talk to a few girls, the teacher, and the director. The program helped the girls build their self-esteem and get off the street (they also had a boarding program for homeless and a transitional program for brothel).
The 90 rupee movie was CORNY (from what we could tell since it was in Hindi) but entertaining. One of the main actors, Abhishek Bachchan (who is the real-life son of the other actor in the movie - Amitabh Bachchan) was delicious!!! The Indian crowd was into it almost as much as black folks at the theater! |
Bollywood is the informal name given to the popular Mumbai-based Hindi-Urdu language film industry in India. The term is sometimes used incorrectly to refer to the whole of Indian cinema. The name is a combination of Bombay, the English name for Mumbai, and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. Though some purists deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it seems likely to persist and now has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. Bollywood and the other major cinematic hubs (Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada) constitute the broader Indian film industry, whose output is the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced and in number of tickets sold. Bollywood is also commonly referred to as "Hindi cinema", even though Hindustani, the substratum common to both Hindi and Urdu, might be more accurate. The use of poetic Urdu words is fairly common. The connection between Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani is an extremely contentious matter and is discussed at length in the linked articles relating specifically to the languages. There has been a growing presence of English in dialogues and songs as well. It is not uncommon to see movies which feature dialogues with English words and phrases, even whole sentences. A few movies are also made in two or even three languages (either using subtitles, or several soundtracks)
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Jaipur is a large, hectic city like Delhi. Actually, 'hectic' is putting it lightly. It is part of the Golden Triangle (Delhi - Agra - Jaipur), the tourist mecca route. Tons of tourists encourages extremely aggressive touts, shop owners, and tuktuk drivers! After an afternoon walking around, I wished I had stayed in Pushkar longer and skipped Jaipur all together.So we skipped going to the fort and city palace and went in search of more meaningful sites. We spent the day visiting two nonprofits. 
At 6pm, we went to the Raj Mandir movie theater to check out a Bollywood movie. We saw the movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. It was a 3 hour event with an intermission half-way through. 
