Home in Jaipur

Back in Jaipur we had the wonderful privilege of staying the home of Rafiq, a relation of Peter's teacher, Sultan Khan, and we are treated like royal guests. (It's always good to reciprocate by bringing your personal sarangi player along to perform.) Perhaps its the holiday season or maybe its the way they work here, but one seems to be on any kind of regular work or school schedule so the time for waking, sleeping and eating varies with the flow of the day, usually running on the late side, since concerts and events often run late in the evening. Currently our days seem to be starting at around noon and ending at about 3am, which suits me just fine. I've heard about experiments where the visible cycle of the sun is removed and the body is allowed to free cycle and develop it's own sleep/wake pattern, which tends to be something like 28 or 30 hours, which would mean going to bed later every night. It feels like we do that here for a few days, then take an overnight plane, train or car trip somewhere, sleep in fits, then reset our clocks again. As I said, this would suit me just fine, except for the fact that no matter where we are, some kind of racket always seems to start early in the morning. In Mumbai, its the beeping traffic and banging construction. In Jaipur it was the deafening and ceaseless drumming. A few days later, at the home of Sultan Khan in Jodhpur, it's pretty quiet, but there's a temple nearby that starts blasting a PA system with music and chanting at 7:15 every morning, accompanied by someone banging on a large bell that sounds like a loud railroad crossing about a block away. Apparently, it's the call to morning prayer and it goes like that for exactly 15 minutes, with the bell ramping up to double-time for the last minute, just in case the first 14 minutes didn't sink in.