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Gita and Sita pose impulsively, fingers swirling, feet tapping, eyes smiling. No lens could resist the frame. As the shutter closes, the sisters cease to be exotic gypsy dancers. "Das-panch dena," the models ask for their remuneration. A picture costs at least Rs 5 in the desert.

Dance of the desert

Don Sebastian
2007-03-08 19:37:20

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Gita and Sita pose impulsively, fingers swirling, feet tapping, eyes smiling. No lens could resist the frame. As the shutter closes, the sisters cease to be exotic gypsy dancers. "Das-panch dena," the models ask for their remuneration. A picture costs at least Rs 5 in the desert.

Pushkar fair, arguably the largest camel and cattle fair in Asia, is a marketplace of frames. On offer are beauty and valour, curiosity and colour, velocity and gore. It has everything the West asks of India: ascetics, gypsies, snake-charmers, camel riders, long moustaches.

Wherever you point the lens, Rajasthan is bright and colourful. Just wait for the right light to fall on the reds, the yellows, the oranges, the greens, the blacks...and you have a picture worth flaunting. And who wins the bargain? Of course not the emaciated girls who ask for Rs 5.

Every year, hordes of tourists from elsewhere in India and abroad descend on the mountain-locked valley called Pushkar. As the villagers from across Rajasthan tether their camels and horses on the fairground, tourists fix their telephoto lenses to their sophisticated cameras.

The annual fair grew on the fringes of a pilgrims' track. Pushkar boasts of the only temple dedicated to Brahma, the god of creation in Indian mythology. On Karthika Poornima, pilgrims from across the country and tourists from around the world assemble round the Pushkar Lake. Saffron-clad ascetics in a reverie, Westerners cleaning the ghats...all must have been there from the time of Creation.

On the culmination of the festival, pilgrims - Indians and aliens, urban and rural - occupy every inch of the vast ghats round the lake. A dip in the holy water will wash away all their sins. As dusk falls, tiny earthen lamps light up the lake, where swans frolic in the day. The lake was created when the god who rode a swan dropped a lotus to mark the ideal place for his ritualistic prayers.

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