the rescued Sita to Ayodhya. Here the epic tale is performed for ten nights running.12 Devotional songs (bhajans) to Ramdevji are performed on the bright second of every lunar month (when the waxing moon is just a sliver).13 Every major procession taken out in Jahazpur, whether Hindu, Jain, Muslim, or secular (as well as most minor ones, and there are plenty of them), will at some point take a halt and congregate for a time at the bus stand—whether processing from an interior site to the water reservoir or from an outlying shrine passing into the market through Royal Gate (see Chapter 4).14
Figure 7. Vegetable market at bus stand showing Satya Narayan temple in background.
The Satya Narayan temple established by the Khatik community in the mid-1980s is perhaps the most potently evocative structure at Jahazpur bus stand, signaling as it does the shifts of changing times and presiding in certain ways over economic developments in Jahazpur as much as religious ones. The Khatiks traded in live animals destined to be butchered and sometimes were butchers; they have SC status. As I understand it (although the timing is approximate), the Khatiks acquired the land where the Satya Narayan temple stands, as well as adjacent property now housing lucrative shops, sometime in the 1970s, when they had used their block voting power to support a politician who, when successful, rewarded them with this land. At that time, of course, the land had less commercial value than it does today. It did not take long for the Khatik community to begin their transformative actions, sacred and secular, devotional and commercial—the establishment of the Satya Narayan temple and of the vegetable auction and associated market (Gold 2016).
Sometimes urban Jahazpur would surprise me by keeping a tradition I had imagined to be wholly rural. This could happen even at the bus stand, with its urban air uniting globalized commerce with village-bound transport. On the day of Makar Samkrant—the winter solstice according to the Hindu lunar calendar, which comes in early January—there are a number of regional traditions. The best known among these is kite flying, which happens all over North India and Pakistan. In rural Rajasthan, however, Samkrant is memorably a day on which individuals purchase bundles of fodder and spread it out for the cattle. This is said to provide merit to the donor. To me it had seemed a sweet and wholly rustic notion: giving cows a day off the hard work of grazing and letting them feast lazily. The beneficiaries of this tradition would be any settlement’s collective herd, so the donor of fodder does not favor their own animals even though theirs might be among the herd, and many people who do not own livestock still donate fodder. In Ghatiyali village, this pampering of skinny livestock takes place on the banks of the water reservoir, rather far from all habitations, a purely pastoral landscape.
I was unprepared on Samkrant morning to encounter urban vendors at Jahazpur bus stand throwing down heaps of carrots for the ill-behaved cows that hang around here. This surprised me, especially as on ordinary days these indolent, pesky creatures, well aware of their sacred status, or so it seems, were often roundly cursed and smacked smartly on the rump or even on the head (though never actually beaten) for helping themselves, uninvited, to some choice, ill-guarded produce. Vendors keep sticks handy expressly for this purpose. But on Makar Samkrant at Jahazpur bus stand, cows feasted on carrots willingly donated. I note this here not only for its being a sign of rural-urban synthesis but because it offers a lesson about change.
The bus stand has not always been the bus stand. Before 1978, when that transformation took place, this site I know as Jahazpur bus stand was, it seems, the site where every morning the herd of cows and buffalo owned by town residents assembled to be taken to graze by a collectively employed herdsman. In villages such as Ghatiyali this gathering place is exactly the spot where people donate fodder on Makar Samkrant. In Jahazpur, we may thus assume that cows have a historically, spatially, and ritually chartered right to be fed just here. Carrots, abundant at this season, are more accessible than fodder to vegetable vendors in town—businesspeople who value the idea of acquiring religious merit.
For those living inside the walls, it would be Royal Gate from which they would most commonly emerge to set forth on many kinds of errands to places near and distant. Royal Gate was my gate, too, through which I both approached and departed the qasba. When I turned homeward I would walk through the bus stand, down Santosh Nagar Road, past the fresh squeezed juice stand (also a Khatik innovation), the subdistrict offices, the hospital, the post office, the idgah, the graveyard, all the way to Santosh Nagar’s very last side street where I lived.
Delhi Gate and Nau Chauk: Historical Passages
Only one store among dozens of small grocery or provision shops carried large jars of Nescafé, which I personally consumed in shocking amounts. Dan and I discovered this store at the far end of the market, not far from Delhi Gate. At first it surprised me that such a well-stocked store would be at what I assumed was the lesser end of the bazaar. But it all depends on your position, perspective, and moment in history. A town’s spatial orientations shift and change not only over time but according to where one stands. Picture the qasba opening up inwardly from Delhi Gate, not Royal Gate. For some who live at that end of town, most probably it still does. In Jahazpur’s not-so-remote past, Delhi Gate was definitely not the tail of the market.
Suresh Sindhi gave a very general account of the shift in orientations of Jahazpur’s commercial and transportation life. He told us, “The people didn’t used even to come to the Royal Gate, because where the bus stand is now was jungle, and no one came there; besides that, in the evening the gate was closed. The bus stand used to be at Nau Chauk.” Just outside of Delhi Gate is the rectangular fenced clearing known as Nau Chauk. Nau chauk means “nine squares” or “nine markets” or perhaps “nine corners.” Today the space called Nau Chauk is a small park surrounded by shops. It is worth looking further into the history of this space, which is Jahazpur’s only town square. Once it was adjacent to almost all the local government offices. Once it was connected with the royal residences inside the walls. Once Nau Chauk, and not the current bus stand, was the site of the annual Ram Lila.
Delhi Gate offers passage to a complicated history of town rule, and its passage denotes shifting orientations of both power and place. Try to picture Jahazpur in an earlier era: imagine today’s bus stand nonexistent. Also nonexistent were the fruit market, the Satya Narayan temple, and Santosh Nagar colony. The road south from the bus stand to Santosh Nagar, which today is flanked with government offices and the small businesses that grow up around them, at that time led only to the Muslim graveyard, the adjoining idgah, and the jungle with its common-property grazing ground. All the town’s administrative functions were in and around Nau Chauk. Today only the Patwari (land revenue office), the Cooperative Bank, and a few other minor offices remain in the Nau Chauk vicinity.15
In 2010–11, the vegetable sellers who squatted on the periphery of Nau Chauk displayed notably less attractive produce than those who stood proudly behind proper (if movable) stalls at the bus stand. Nau Chauk itself was a far quieter place than the bus stand with far fewer vehicles. However, there are still some quality stores ranged around Nau Chauk, including an excellent “fancy” store favored by Bhoju’s daughters.
Our passage through Bindi Gate will lead us to some social structural aspects of qasba life; here I set Jahazpur town in broader currents of Rajasthan histories. In the flat lands of Jahazpur are several Hindu temples that town citizens declare to be “very old.” Inside the walls is Juna Char Bhuja (“ancient Four-Arms,” that is, Vishnu); outside are Barah Devra (“Twelve Temples”) beyond Hanuman Gate; and Narsinghdwara (“Door of the Man-Lion,” again an avatar of Vishnu) on the banks of the Nagdi River. I have heard all of these attributed to the eleventh or twelfth centuries, but I have no documentation of their age. There is significant archaeological evidence of an ancient Jain presence in this region, dating to a period well before the Mughuls (Chattopadhyaya 1994:47; Sethia 2003:25; see also Chapter 5).
