Sands of time

Kalpana Lajmi recalls discovering rural Rajasthan almost as a hitchhiker while shooting for Rudaali. Her story moves from adventure to misadventure.
If there is one trip that is etched in my memory forever, it���s the one I made to Rajasthan,18 years ago. I was told by the NFDC (the National Film Development Corporation) when I proposed to make Rudaali and said I needed to do a recce of desert locations, that I couldn���t go by train or plane since they had no money.So I made my first trip to Rajasthan in a battere d Ambassador, accompanied by a drunken assistant and my art director Samir Chanda, and it was an adventure in the true sense of the word.
Lean, and really mean
Not only were we sent in a battered car, we were also given such a mean allowance that the money could only get us Z-grade restrooms to stay overnight (yes, that's what I'd like to call them). I went into one of the motel rooms once and saw stinking bedsheets, probably flooded with semen, and floors astir with cockroaches. After that I simply curled up on the car seat every night. And this went on for four nights!
Finally, on the fifth night, tired and dirty we reached a city, which the driver told me was Jaipur. We took his word for it and went in search of a hotel.
This time I was adamant about staying in a good hotel. At one hotel, going against the allowance, I paid a good amount for a suite and shared it with the two men. There, I bathed long enough to last me for the next two days.The next morning I got up to find we were at Jodhpur and not Jaipur. So I asked a local where I���d find a sandy location for my film. He told me that on one side, Bikaner was an 8-hour drive, on the other, Jaisalmer was a 9-hour drive. I flipped a coin, and got Jaisalmer.
Toss ka goss
So we set off on a nine-hour drive. Along the way, I saw poverty and human ways of dealing with it. The staple was bajre ki roti and mirchi ka saalan. Sometimes they had roti with a little gur. We too had the same food.
When we arrived at Jaisalmer, all the tiredness disappeared, I was so taken in by its beauty. There we found a little guest house to suit our budget. It was a lovely little place, but had only one room available. I refused to share a room again with the drunken assistant Govind (who was by now drinking battery oil from the car because he couldn���t find tharra anywhere). So he stayed in the dorm, while Samir and I shared a room again.
Queen-sized hospitality
I spent some very nice days there. The locals were very warm and really helped us all the way. I also met the maharani of Jaisalmer. She was very interested in my film. I told her the story and when she realised it was about the upliftment of widows, she even offered her palace for me to shoot in. I used her palace to show the houses of Raj Babbar and Amjad Khan in the film. There was a swing at the palace from where you could watch miles of yellow sands. It was beautiful!
Not so Simple
The next time, I returned to Jaisalmer with the film unit. This time we flew to Jodhpur, and then were revisited by a battered Ambassador again, which would take us to Jaisalmer. After travelling for a while, Dimple said that her sister Simple, who was accompanying her, had got a cut and needed a tetanus injection. There was no question of finding a good hospital or clinic anywhere. Finally, after much detour, we found a shabby-looking health centre. The doctor there barely heard us out before barking out instructions at Simple, ���Ulta soyiye, pyjama neeche keejiye��� and jabbed her on her bare bottom. We were done in two minutes flat!
Then on we went. Along the way, we discovered the intricacies of Rajasthani cuisine. Dimple was really interested and encouraged by her, we tried out all of them ��� mirchi fry, a combination of sev, gur and ghee.
The rustic route
Santosh Sivan was my cinematographer. He insisted on waking Dimple and me up at 4 am and go with him to check out the light quality. ���Let���s discover the world,��� he���d say. And the world we discovered was beautiful. Seeing Dimple without any make-up and the orange sunrise reflecting on her face, Santosh and I decided exactly how we���d shoot her. When we showed her young, she used no make-up, only lip gloss and kajal. Later, when we showed her ageing, we shot her in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, Simple designed the costumes for me. She would take me to the village and go into people���s homes and actually borrow widows��� clothes from them. She had them laundered and made Dimple wear those clothes. She also bought some fabric, found two tailors and set them to work on an advance payment of a bottle of rum each!
The villagers were really co-operative. The only thing that angered them was when we used tankers of water to show rain. They couldn���t understand this waste. And I remember an eight-year-old boy telling his mother in amazement that there was water falling from the sky. In his eight-year life, he had never seen rain.
P.S: I learnt a lot about real India from this trip. It wasn���t just the poverty, but the acceptance of this poverty that was surprising. The villagers hardly had any water, yet they kept their vessels polished with sand. No wonder I���ve never gone back to Jaisalmer again. I discovered it like a hitchhiker, and the memories are very special. I don���t think I want to go back and create any new memories there.