Jaipur and Udaipur, October 2009

It is October 17th and after a night at a restored palace, we are in a lovely little hotel in Jaipur. Lucky as it was for us that day,  we were shopping in a very private and upscale area of town, led there for a store that was known to be a good one;  we walked and walked and somehow found a private house that had a sign on it; textiles and jewelry, call for appt. We knocked at the door and a lovely young woman came in who had very little time as she was on her way out of town on a business trip. She had beautiful wooden furniture and slowly I made my way to the few pieces of jewelry she had under the glass. Here comes my question: "Do you have any 'purani' deity pendants; that is old, from the village?" And she pulled out some prizes for me. But they were expensive. I purchased a few that I couldn't resist and she told me 'Don't sell these too cheaply, they are very valuable. They are real gold, and very old." I was in bliss to find these but I had wished I had found them in the village instead of the store.

The next day we hugged elephants, walked and walked everywhere and shopped our butts off as our rickshaw driver took us to all the places that would pay him if we bought. So tired, we were ready to be done for the day and my phone rings.. it's my gem guy who I've purchased gems from a few times. One of my main goals was to go see his factory and get his gems from him more cheaply, rare and unusual ones, I thought.  This photo is me in Jaipur at his house after about 4 hours.  I am throwing up my hands in frustration! I ended up spending all those hours there for him to tell me to just make the order online! He showed me the same stuff you see anywhere, and there is not factory, just his house with his kids oogling at us. After picking out a few and having it add up to more than I even paid from the US, he said 'go online and just make the order like I've done from home! Why did I need to go to Jaipur, I was pounding my head! Eileen shot this photo as I was ready to shoot him.... so all we could do after that was to try to find some elephants to hug. And we did.

But, alas, it was Udaipur that made my jewelry journey all ok. I found a few good pieces of jewelry in Jaipur, but really not as much as I had thought. The fabulous paisley sterling bracelet was from a guy who our rickshaw driver took us to. Inside was a man who seemed to be interested in everything else other than jewelry. Here I was eager to buy and all he could do was tell me he knew my future and could heal me and wanted to see me in the back room to tell me all about it. After all, he said, he has cured so many people and hundreds of them come to his seminars all the time. Really, I just wanted that beautiful paisley bracelet and nothing else in the store. But he made me listen to his ramblings and told me his cure for me was in a gemstone and he threw it out at me on the table. I didn't pick it up, I just looked at it. Then I got up and walked away. I gave the other assistant in the store the money for the bracelet and asked the driver to take me to another place. There I found another few 'purani' pendants, my true love. But it would be later  Udaipur in a tiny, rundown dusty little two room store with swords and knives in the window that I struck 'gold'. How many little jewelry places had I stuck my head into asking if they had any 'purani' (old village) deity pendants and over and over and over the answer was 'oh yes' to go in and find nothing. A youngish man in the store said the same thing, 'yes, maybe I do' and I waited again, knowing if he did have anything it would be worthless. He was gone in the back room it seemed for hours, but it was really about 10 minutes. He came walking up to me in the front room with an old rickety drawer. He said, "I have some pendants in here" and I looked down to see hundreds of little dusty old squares and circles in metals. Little by little, he and I both sorted through them and that day I left with a whole bag of the most wonderful deities of all kinds in both silver and gold, and old gold. Some of them were reddened by the pujari's red tilak's as they were deep in worship. And they had been lying in that drawer for years, so I bundled up the good ones and asked for a 'bulk' price. I was in heaven!

Me in Udaipur