Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hostilities between states today, particularly over issues of language
and education, issues at the core of all nationalism.
Hovering over us, but not joining us - a host's duty, not servility
- Hoppy made another valiant effort to change the subject.
'My ancestors fought here against the Turks,' he announced.
'Hundreds of years ago. Perhaps on this very spot.' He looked around
to see if this had grabbed our attention. 'You know,' he continued
more enthusiastically, 'they ate
amal
- opium - before going into
battle, so they would not feel their wounds.'
I could relate to that.
'No,' Hoppy went on, assuming he hadn't been believed. 'It's
true. There are stories of Rajput warriors fighting on for over half
an hour after their heads had been cut off . . .'
'We got junkies like that in New York,' Bentley said.
'No, no,' Hoppy protested. 'It is true. They felt nothing, and their
bodies would just keep fighting.'
Opium, he told us, was still very much part of traditional life
around Jaisalmer, and in ways one found hard to compare with the
use of illegal drugs in the West. It was the custom, for example, to
present a ball of opium to every guest at a wedding.
'No wonder your weddings here last so long.'
Perhaps thinking he had gone too far in presenting his people as
a bunch of dope fiends, Hoppy tried to backtrack, saying these
customs were really only practised now by village people. This was
familiar to me. Village people in India are blamed for everything
the Western sensibilities running New Delhi cannot condone or stop.
I observed the dreamy patience of our cameleers and said nothing.
Unlike most Indians, these Rajputs would not talk much about
religion. It was far less a part of their lives than seemed plausible. I
wondered aloud why this might be.
'Perhaps here opium is the opiate of the people,' Bentley
whispered. No one offered any other explanation. Hoppy muttered
about 'modern times,' and Girdhar coyly said something to do with
what a man had in his heart. The real answer, I suspect, lay in the
inextricable link that had once existed between the raja, his army,
and the religion both fought for. The great Hindu epics concern
themselves almost exclusively with this same trinity. They even make
it seem the very core of the religion itself, to the point that, for warrior
