First Experience of Jodhpur

I was excited about my trip to Rajasthan, and there were so many reasons behind it. The first reason was that I needed a  break from my routine College life, I was excited as the train was going through Gujarat (my home state), I was excited for the new experiences, new things/places as for the first time I was going to Rajasthan. I never had any experience of picnic in my past school life, traveling in a group is not my cup of tea, as an Introvert I love to travel alone and therefore traveling in a large group is terrible for me but still as it was a very small group and I knew all of them very closely so it was not an issue for me, still I packed all necessary things like headphone, books, personal diary, mobile, and laptop to minimize unnecessary interactions.

So the journey didn't start on the expected way, we reached at the station just 2-3 minutes before the train departs. So after 17 hours of long journey, we reached 'Blue City' Jodhpur. As we came outside the station, many auto drivers run towards us for a ride but first, we wanted to click some pictures at the station so after clicking pictures we took an auto to reach the place we are expecting to stay. The ride was adventurous as we five people with heavy luggage seated in one auto. The auto driver was asking for an address so we gave him address but due to some misunderstanding we went on the wrong route but somehow we managed to reach our place.

After all formalities, we took some rest and then in the afternoon we planned to visit mines of Jodhpur, so Then we went to mines, we just looked at it from the highway, we didn't enter. So the basic information we got is that there are so many communities working as a mines laborer, the living conditions of this people is very bad, the impact of this mines on the health of the workers should be the primary concern of the Administration of this area as mining taking place in large numbers. Most of the times, the workers in mines are Adivasi and Dalits and our countries biggest misery is that the issues of Dalits and Adivasi never accepted as an issue, only the issues of dominant castes get attention and therefore the mine's workers are from many generations being discriminated. To break this vicious circle there is a need for effective administrative intervention.

After that, we planned to visit Umaid Bhawan Palace which is one of the world's largest private residences, The palace has 347 rooms and is the principal residence of the former Jodhpur royal family. A part of the palace is a museum. One of my friends wanted to visit Jodhpur high court as he was interested to do an ontological inquiry of the statue of Manu, but somehow it was not possible as we had limited time. So after visiting Umaid Bhawan Palace, we came to a famous Daal-Baati Restaurant, it was established in 1985, Daal-Baati was good.

So, Jodhpur is a Beautiful city and has so many tourist places, along with so many tasty Traditional dishes but another aspect which many people have missed to even notice is that in Jodhpur there are nearly 33,000 mines. The labors are coming from different places and face different types of discrimination based on caste, class, gender, ethnicity, region, and language. The working condition of the laborer is very bad, there is no safety for them in mines, their health is at risk there is no health facility, many of them are patients of Silicosis and Asbestosis. The life expectancy of the worker is very low, their children don't get any opportunity of education and they start working in the mines in very early ages. so when you search on the internet about Jodhpur you will definitely get a recommendation for many famous tourist places to visit, but there is another side of the city which is kept hidden and no one is talking about it.

Beliefs of Rajasthan and alternatives

As I belong to Bhilwara district in Rajasthan where I along with one of my classmate placed for the fieldwork. due to this, I know more about the culture and the lifestyle of people but this time I came here with new vision and objective to evaluate and analyze the conditions of mining labourers in the targeted area. We were in Jodhpur for two days where we introduced MLPC (Mining Labour Protection Campaign) an NGO which is working on the issues of mining labourers. There are many stone mines situated in Jodhpur, we visited some mines but there were no labourers on that day because there is a belief that on the occasion of Amavasya (15th day according to Hindu calendar) people do not work in the mining and other construction work. If we see any hotel or shop we found the similar name for them which is related to the ‘GOD’. every year in rainy season we can see more people walking on the road with a flag of a particular god, actually, people from all over Rajasthan, Gujarat & Madhya Pradesh goes to a religious place situated in Jaisalmer. There is a belief that in this month god visible for those who go to the place where the temple of that god is situated. We can say that Rajasthan is a religious state and the need for Social Scientists is more essential in order to aware people and build consciousness in order to make them free from the hollowed religion.

Be in touch with me, I will share more aspects of Rajasthan.

Neeraj Bunkar

Shift of Spaces: A Journey From Mumbai to Jodhpur

Our train departed on time and we were short of time. Adventurous. In fact, we touched the train just 2 minutes before it starts moving from Bandra Terminus at 1.30 pm. Still one of our group member (who was carrying our tickets) was not there with this, we were trying to call him but his phone was not being picked up. Somehow he picked the call and assured to meet us in the next month. That made the group cheer into joy but things didn't went very long when the group discovered that there was a shortage of money too. Only two of us were having cash in hand and managing a journey of more than 17 hours was something more troubling. Somehow going through our pockets and wallets we collected a specific amount and planned to spend it in an economical way. The passengers were keenly observing our activities but none of them asked anything. In my experience of five years of journey in trains, I have seen the impact of technology and its effect on long- lasting (sometimes frightening) conversations, discussions and dialogues with co-passengers. Nowadays, people are equipped with multiple gadgets and movies, songs etc put in that. Apart from it, social media led to radical changes have minimized the human behaviours limited to the smartphones. Similar things were going on in our bogie too. Though I was having continuous conversations with my classmates on the other hand, with other passengers I have some interaction only when we were sitting in their seats for having dinner.  

Throughout the journey, the interaction among our group was regarding the expected environment of the field. Since two of our colleagues were from Rajasthan so it becomes easier for us to get answer of several questions, like; What is the nature of marble industry, how it affects the health of mining labour and why there are certain imbalances created by the industry. Apart from it, we discussed the food, culture and tourist places of Rajasthan. As our discussion was going on we were in Gujrat and travelled more than 300 km. We had our snacks by having some local eatables. After that, we discussed something about our personal lives and what are the problems are there. We exchanged suggestions and discussed how those can be solved. After two more hours, we reached Ahmedabad and have our Dinner in the cheapest way possible. Then we directly went for our respective seats and take rest with a 'sounded' sleep.

The train was on time and arrived Jodhpur on time and the scene in the early morning was mesmerizing. Since for the first time I have travelled too far of  North-Western part of India with the imperatives built by the mainstream media especially through movies like shortage of water, sands etc. get destroyed in few minutes when I observed the landscape and its beauty. Finally, I realised that universalization only harms one's potentials to see realities differently and contextually. 

Hoping for more Contributions,

Mohammad Imran