Hampi

It's a funny name for a place, but it sounds all right to an Indian.

This is not about Hampi- you can find out everything you want on the internet. This is about that odd experience which isn't odd per se, but makes you think. Anyone who loves to travel knows what I mean.

I met a strange woman in my travel to this alfresco museum of the world, this natural heritage site of everyone's most careful preservation - she was from Rajasthan, which is way up north of Hampi. She was a gypsy, trying to sell anklets for 800 bucks to passers by, especially the white (and mostly stoned) ones. I went closer and picked one up (it was lovely - with shells and beads running along its length) and I asked her how much. She said 30 bucks. I exclaimed, you were just yelling 800! And she said, you are from where I am, you see right through me.

And there began again the old introspection of life and how we're better or worse off though we all rise from the same ashes. Do we really? How has a lady from the deserts of Rajasthan, which is fast gaining its repute as a tourist destination, found her way to a little heritage village in South India, and made a living from rings and bells? Her childhood was spent in the scorching sun, learning to spin and sew and count money before she could write her name (if she could write at all); and mine was in the shelter of a home and school where the most menial task I ever performed was setting the table, grudgingly so.

And no, I was never out in the sun for longer than necessary - if I had, I'd have gone as brown as this wrinkled old woman...who was by now, tying a third anklet on me and saying how lovely it looked on my fair skin - something that must have been demanded of her by society that she couldn't give. North India's prejudice for fair people is so deep-rooted that it reflects even in my family, which claims to hold the torch of liberalism. It does, in so many ways, but not all. The ones who are actually liberal don't make a fuss about it because their actions speak louder.

I thought more than I saw in Hampi, and fell in love with Paulo Coelho again. Reading his book just added to the romance of this forgotten kingdom.

I bought 7 pairs of anklets from her.