What Colour is Jaipur?
What colour is any city, really
When Sawai Jai Singh II founded Jaipur, he dreamt of creating a city emulating Delhi’s Red Fort. Pink, we are told, is the generic colour of Indian hospitality. The sandstone and terracotta havelis speak of a place saturated with tales of the past. If storytelling had a colour, it would resemble a prism breaking out into the colours of Jaipur’s shops and stalls and alleys and ateliers. A riot, and no less.
Sights can smell of colours
At every turn and corner, we discover the multifarious faces of the city. Jaipur’s antiquated heart, best discovered on foot, comes alive through sensory delights. Colours are the first thing that greets you, and overrule the claustrophobia of the dingiest of galis. Here, sights melt with smells and leave behind traces of spicy tinctures. Wanderers caught in the dizzying rush of traders and shopkeepers resuscitate over cups of tandoori chai and pyaz ki kachori. Evenings heighten the salmon-hued walls of fabric stores that hoard everything from yardages to yesteryears. The past will creep up on you without warning, as will the ginger-garlic aroma of adjacent namkeen stalls, the frothing oil a delicious reminder of how colours are born through alchemy.
Walls contain a world of prisms
The old city echoes a world of artisanal flair. It is as if the city stands oblivious to the waves of change outside. To the insider, there is no repentance, as it often goes with the gaze of the insider. In Jaipur, shopkeepers and artisans and traders sit behind doorways that frame a universe of exotic patterns and design. Floral motifs in cerulean and mineral blue fill up the hollows of an almond wall. Creepers painted upon the walls of a metalsmith’s workshop in mistletoe green add sinuous sentiments to the otherwise dreary sound of a hammer at work. The walls are a prism of every conceivable colour. These decades-old houses transmit the colours of the gemstones in elaborate wall art that evoke the blessings of the cosmos. Symbols blend with carefully laid out brushstrokes in merlot red and muted henna. These colours assure you of a divine hand.
Hues and tones to allure and allude
Jaipur is a hub of skilled textile artists. For new age designers, the city is filled with opportunities and material abundance. Block printers who line the bazaars, dye artists who grind colours out of minerals, and miniature artists adorning the figurines of their artworks with the amalgamation of these hues.
Do memories lose their colours with time? If remembrance had a colour, would you paint it sepia?
Jaipur’s tryst with material culture is time-governed but without restrictions. The past is as easily summoned as hawkers from over-crowded tourist spots. Colours escape from the dyed fingernails of artists and lather onto wooden doors, sometimes chipped walls and desolate staircases. The fine ochre of an ancient building will turn into the gerua of temple walls and, quite as easily, dissipate into whitewashed nothingness inside a blue potter’s atelier. We are left intrigued by natural minerals, soil and silica that can produce hues vivid enough to paint your clothes a deep salmon or vivid ‘rani’ (magenta).
Jaipur’s art and culture repertoire is a timeless revelation of the fascinating role colours play when they come together in formidable combinations. Did medieval artists theorise colour play in aspiration of balance, order, and harmony in their creations? Were colours mixed and laid out in union to convey a hidden message? Or were colours used as per availability, leaving us to the task of derivative meaning-making as consumers and connoisseurs.
Cover Illustration by Shreya Parasrampuria
Photobook by Sayali Goyal