Except as noted, all images copyrighted by and should be attributed to E B Hawley.
I had become many eons ago a traveling literary gnome, inquisitive about places I had and had not visited,
walking the same paths of peoples from the past, through places once grand and still grand,
photographing images that now show me the places about which I still dream . . .

Monday, January 12, 2009

Gnome's Palace Life: Chapter One, The Sniffles

Karl stated facetiously that it is now a tradition for one of his fellow travelers to remain at the Rambagh Palace while recovering from illness. Corky was here a few years ago with bronchitis, and now I am here this week with a severe cold. I say that if one travels frequently enough, one is bound to fall ill somewhere in the world; so here I am, enduring my turn in the barrel at the Rambagh Palace.

A lovely doctor, Archana Sogani, the palace doctor, came to see me yesterday and today, and will return tomorrow morning before I leave for Agra.

At the Rambagh Palace, every guest has a personal butler. I have two, depending on the clock: Pradeep works during the day, and Chetan works in the evenings. It was Chetan who arranged for me to have black tea with lemon and ginger, good for colds, and prepared the same way his mother made for him whenever he caught a cold.

I might become accustomed to palace life. I can pour my own tea, and mix honey in it on my own, but I sit patiently while my butler pours it for me, because that’s what he wants to do, that’s what he was trained to do, and that’s part of the experience of staying at a palace hotel. Thoughts of having my own butler at home have appeared roaming around in my mind, a butler who will bring me tea, then, hold his palms together, and, bowing, leave the room walking backwards.

Below, a member of the staff at the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur keeps watch over the inner garden. Whenever a bird lights upon the benches or the fountain, he pounds the cloth with a stick. The sound carries throughout the inner garden to my room.

He walks around the gardens for most of his day. His smile is wide when a guest waves at him.

Would he have pounded his cloth to frighten the peacocks? Below, a female jumps over the wall of the Oriental Gardens at the Rambagh Palace, too shy for my camera lens.
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JMHawley Gave Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On

Listen, will you? I think that . . . literature, poetry, music and love make the world go round . . . while mathematics explains things; I fill my life with them, then go walking in snowy woods.
Let us go then, you and I
like two etherized patients floating
through life, together feeling prufrockian.
DDB Jr. makes my world go 'round; during his absence, Pachelbel fills it up.
One summer I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, then through the Gulf of Finland to reach Saint Petersburg; I pursued Joseph Brodsky in its alley ways. I dream of making that two summers.
I read “Biking to Electra;” found my way in a Jaguar car, and glanced at the flashing steel grasshoppers at sunset. I’ll follow K.O.P.’s footsteps after he followed N.Scott Momaday’s; find warmth and inspiration on a rainy mountain.
Throw chinese coins for the I Ching.
Save the whales, the spotted owl, the woman in toil.
Cast a fly for trout; my memories of fly fishing under the sunny blue Colorado sky remain; I yearn to build more . . . with more trophy Browns.
Listen for the swan’s calls on the Baltic Sea. Feel KKII's joy, his arms spread wide in Yazilikaya.
Good night, Jimmy Durante, where ever you are.