Upright as darts, they walk with slightly swaying
gesture, a slender brown arm upraised to support the big brass chatties on
their heads, revealing an incredible collection of bangles on arms and
ankles. These women are the descendants of those who, in the stormy days
of the sixteenth century, while the Rajput princes still struggled
heroically with the all-powerful Mogul emperors, preferred death to shame,
and, led by Kurnavati (mother of Oodi Singh, the founder of Udaipur),
accepted the "Johur," or death by fire and suffocation, to the number of
13,000, while their husbands and brothers threw open the city gates and
went forth to fight and fall.
As we drew near our destination the towers of the Maharana's Palace rose
up above the trees, gleaming snowy in the cloudless blue. The brown
crenellated walls of the city appeared on our left, and, suddenly sweeping
round a curve, we found ourselves by the border of a lovely lake, whose
blue-rippled waters lapped the very walls of the town. In the foreground a
glorious note of colour was struck by a group of "scarlet women" washing
themselves and their clothes by the margin.
Up a steep incline, and we found ourselves before a verandah, blazing
overhead with bougainvillea, and our hostess waiting to receive us beneath
its cool shade.
In the afternoon, refreshed and rested, we went down to the shore, where
our host had arranged for a state-owned boat and four rowers to be in
waiting.
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