This story appeared in Ekalavyas. You can read it at this link.
Part 1- The Well
Jodhpur sits at the edge of the great, dusty Thar Desert and is built like a bowl, spilling down from a rocky hill capped by a muscular fort. The city is famous for its many blue buildings, immense overall beauty, and- slightly less so- its stepwells. These ancient water management systems helped trap the rare rain as it flowed downhill through the city, providing cool shade and clean water even in the brutal dry heat of summer. At some point, building stepwells became a traditional responsibility of the female head of household of the successive ruling families of various Rajasthani kingdoms. They became increasingly elaborate, and proliferated throughout the state to a ridiculous degree.
Seeing a stepwell for the first time is a unique delight: unlike other architectural wonders which you see long before you get close to them, a stepwell is sunk into the ground and simply appears from the jigsaw of motos, autos, momos, Tatas, and other densely packed items that crowd Indian streets. They are wonderfully, unnecessarily, symmetrical and beautiful. The scale of these things is hard to overstate: Chand Baori, which is the grandest of them all and located in a now-insignificant town, is apparently where they shot the “Without the Rope” scene from Dark Knight Rises. They’re awesome.
Unfortunately, the world has not always been as obsessed with stepwells as I am, and many have been lost. Their heyday in Rajasthan passed when water piped in by the government from rivers in the Punjab and elsewhere provided the people with an easier source than the local well. All of Jodphur’s stepwells silted up, filled with trash, sprouted trees, and became essentially forgotten, even as the town boomed with tourism.
Perhaps the finest stepwell in Jodhpur is Toorji Ka Jhalra (Toorji’s Stepwell). As recently as 2014, it was a garbage dump. Then something funny and mysterious happened, possibly involving a crazy itinerant Irishman and certainly involving an urban regeneration project called JDH. As close as I can piece the story together from blogs, JDH materials, and the tall tales of rambunctious stepwell-swimming youth of Jodphur, an old Irish man on his way to Jaisalmer stopped in Jodhpur and never left, committing his life to cleaning the city’s stepwells, first alone and then slowly with more support first from the people and then from the city government. He made some progress on smaller stepwells, but Toorji’s was out of his league. A little later, JDH came around and saw an opportunity in the massive stepwell, located just next to the main tourist market but virtually unknown. They marshalled the support of various city departments and their own deep pockets to pump out the well over several months, sand-blast the stone, clean it up, and bring in clean water. It seems that the stepwell was back in business by 2015.
And so Toorji’s Stepweel came alive again. It’s truly majestic: at least 7 symmetrical layers of staircases cut out of pink sandstone lead to the water, which is presided over by a large Mughal-style arch. People flocked to it: the engagement photoshoots and bro selfies began, aspiring artists starting painting it, autowallas set up a fixed-price stand next to it, JDH put up hotels and cafes around it, and nearby landlords built rooftop platforms to see it better.
As far as I can tell, swimming was not prohibited in the clear, cool water in 2015. It became a well-known place for local kids to swim; and for the more daring among them to jump in. Some people who visited the place swam, and jumped in, and blogged about it. By 2017, we start seeing mentions in blogs of a swimming ban, of police rounding up kids swimming and kicking them out. More recent blogs indicate a strengthening crackdown, attempted fines, more vigilance.
Part 2- The Swim
At the very end of 2019 Will and I found ourselves in Jodhpur, and after spending the first night trying unsuccessfully to sneak into the fort and then getting in trouble for accidentally trespassing on someone’s roof when climbing around ancient battlements to find the optimal sunset spot, we wandered down to Toorji’s Stepwell on our second afternoon. It’s a great place to hang out, and we had been there more than half an hour when some teenage guys started taking their shoes off. The air got a little bit more electric, and everyone around the stepwell started watching as they jumped in from the low stairs around the water and swam. One guy even climbed partway up the front face of the stepwell, to one of the small dome-covered windows, and jumped in from about 15 feet up after much hesitation.
One of these guys must have seen me looking itchy and started heckling me to get in, which was all I needed. I did the stairs jump and the window jump, and participated in a couple of races that they blatantly let me win (true hospitality). We were having a great time.
Then the whistling started from the top of the stepwell. The famed Jodhpur stepwell police had arrived! We all got out of the water quickly, and I wasn’t sure what was happening, but heard the word “fine” at least once so quickly grabbed my phone and shoes, left the rest with Will, and started running up the stepwell with the other guys. The police came around to cut us off at the top of the well, but we were a little too fast, turned tail and ran back down and out the other side. I had pre-scouted a certain alleyway to disappear into, which I did, thinking that I was in the clear.
One of the guys caught up to me and told me that I was not. The police were serious, now, he said, and I would be easily caught as a soaking-wet white man wearing shorts in the winter. He told me that he could get me out of trouble, though; so I put all my trust in my newfound friend. His name was Gaurav. He gave me a very tight bright green hoodie to wear (hood up) and walked me into a series of alleys far from the stepwell, borrowing my phone every 2 minutes to call his friends and get a status update from the stepwell.
The calls proceeded as follows: Gaurav grabs my phone. He smashes the call button and immediately starts shouting “hello.” After 10 or so hellos, it seems his friend has picked up, and he barks out a two-syllable question. A second later he immediately hangs up and starts walking away quickly. I catch up and grab the phone back. Repeat. Repeat. Apparently the police were still there, looking unhappy. Will was trapped there, with most of my stuff, and I hoped he would not be connected to his delinquent friend. I was getting nervous.
But after several calls Gaurav relaxed a little. At some point he became satisfied enough with our safety to take the hoody back and call up his friends for a full round of selfies, group and individual. We high-fived. We shook hands. We took more selfies; I was asked to text them all to the group, and did so under the diligent eye of Gaurav, telling me to hurry. Once I had done this, the performance was complete, with the key output (selfies) secured. I was led back to the stepwell, where I got scared again upon seeing that a cop was still there, but some older guys around the edge of the well said they had agreed to forget about the whole thing. I was passed over from Gaurav’s crew to this new group, twenty-somethings, who had been around a while and wanted to see if I wanted to buy something special from them.
“You want it?”
“What do you mean, it?” I know exactly what they mean.
“You know, Shiva.” They know I know.
I change the subject: “Anyone ever jump from the top?”
They nod. Once guy pulls out his phone and shows me a video of his friend doing it. He’s in the air for quite a while- it’s pretty high. I grab Will, and we go back to the guesthouse, having achieved our dose of adventure for the day.
We were to get a further dose that night- involving another seemingly not-so-random run-in with the Shiva crew- but the idea of jumping from the top had stuck, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Could it still be done? Was the police presence too intense, now? A person would have to do it quickly, with little fanfare. But it would be hard with no warm-up. And how could it be recorded for eager posterity, to add to the blogged history of Toorji’s Stepwell, Jodhpur? I tossed and turned.
Part 3- The Jump
The next day was a Monday. Will and I were taking advantage of the office being closed for renovations to work remotely from Jodhpur before taking the bus back to Delhi that night. Incidentally, we must have impressed the owner because he eventually told us his life story and tried to convince us to invest with him in bringing an Indian import/export delegation to Nigeria- but that’s beside the point. The idea of the jump was still roiling. As the sun set, and our departure from Jodhpur approached, I told Will that I needed this.
And we made a plan.
We would walk to the stepwell, separately. I would wear several layers of clothes so that I could change after the jump, to avoid police identification. Will would set himself up directly across from the vertical side of the well, with his camera and his phone. He would set up the phone to record the jump zone automatically, and would hold the camera and try to snap some shots during the jump. While he was doing this, I would look over the edge, stretch my legs a little, and make sure that I was ready to go for this. Upon a signal from Will that he was ready, I would then strip down at the top of the stepwell and jump in. I would immediately swim out, dress, and go back to the cafe through back alleys. Will would stay around a little, posing as an unconnected tourist. We would then meet back at the cafe, change clothes, get in an auto, head to the bus station, and leave Jodhpur.
Easy. We were ready. I changed in the cafe bathroom, left my valuables, and we set the plan in motion.
We walked together to the last alley before the stepwell, and then Will went ahead. I followed a minute later. It struck me quickly just how many people there were around the well, at sunset: ice-cream vendors doing a good business, local goondas looking shifty, couples holding hands, foreigners from around the world and old men who looked like they’d lived their whole lives in Jodhpur enjoying the place. I went to the top of the well and looked down. It was far and my heart started pounding. I walked through the crowd a little, doing some deep breathing, trying to forget about what I was going to do. I was feeling some of the pure, physical adrenaline that I’ve felt walking to the ring before boxing matches; forearms buzzing, locking in, similar but crucially different (and so much better) than the cold panic that sometimes sets in on bad days at work.
After an eternity, Will gave me the signal. Go time. I went to the lip of the well. There was one guy there as well. In a last clutch for company in my craziness, I asked him if he would jump; he laughed a little, whether from the jarring English words or from their meaning I don’t know. I was alone. I started undressing. Plaid shirt, hoodie. Shoes. Shirt. Long pants. I heard the crowd begin to mutter. My heart was pounding like crazy. I climbed over the centuries-old, protective low stone fence and onto the lip of the well itself. I was too far to turn back now: by climbing the lip, I had effectively ensured that I would jump, because the embarrassment of backing out would be worse than the fear on the plunge. I looked at Will. I looked down. People were yelling.The water looked black, very far away, and very small. I grew up in Ontario in the summers and was lucky enough to know some Bracebrige locals, and I’ve done some jumps before that were sketchy in one way or another, but this one was high and the target was small. I braced myself.
And then a loud whistle came from the crowd. Must be the cops. I was shook. But I looked over, and through my tunnel vision couldn’t see them, and so I decided to go for it. Will told me later that someone in front of him was whispering “don’t do it” again and again. Young guys were shouting.
I jumped.
Memory of moments like this is different than other types of memory, so it’s hard to describe, But I know I was in the air for a long time. I got my arms in before impact but forgot to point my toes, and whipped the soles of my feet on the water. I was under, deep, and fought my way up through the adrenaline and cold shock of the plunge. I broke the surface and people were still yelling. It was time to move out, fast. I swam to the water’s edge and got out. I was too buzzing to act logically, so I started going up the wrong way and had to come back down and get to the right set of stairs to get back to my clothes. A group of guys had formed at the clothes, and we exchanged some excited words (understood by neither side) as I haphazardly pulled on my new jacket, brilliantly, making myself completely unidentifiable. An old man came up and, in the weirdest and perhaps most deserved part of the whole experience, asked me when I had had my last bath. I ran away.
Will and I met back in the cafe, and hid out for a bit, and had one of the most stunning, unexpected Nigerian business offers of our lives, and got on the bus, and made it back to Delhi, alive to tell the tale. And to look for the next chance to create one.***