The Pushkar Fair, half the world away, felt comfortable. It was like our county fairs. There were people from all the local countryside and nearby villages becoming crowds of smiling excited faces, eyes wide, taking in all the action of this sleepy town dressed up and swollen with entertainment. There were booths and stalls with vendors, the smells of fair food - mostly fried and heavy, surrounding gaggles of girls prettied up whispering and talking amongst themselves about the lanky boys with slicked back hair. And ferris wheels. There were two. They were old and clanky looking but with bright neon green and white lights and buckets of laughing talking passengers going round and

round in the cool night air. Between them a buccaneer ship swung back and forth, the tide of loud squeals rising and falling as if it were itself the wave. And the noises, voices from everywhere, some much louder, forcibly attempting to attract attention for their sale, were drowned out by the blaring distorted music screaming from the loudspeakers near a large red and white roofed tent. In between wafts of the delicious smell of frying dough, was the scent of animals and their fragrant products, a reminder of the daylight displays of prime livestock vying for awards and the highest price.

But this fair was a world of foreign dramatic contrast, an Indian mela, not a tobacco chewing, baseball cap and t-shirt wearing, elephant ears and cotton candy eating, redneck midwest county fair in the summertime. This was a place of girls in bright flowing dresses, saris draped gracefully around shoulders and over jet black hair to eyes of constant brown separated by red bindis on the their foreheads, accentuating their soft bronze faces with two inch gold hoops hanging from their left nares. And the boys who admired them, flirted with them, dared not to touch them, to share affection publicly, maybe not even privately. But they touched each other, young men and boys in their best crisp long-sleeved tailored shirts and western style pants holding hands, swinging them back and forth as they wound their way through strangers, sometimes arm in arm, an innocent exhibition in the body language of caring in this society, that of a brotherly nature, not that of a pair of lovers.

Skinny old farmers in red turbans and dirt stained white shirts with baggy white Jodhpur riding pants gathered at their calves in the back, their bronze skin in contrast blackened by the desert sun, drifted through in packs of three to six, comrades from the country who came for the camel trading, not for the party. Those camels were somewhere in the distance, stalled and tied and fed for the night, but in the streets ambled lazy bulls mixing with the sea of people and the scruffy, rib showing wild dogs, their pungent patties randomly but strategically placed in the dirty dusty streets. The familiar smell of greasy food was different too, accentuated with fragrant odd spices as the strangely shaped pastries soaked up the bubbling liquid oil in large shining metal vats. And the voices, conversations in Hindi tongue changing to lilting English when foreign white skin drew near, "Madam, look at my things. Want something?" they would address the query alike to teenage dreadlocked backpacking hippie girls and to past middle-aged semi-dignified European women in Khaki pants and not-to-wrinkle catalog ordered tourist cloth as if all were French aristocracy.

The music blaring overhead by the tent was un-recognizable not only because of the harsh distortion filtered through the loudspeakers but also because of the foreign beat and incomprehensible words. Its annoying loud disruption of the night seemed oblivious to the patches of untouchables, the lower caste, rolled up in ragged blankets like carpets, sleeping alongside the busy streets in small groups, also unbelievably oblivious to it.

Steve and I strolled through, our senses saturated, our attention mesmerized by life. In shadows were men with backs turned, streams of urine peeking out behind widened stances, decorating stone fences, rocks, gates, dry earth, anything that could be found for a few seconds of not so private relief, public urination unnoticed by the locals. Past the crowds we went to the quiet beyond, a deserted side street with overhead bright white light illuminating sleeping boars and bare bottomed brown skinned children peaking with luminous brown eyes around the open door frames with families relaxing together beyond. Down towards the darkness and the open star spangled night sky to the fork in the dirt road we came, along the way passing a recessed red guesthouse with sweet fragrant gardens without any English signs, the Hindi denoting to which one caste these sleeping quarters were available to be filled with wall to wall people lying on the floor on blankets in one large room on the first floor.

Ahead in the night was an attractive tall thin short-haired blonde woman with a diamond studded nose engaged in conversation with a shorter dignified middle-aged Indian man in cream colored Punjabi shirt to his knees. "Are you lost?" he asked with genuine concern. But we were just wandering, hand-holding, exploring the newness, enjoying the reprieve from the crowds and the noise and the festival. "In that case, you must come to my house. You are welcome." And with that he led us to a small light blue concrete one story house on the hillside. Beyond the open door of the front wall was a small inner courtyard with older children arranging tea cup lighted candles on the floor into the initials "MB" for Master Babu, their spiritual guru. It was a home, with a father joking with his sons about their English skills, always saying "yes" when they didn't begin to understand the question, and the younger boys dancing around competing for attention like children often do when company is present.

The well spoken Indian father in cream colored Punjabi was Nathu Lal Solinkey and the western blonde his student. In his home was her family too, mother and uncle and two Spanish friends, enjoying the hospitality, the lentil soupy dal with steamed white rice and vegetable curry to the side. A small shiny tin bowl of white yogurt was to be poured on the rice, mixed up by hopefully clean hands of the eldest boy, Nirsey, who was sharing my tin plate on the floor as we all sat crossed legged eating traditionally without table or silverware, like Barbarians on cold reflection, but politely and appropriately, so natural for the circumstances, almost romantic in the open air courtyard softly glowing with candlelight.

Marcella, the Dutch blonde, studied music and Nathu was a famous drummer teaching his skills to the young woman who had come to Pushkar excited to meet someone she described as a legend to her. His drums were nagarwas, born of Pushkar, symbolic of the village and its culture. In the old days, Nathu explained, the maharajas would have the drummers beat for communication, to announce community meetings, to signal others in the distance. But now they were purely for music, for the rhythm, for the soul and its meditation. He showed us a CD without a player, unable to hear the sounds; we were able to read the fold out paper, the label in the clear plastic case. Nathu, the drummer from Pushkar, was playing with Tito Fuentes and members of The Grateful Dead, read white English typing describing the masters on sandstone colored paper that was held out proudly for display in Nathu's hands.

And the next morning, there was a lesson for us both in his studio by the ghats, the one room cement box beyond green wooden screened doors off the main bazaar. We sat crossed-legged on the floor, Nathu between Steve and I, the three of us pounding in unison the simple combined notes on the two taught hand made drums, one a little larger than the other, facing each other before us on the floor.