The Sindhi Sikh Temple

The Neighborhood where we stayed in Jaipur was near the Sindhi section of town. In fact the section of town is named "Sindhi Colony." Well, having a taste for all things peculiarly exotic and ethnic I REALLY wanted to go see the Sindhi neighborhood. We were after all, right next to it. So I asked around for info about the neighborhood. It turns out, very few Sinhdis still live there. I was very sad. In case it is of interest to you, Sindhi is one of Pakistan's 3 official languages (the others being Urdu and Punjabi, Kashmiri does not hold official status as far as I know). The Sindhis are an ethnic minority in both Pakistan and India. Their land was in fact split up during the partition of Hindustan. In addition, the Sindhi are in large part Sikh, rather than Hindu or Muslim. Their alphabet is similar to that of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, except that it contains 52 letters whereas Arabic has 28, Farsi and Urdu have 32... I can read Arabic script (poorly) and make my way through certain things in Urdu and Farsi, but Sindhi... It's a lost cause. (Omniglot link: Sindhi alphabet)

So, feeling a little dejected that the Sindhi aren't IN Sindhi Colony we set out to see the rest of Jaipur. After we went to Hawa Mahal, we went through the shopping huts in the pink city. Yvonne was looking for bangles and shoes, while I was interested in eating. While she shopped and haggled, I just sat and shot the breeze with all the shop owners who complimented (sometimes falsely, just to get my attention) my facial hair styling. Eventually it was about 5PM and we set out to see the City Palace, but oh... The city palace closes at 5 PM, so I charmed a cobra (tourist whore that I was) and we hired a rickshaw (bicyclist) to take us around to places that are not "coupon shops." We struck the deal, that for every shop he's stop in (3) where he'd get Rs. 20 we'd just pay him to take us elsewhere... So we struck a deal for this little small Indian guy to cart around two tall Americans for the rest of the afternoon for Rs 100. He took us to the Sikh temple (A Gurudwara). I hadn't been to a gurudwara yet, and so it was interesting for. It was a nice small temple, completely made out of marble, and luckily, marble keeps cool in the shade. We all had to cover our heads and walk around. I didn't notice until we were leaving that the inscriptions on either side of the entrance gate were in Devnagri Script and Sindhi script. Where we had just gone was one of the last remaining Sindhi temples in Jaipur. Turns out, the Sindhi neighborhood had moved from where our hotel was to the neighborhood behind City Palace... Go figure.