It was perhaps fate that I visited Jaipur, the famed pink city, at the advent of the Barbie movie’s global conquest.
You may be surprised to learn that Rajasthan’s capital city was not painted pink, the colour of hospitality, in honour of our favourite plastic blonde doll, but rather to welcome Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband in 1876. The Maharaja Ram Singh ordered the buildings of Jaipur to be coated in bright hues of salmon, and the city has kept this joyful aesthetic going for the past hundred or so years. A friendly shopkeeper in one of the city’s many exuberant bazaars explained to me that residents of Jaipur aren’t all devotees to the colour pink, but face hefty fines if they repaint the building fronts in any other colour. It is mesmerizing to wander the bazaars, duck under arches and gape at forts, palaces, mosques, temples and mahals, all painted in this welcoming shade of peaches, roses, Himalayan salt and Barbies.
Opmerkingen