I have lived in Jaipur for over 16 years now. While it wasn’t love at first sight, the city has grown on me. I have explored its gullies and scoured its bazaars for the best bargains, seen its amazing heritage monuments, tasted its foods, and slowly and surely fallen in love with the city.

As the names of the places where Tuesday’s blasts took place flash across the TV screen, the reports repeatedly tell viewers that these places are part of the ‘walled city’. When friends and family from all over the country ring up to ask if we are all fine, I can sense something in their tone that says, “but that’s far from where you live, isn’t it?” “Yes we are all fine”, I tell them and leave it at that. But I want to tell them that it is not really all that far off. And that I know a thousand people who live there. They work or study in my college, work in my husband’s office, they are shopkeepers whose shops I frequent, they are friends and they are acquaintances.

Johari Bazaar has been a favourite haunt and not least among the reasons is the famous LMB restaurant there. You have to eat the dahi vada and aloo tikki to believe it. Everytime you want to buy silver artefacts, chunky jewellery, gold ornaments or trousseau sarees, Johari Bazaar it will be. Parking is tough to find but I have always thought I was lucky because I would manage to squeeze my car into a parking slot just after one or two rounds of the bazaar. I also frequent the Katla or the cloth market through a narrow passage from Johari Bazaar, where you get the most amazing tissue and brocade fabric at wonderful prices.

... contd.