"Standing on the ramparts of the Jodhpur fort — on a level with the highest wheelings of the vultures, whose nests are on the ledges of the precipices beneath the walls — one looks down on to the roofs of the city, hundreds of feet below. And every noise from the streets and houses comes floating up, diminished but incredibly definite and clear, a multitudinous chorus, in which, however, one can distinguish all the separate component sounds — crying and laughter, articulate speech, brayings and bellowings and bleatings, the creak and rumble of wheels, the hoarse hooting of a conch, the pulsing of drums. I have stood on high places above many cities, but never on one from which the separate sounds making up the great counterpoint of a city's roaring could be so clearly heard, so precisely sifted by the listening ear. From the bastions of Jodhpur Fort one hears as the gods must hear from their Olympus — the gods to whom each separate word uttered in the innumerably peopled world below comes up distinct and individual to be recorded in the books of omniscience."