OK, to make things clear for all: until I return to the UK, I will not send *any* emails with attachments without either a blog entry*, phonecall or a previous email saying I’m about to do so. Unless the attachment is absolutely urgent, I will obtain consent before sending it (via LJ for those who I know regularly read this blog, via email in most other cases and via phone if all else fails.)
*if I use this method, I’ll await the intended recipients’ permission before actually sending the attachment.

So unless I have already warned you that I’m emailing an attachment, please immediately delete any email that both has an attachment and appears to be from me.

BTW, it’s possible that I’ll not email anything for the foreseeable future. Electricity in the main part of Nedumkandam is very intermittent (and non-existent yesterday) due to road-works and attendant replacement of cable-supports. This cybercafe’s UPS is almost empty (in fact it emptied 30 minutes ago but the current’s been back for 10 minutes – then died again).

Further, since this place uses dial-up and windows 98, attaching photos is a pain I’ll avoid wherever possible. Even with ISDN, it’s tedious and costly.

It appears that something has got hold of various addresses that I’ve previously emailed and is sending spam to these addresses.

1. Sincere apologies for anything I inadvertently did to cause this. I hope you know I wouldn’t deliberately spam anyone.
2. It’s possible that another correspondent’s PC which received the ‘I’m offski email’ I sent before I departed has had all the CC addresses harvested. A couple of days ago I received ‘your virussed email has been bounced’ messages in response to things I didn’t send. I also received notification that a correspondant had tried to send me some infected pictures – and I know this correspondent wouldn’t knowingly do so
3. Apologies again for any hassle you’ve received

To try to assess what’s happened and look for a cure, please comment below if you’ve recieved any spam which purports to be from me.

The following isn’t meant to be inflammatory, just an expression of what I’ve experienced and a possible way forward. My opinion is just that, only my opinion, and open to change in the light of fresh information and cogently-argued thought. (And so I think I have learnt something from the exchanges in MsInvisFem’s blog.) So if you don’t like what I say here, comment here or privately and I’ll try to listen and act on what you say.

I’ve very rarely experienced anti-English racism in Scotland (and laughed like a drain at the example in Trainspotting. However, if needed, I could speak about the bullying and oppression I experienced at school. That hurt a lot at the time (a vibram-soled boot planted at speed on my back may have been the cause of on-going weakness in my middle vertebrae) and may have contributed to some of the nastier sides of my character. Certain people who may read this blog have seen far too much of these sides. With the exception of where I was attempting (and usually failing) to protect myself, there is always a tacit apology on my lips.

I still don’t like labels that divide humans from each other, whether perpetrated by majorities or minorities, oppressors or oppressed, even to draw attention to oppression.* It’s too easy for these labels to be a stepping-stone to ‘negation as people’.
*When oppressed or minorities use such labels to describe themselves, it can be seen to imply that they’re accepted or even desired by the oppressed or minority in question. Then even well-meaning but ignorant members of majorities or non-oppressed groups may well perpetuate such labels and the divisions and oppressions that go with them.

However strict avoidance would prevent me from saying things such things as

• ‘I’m from Worcester.’
• ‘My father is australian, my mother is austrian, I live in Scotland and drink irish whiskey and czech lager and eat indian and latin-american-style food. Now try to tell me my nationality!’
• ‘He/she/they /are (i.e. describe themselves as) brahmins.’
• ‘He is the “village-king” of this tribal village.’
• ‘Men do this while women do that.’

In this blog, such phrases are only intended to clarify who I’m talking about or state what I’ve observed*. They’re certainly not intended to mean that any group of people is worse than any other. We’re all human, and we all have our own particular mixes of faults and foibles.
*with the usual caveats about observation and narratives being far from the whole story

As far as I’m concerned (and with no intention to discount what others have experienced: if something hurts, it hurts and nothing I can say or do will undo this experience), the biggest issue is a person’s financial status. If minorities, etc, had the financial wherewithal, they could simply laugh off racist/oppressive comments, safe in their luxury apartments. However, this is currently pie-in-the-sky: often groups of related* people live together in terrible conditions which are an utter disgrace to our common humanity. One function of this blog is to report on the examples I’ve seen here and invite readers’ thoughts and action.
*This seems almost inevitable: if they can’t afford brick walls, how on earth are they going to afford transport to get to form relationships with other, better-off people?

I should add that this part of Kerala is probably nowhere near as bad as other areas of the globe: there are plenty of posh-looking villas on the way from Nedumkandam to Kattappana, for example. The fertility of this area is beautiful and stands in stark contrast to the dust-bowls and abject misery of north-eastern Africa (for example) that’s been on my TV since the early 1980s. There’s also plenty of luxury hotels* if you want to come and see for yourself. However, the best way would be to make contact with a family such as Ajeesh’s: you’re almost guaranteed a lovely time along with your practical lessons.
*The link is to the Edassery hotel in Munnar. However there’s an Edassery hotel in Kattappana and it looks very posh from the outside.

You are warned that some of the pix behind the cuts show me with my ‘local-style’ haircut.

respectable clothes/on the way to Munnar and Kanthaloor

All dressed up!

Gopalakrishna and I

jaggery factory

visit to orphanage

Bruce and Shaji

DS, Shaji, Anish and Ajeesh

a typical Keralan side-street

Ajeesh with some of the orphans

The orphanage children and staff

I’m starting to grow into the new hairstyle.

EDITed to remove pomposity and implication that my blog and I are always perfect and factually correct: we’re not!

CHAI-STORIES
Having moaned in my last entry about the travel agent (and there’s more moaning to come), it’s pleasing to report two good things:

• After escaping from the travel agent, I bought sheets of two different grades of sandpaper at a hardware/DIY store here in Kattappana. The shopkeepers apparently spoke no english but miming polishing the coconut-shell bowl I’m working on did the trick. I’m very grateful to the shopkeepers and slightly proud of my miming
• I’m also very pleased to report the cheapest khardum chaya yet: Rs2.50 at a cafe in Kattappana’s bus station with very friendly and efficient service. That’s around 3 UK pence or 6 US cents. Starbucks has a lot to learn! (Also their masala dosa and a wada cost Rs13 and were yummy.)

DIARY BIT
The bus home on Tuesday was one of the most exhilarating times I’ve had here. The bus was crowded and so most of the time I only had half my right buttock on a seat* while I clung on to the railings for dear life, much to the amusement of my fellow passengers. If you ever want an extreme roller-coaster ride, try the 7.30pm bus from Kattappana to Nedumkandam. I call it the ‘Kerala switchback’ and thoroughly recommend it.
*The rest of the time I had no contact with a seat at all thanks to the many bumps and pot-holes in the parts of the national highways that have yet to be resurfaced.

On the walk up to Ajeesh’s house, I met their neighbour Babu. I believe he’s a member of the local gram panchayat (village/town council) but can’t really have a conversation with him without a translator. He appeared to invite me to his house for a drink or two. I found out later that he was inviting me to have a drink with him in a bar in town. Apparently he has a wee tipple each evening. I thanked him for the invitation but I’m wary of mixing alcohol in local bars, communication difficulties and relative strangers: it seems a perfect recipe for disaster.

MORNING GLORY
Yesterday (Wednesday 28th) I was introduced to Ajeesh’s uncle, who apparently also arranged Jaya’s wedding or at least introduced Rajesh as a potential husband. I was told he has a suitable match for me. I get rather tired of going through the reasons why I’m not interested and of having to appear grateful for this extremely unwanted favour.

ELECTRICITY NEWS
I’ve often failed to charge my camera batteries sufficiently, leading to quite a few missed photo-opportunities. Yesterday I learned one possible cause: India’s domestic supply voltage is nominally 230 volts. However Ajeesh’s area receives 30 to 40 volts. Ajeesh’s family have a step-up transformer but it moans from time to time so is far from a perfect answer. To be honest, I’m amazed that electricity cables have been laid at all, considering the state of the roads to the house.

TRAVEL TROUBLES
On Tuesday I spelled out the options to the travel agent:

• flights from Calcutta to Singapore and back
• flights from Calcutta to Singapore, then Singapore to Medan and back
• flights from Calcutta to Singapore, then Singapore to Padang and back
• flights from Calcutta to Singapore, then Singapore to Pekanbaru and back
• direct flights from Calcutta to Medan and back
• direct flights from Calcutta to Padang and back
• direct flights from Calcutta to Pekanbaru and back.

He asked me which option I prefer: I said I would prefer the cheapest overall way to get to Sumatra but that I’d decide when I’d seen the prices of ALL these options so I wanted prices and availability for all of them. Yesterday he gave me a price for the Calcutta-Singapore-Calcutta option only because that was my preferred (i.e. the cheapest) option. Gaaaah!

I didn’t have time yesterday to do any research myself because I was in a hurry to get back to Nedumkandam and on to a ‘social work’ function.

SOCIAL WORK NEWS
Here’s why I respect Ajeesh, his family and friends so much: you already know about their situation. Yet they take time and trouble to support people who are even worse off than themselves. Yet again Kerala has reduced me to speechless tears.

Rural poverty here and in other parts of India can be roughly assessed by the number of debt-related suicides amongst farmers. It’s a topic that bubbles under the headlines and occasionally surfaces onto the front page. Local banks have been encouraged to write off loans but I have no idea if this is yet making any difference.

CORRUPTION CORNER
To make things even worse, corruption appears to be a big issue. As you may have read in earlier entries, Ajeesh needs to find Rs200,000 for Jaya’s dowry. He tells me that he can’t borrow this from a regular bank because they only give business loans so has to go to a private bank. (I think it’s the Idukki Co-operative Bank.) However, to get his loan application approved, he has to bribe certain officials with around Rs10,000. This 5% ‘rate’ is apparently half the usual rate.

The officials are, allegedly, gram(a) panchayat(h)* councillors who are also somehow in charge of the bank. No bribe was mentioned when Ajeesh saw the actual bank staff but the need for (and amount of) a bribe was made clear in a separate meeting.
*I’ve seen several variations of the spelling of this phrase.

I’ve offered to accompany Ajeesh to future meetings and record proceedings on my camera and/or mp3 player, then demonstrate these recordings and my NUJ membership to the bribe-takers. I’d hope either to get them to drop this request for a bribe or (preferably) expose them completely and get them out of office.

Ajeesh is doubtful about this: the request has already been made so why would a further meeting be needed? (Maybe I can record and photograph the hand-over and stop the process at this stage.) Also, he’s afraid that he’d just end up being ‘black-balled’ in this area and so have to move somewhere else where he doesn’t have his network of friends and relatives.

Personally, I’m furious that this state of affairs appears to be normal practice. My fury is exacerbated by hearing that the officials who have demanded the bribe are members of a communist party! Well it’s a sure way to annoy people enough that a second bolshevik revolution can’t be far away. In fact it’s already going on: google for ‘naxalites’ and see for yourself.

OVER TO YOU!
I may have mentioned that Ajeesh, Shaji and DS (and maybe others) plan to miss a meal each week and divert what they save towards social projects. I’m going to follow suit. You can help me in one or more of the following ways:

• make sure I live up to what I’ve said and don’t cheat by eating loads at the meal after the one I’ve missed
• do the same yourself and make a suitable donation to the charity of your choice or to one of the projects Ajeesh runs here, maybe via the Red Cross.
• have fun the following way
  1. Obtain a coconut, a mango, some spices and some sandpaper.
  2. Split the coconut open equatorially.
  3. Make yourself some chatni and eat it with rice, iddlis or chapattis. If you’re adventurous, abandon cutlery and use your right hand to feed yourself. (You can use your left hand to manipulate serving spoons, etc.) Remember to wash your hands both before and after eating.
  4. Clean out and sand the closed end of the coconut shell until you have a smooth, dark-chocolate-brown mixing bowl.
  5. If you must, paint it Day-Glo.
  6. Flog it to a hippie.
  7. Repeat steps 1 to 6 as often as your RSI will allow.
  8. Distribute the proceeds accordingly.

BACK TO YESTERDAY AFTERNOON
After a fair amount of waiting for DS to arrive, Ajeesh, DS, Shaji, another journalist (Anish) and I pooled some money and collected further amounts from some other folk. (I saw one bloke hand over at least RS200.) They then went to buy food for a local orphanage. DS told me that they do this 3 or 4 times a year. Apparently they get most of what they need by leaning on wholesalers who they know have avoided inter-state import taxes. Shaji and Anish are journalists for a malayalam newspaper, Deepika and so can threaten to expose the wholesalers if they don’t cough up. I can’t say I totally approve of this system but I guess it works.

At the orphanage, they kids were fed vegetable rolls, bananas and milk. It didn’t seem a big meal but considering that the place is only half-built (gaps in the walls of the building that’s inhabited and another part under construction but still without a roof) I guess anything is better than nothing. Ajeesh and DS fed two children who were in an ‘infirmary’ bedroom: one has polio and the other severe cerebral palsy or similar. Then Ajeesh led a singing session: he has a good singing voice, IMHO, and the children appeared to enjoy it. I think there were about 16 children and four staff, led by sister Anna Rita Maria.

Afterwards we all returned to Shaji’s office. I have some (hopefully wonderful) video of the four of them singing in harmony. I can’t say how often how much I like the people in this corner of the world: despite some terrible problems, they are often laughing, joking and singing with each other and appear far happier than I do most of the time.

Ajeesh drove me halfway up the hill to his house: he stopped to visit a relative who is getting married today and I walked the rest of the way up the hill.

RACISM/CASTE NEWS
(With thanks to for helping to bring this topic to the front of my mind.)

Early yesterday morning, while dressed in his field-work clothes (a dirty lunghi and short-sleeved shirt), Ajeesh introduced me to an old lady who is a friend and neighbour. She wore a dirty, stained and frayed saree and underskirt. Ajeesh asked me if their clothing gave away their caste status. (They’re both brahmins but I think they’re in different sub-castes.) Of course their clothing said nothing at that moment. (Repeated meetings so I can assess their usual clothing might say more.)

I think the implied lessons are

• brahmins are workers as much as any other caste, except that their duties include religious work on behalf of the other castes,
• members of all castes can be poor farmers
• that dhotis and nice shirts are only worn as office/white-collar dress. (In all the films I’ve seen here, the politicians wear pure white dhotis and shirts.)

Also, allegedly, one of Ajeesh’s relatives was surprised when Ajeesh told him that we had visited a tribal village and drunk the coffee they offered us. I’m told that this relative feared the tribals’ food and crockery would be unhygienic and unsafe and allegedly opined that the tribals are a bit less than human. Well it appears to have had no bad effects on either of us (and you know I’ve received doses of Mughal’s revenge from restaurants in tourist areas that should do much better). Also, as far as I could see the houses were clean, just terribly overcrowded and smoky because they didn’t have chimneys. (I don’t like to think about the respiratory diseases this might cause.)

Ajeesh implied that the tribal people are outwith the main priest/warrior/merchant/farmer caste system* and disparaged his relative’s opinion. He wholeheartedly agreed with my opinion that they’re humans, just like the rest of us, and as welcoming as any other Keralan I’ve met.
*He says that roman catholicism, orthodoxy and protestantism are ‘castes’ of christianity.

TODAY’S SNIPPETS
I’m back in Kattappana to blog (hey, they have the luxury of ISDN here!), research tickets and make contact with the outside world. It’s ages since I’ve seen an english-language newspaper or seen more than a snippet of english TV news so I have almost no idea what’s happening outside of this corner of Kerala.

I was on the bus by 9.15am: I can hear former colleagues gasping that I might be awake by this time. before this, Jaya served khardum chaya and banana- and jackfruit-chips. I hope I can bring home some jackfruit seeds and banana seedlings: I’ve never seen in the UK the 3-inch sweet and delicious bananas that are so common here. Nor have I seen the big red bananas that are made into bananas bhajis. I’m going to really miss these and Jaya’s jackfruit-seed curry. She tells me she’d like to come to the UK and start a restaurant there. I can be her accountant, she says.

BUS BLETHERINGS
A word or two about the local buses: they usually have two doors on the left side. Running from just above them are strings that lead to a bell near the driver. The conductors use this system to tell the driver to stop, start or that it’s safe to reverse. (There are two three-point turns on the Kattappana-Nedumkandam route.) Where the strings are absent, they slap on the inside walls of the bus or shout ‘va va va!’ (for ‘go, go, go!’).

The windows have no glass but have rubber-backed metal concertina-style shutters held out of the way by metal gates. Pressing up on the base of the shutter allows the gates to spring out of the way and the shtters to fall closed.

Tickets appear to be of two sorts:

• either the conductor writes the cost on a ticket, with a carbon copy left in his or her* book or
• he or she has a metal case with around ten groups of different-coloured tickets screwed into it. He or she will tear off tickets to the value of your fare. (Each colour also has its price printed on it and may have places for the conductor to clip the date the ticket was issued.) I’ve also seen both systems in Goa and occasionally had journeys where I received ticket at all.
  *I’ve only seen one female conductor.

IT NEWS
In each town bigger than 20 or so buildings, I’ve seen at least one ‘digital studio’, usually offering photographic and/or videographic services and occasionally offering internet facilities. However, most cybercafes are stuck with Windows 98: it’s relative a treat to find Windows 2K or XP. I’ve not seen a hint of Apple stuff apart from a closed AppleStore in Pune. I miss my pismo so much it’s not funny!

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
I don’t think I have the budget to do all that I want and so I’m probably going to give Assam a miss. I’m told that it’s very similar to the tea-growing areas of Kerala and Tamil nadu and just now likely to be severely monsooned, making travel next to impossible. This morning Ajeesh again invited me to stay until I need to go to Calcutta to then go on to Sumatra.

Again, I’m very tempted but I don’t like free-loading. Ajeesh won’t accept any money for me staying there, even though it’s saving me at least Rs350 per day, because I’m a guest (and hence a god) and he feels like I’m his older brother. I pointed out that I can’t be both a god and his brother, and that if I’m a guest, I feel that I’ve overstayed already. I said that if I’m his brother, he must let me pull my weight domestically and/or in the fields.

If this happens then I’d be happy to stay a longer, learn (and, where possible, contribute) more and continue having a highly enjoyable time. I’d be very grateful for your thoughts: please, please comment.

His mother seemed delighted at the potential of gaining an extra son. They all want me to stay on for Jaya’s wedding (31st August, dowry issues permitting) but since my visa expires on 27th August and my flight home is already and irrevocably booked, I can’t.

OK, I think that’s enough for now. See you later, space-cats!

It took the travel agent 3 hours to come to the incorrect conclusion that there are no international airports in Sumatra and, er, not come up with any alternatives.

He didn’t want to believe me when I showed him documentary evidence that there are four international airports there (Batam, Pekanbaru, Medan and Padan). Even if there weren’t, he should have been able to see that Singapore and Kuala Lumpur are very near. (You can get by boat from Singapore to Pekanbaru in a couple of hours!)

So now I’ve spelt out the options for him and told him it’s his job to find prices and availability for all of them (not just the one I prefer), I’m to come back tomorrow. I think I’ll be better off going to Madurai or even back to Goa and finding a Thomas Cook.

Gaah!

Personal hygiene may be important to you. If so, read on…

• Warning 1
  Always, always, always take your own toilet-paper and torch with you in India. You are very likely to need to use a shopping-mall toilet and these are bound to have no paper and no lights.Remember your house of easement will have a ceramic hole in the ground, not a pedestal.
  • If you’re very lucky, there will be a flush mechanism.
  • If you’re merely lucky, there will be a bucket and tap so you can flush it manually.
  • Usually there will be neither manual or mechanical flush options.

  Then again, maybe you don’t want to see where you’re going. It will almost certainly be bad enough that you can smell it.

  Of course, if you’re in a mountainous part of Kerala, you’ll have your torch with you anyway for picking your way along the tracks after dark.

• Warning 2
  Indian english for ‘toilet’ is ‘bathroom’. I defy anyone to get a real bath in India. Usually you will wash by pouring water from a bucket over yourself with a tin or plastic mug. If you’re staying in a home*, your hosts may well heat your bucket of water for you.In hotels there are also showers as westerners know them, in the same room as the toilet [so wetting the seat is a real possibility]. I’ve only met two that give hot water but usually I’ve been glad of the cold.

On the whole, I’m enjoying these challenges. My major publishable, personal regret is not having learnt any Malayalam, Hindi or Tamil before coming here. Occasional withdrawal from soap-related activities is nothing compared to being in dire need of a bathroom and being unable to ask where to find one.

*If you are staying in a home, my limited experience suggests you will be treated like a god and have a fantastic time.

OK, this morning I took a bus to Kattappana*, the nearest town big enough to have a worthwhile travel agent so I can book my travel to Sumatra next month. I’m a bit doubtful as to whether I can afford it and spend time in Assam this month. Ajeesh has said I can stay as long as I want in his family’s house but given their situation, that’s too much like free-loading for even my conscience.
*It’s about an hour from Nedumkandam by bus, along well-surfaced but horribly twisty and undulating mountain roads that had a woman in the seat in front of me review her breakfast. Thank goodness the bloke next to me noticed in time and shut the window. Uurrgghh!

FUNNY MOMENTS
On the way back from town, Ajeesh and I stopped at a small stall so he could buy some paan. His car stereo came to a fairly fast bolly-techno track and so we danced in the road, much to the amusement of the folk at the stall. (These included Ajeesh’s father and neighbour.) Ajeesh passed around my hat and we netted a whopping 50 paise!

Before this, yesterday was Shaji’s pay-day so he took Ajeesh, DS and I to a small restaurant for dosas. At the restaurant, Ajeesh picked up a newspaper, saying “aha, today’s newspaper”. Shaji quipped “naw mate: it’s tomorrow’s”. DS and I fell about laughing while Ajeesh looked faintly boggled.

OBJECTIVE REPORTING
In the interests of fairness, I have to report I saw a man doing some domestic work yesterday evening: Ajeesh’s father was cutting shapes out of cake-dough. I don’t know who made the dough or then cooked the cakes (they’re fried in coconut oil, rather than baked, and bloody delicious) but I do know that Jaya made breakfast and served Ajeesh and I this morning.

FINANCIAL HORRORS
There was a fairly unpleasant moment this morning: the gas-bottle ran out and Ajeesh’s mum asked him to buy a new one. (This is understandable – their cooker is a gas double-burner. They have built-in wood-fired stoves but are socially not ‘allowed’ to use them because the house isn’t yet finished. [They need glass in the windows, not torn plastic sheeting and to fix the roof as a very minimum. After that, the packed-earth floor would need to be surfaced, then I think they’d want doors in the internal door-ways.])

Ajeesh screamed: today he’s due to see his bank manager about getting a loan for Jaya’s dowry. I don’t care if I’m repeating myself when I say it’s 2 lakhs (around 2500 UK pounds) and that it needs to reach Jaya’s fiance’s family by the 16th August. This will enable the family to build a house for the couple: they’re due to marry on 31st August. (Apparently this is an astrologically opportune date.) Ajeesh tells me that Rajesh, the fiance, wouldn’t mind if the dowry didn’t materialise: he loves Jaya and wants to marry her, not her bank-balance. However, Rajesh’s family does want the dowry, ostensibly for the house I’ve just mentioned.

So Ajeesh is going to try to get a loan from his bank. The interest-rate is likely to be between 6 and 11%. I’m not asking any reader to lend an unknown bloke a large lump of cash purely on my recommendation, even secured against Ajeesh’s family’s house. However if anyone can come up with any bright ideas for a lower-cost loan, please, please contact me privately or comment here.

(I should add that within moments Ajeesh, Jaya, his mother and I were back to their normal, jokey selves. One of the things I respect about the Kerala I’ve seen is the jokey, happy nature of people, even in extreme conditions.)

HELP REQUEST
Also, Ajeesh’s mate DS would like to consult with someone about lightning conductors. Again, please contact me privately or comment here and I’ll forward you DS and Ajeesh’s email addresses.

OK, that’s enough for now. Time to go back to the travel-agent and see what he’s come up with.

Firstly, sincere apologies to anyone who reads this for not getting the lj-cuts in the previous entry right first time. I did try to correct them but the town’s dial-up connection had died, along with my retinae, just as I was about to submit the updated entry.

The lj-cut ‘abdicating my divinity’ hides a long and probably tedious examination of gender roles and treatment of guests here. You have been warned.

yesterday once more (Sunday 25th)
Yesterday contined with a meal at a local restaurant: masala dosa and black tea for Rs12. You can do the maths. I wonder how much the workers make per hour?

Ajeesh then drove us back towards his house. At the place where he parks his car (about 500m from his house but just before the slop gets impossible for the car), we met some of his friends who live about in a nearby ‘suburb’, 100 or so metres vertically above his house and about 1km of jeep-rutted track away. They have a small chai-shop that seems to fulfil the functions of a UK pub – apart from selling alcohol.

One of them is a self-taught electronic engineer. He introduced me to the sound-system he’s cobbled together and we bounced around his house. It’s a shame to see his skills going to waste: he wants to be a fully-fledged hardware engineer – you can guess why it hasn’t yet happened.

happiness?
It may seem that I’m perpetually upset and not enjoying myself here. I think there’s bias in the reporting. On the whole I am very much enjoying my time here. Every now and then I get a bit miserable, especially when I lose things or get too tired to want to be here, but every now and then, something happens to make me say to myself ‘shut up moaning, you pampered so-and-so’ or I see again some of Kerala’s beauty and the enjoyment restarts. I’ve been invited to stay indefinitely and offered, even encouraged to make a life here. It’s tempting but there are too many people and things in the UK I’d miss.

I think the friendships I’ve made here will continue: I hope they can be strengthened by some sort of fair/ethical trade set-up. Anyone out there interested in buying coffee, tea, vanilla, cardomom, jaggery, etc from here. I’ve enjoyed the food immensely here and would like others to have the chance to do so.

yesterday once more (Sunday 25th) continued
Back at the house, another food-gasm courtesy of Jaya:

• fat-grained rice still in its cooking water
• chatni: grated coconut, mango, onion, mustard seed, all mashed together
• part-caramelised onion, steamed with sliced green beans, chilli and slightly fried grated coconut

</lj-cut)

movie mayhem (Saturday 26th)
After finally getting to wash my clothes this morning, Ajeesh drove me, Jaya, his mum and niece into town to watch another movie. This was filmed in Idukki district and appeared to be about a carpenter who shelters a woman from unjust legal penalties by getting her to dress up as a bloke and become his apprentice. The song-and-dance piece where she acts as a bloke trying to dance a “normal woman’s movie dance” were hysterical.

I lost interest when she put her (own) clothes back on and the inevitable matching happened. However my interest perked up again when the woman (by now still female but appearing to have gotten through 2 tragic marriages [I’m sure appearances are deceptive here] then fell in love with the carpenter. During the interval (movies here tend to last over 2 hours), I fell about laughing again to a techno version of Twinkle, twinkle, little star. I’m sure I’m going to have to explain my amusement to Ajeesh and co later.

In another hysterical piece, she pressed her suit towards him while he politely tried to evade her clutches and escape. Eventually he returned her love and they pedalled off into the sunset. The part I enjoyed most was when the projectionist fell asleep and delayed a reel-change for 5 minutes: the audience’s cat-calls have been recorded for posterity.

abdicating my divinity
I don’t care who is looking over my shoulder as I key this. If you have the nerve to pick up my diary or look over my shoulder when I’m keying in my banking password, don’t be upset by what you read here.

There’s a bloody great caveat about my fondness for Kerala. People have been wonderfully friendly and welcoming (if far too nosey) so it may seem unfair to criticise but I think it’s right to record and report my complete impression.

The caveat is that, outside of restaurants and chair-stalls, if a woman is fit and available, she’ll do ALL the domestic work. A man won’t even take his dirty dishes to the sink and will drop (for example) his cigarette-packet wrapper on the floor and expect a wife, sister or mother to sweep up after him.

I don’t know if men living on their own don’t do any (I have no experience of this to report) and I know they’re capable of doing it. However, I’ve been told that domestic work is basically a woman’s role and that it is ‘balanced’ by men’s work in the fields, etc.

I might be able to accept this if I didn’t see evidence of lack of balance: women certainly do work in men’s ‘province’. I’ve not seen a single man return the favour. For example, many women work in fields, carry huge loads of wood barefoot up extreme slopes and labour on roads. I don’t know who does the domestic duties in their houses but I’d be prepared to bet the cost of my next week’s food that it isn’t their husbands.

I know that I’ve seen a statistically insignificant part of Kerala and that by reporting what I’ve seen here, I’m only paying lip-service to this issue. So far I’ve done nothing significant to balance the amount of work that Jaya has done for me and I’m struggling to think how I can. The only route seems to be to find a job for Ajeesh so that he can pay her dowry to her fiance’s family and so Jaya and her fiance can actually marry.

I need to acknowledge that Ajeesh has spent days centred on my wishes and needs too and that I have so far been unable to give back to my satisfaction. However I think there’s more scope for doing so in his case.

As for the many people to whom he’s introduced me, especially all the women who have made tea or prepared delicious food and served me with welcoming smiles until I near explosion, then taken away dirty dishes and refused to let me do anything in return, I have no idea yet how to restore the balance but I’m thinking about it!

I know I’m mixing my experiences as a guest and as a (western) male into this report: this is inevitable because there’s only one of me. (Aren’t you glad?) The attitude here seems to be that ‘a guest is God’. I feel a large need to abdicate from this divinity. Quite apart from the tedious of disappearing in a puff of logic because I won’t allow myself to believe in deities, I don’t want to be worshipped and I don’t work miracles. Nor do I always want to sit in the best chair: standing is nice sometimes.

Again, this fulfillment of my almost every need might be more comfortable if I was currently returning such consideration or there was a chance to do so in the future. However, it’s very unlikely that Ajeesh or Jaya, for example, will ever be my guests in the UK or elsewhere. If you have any suggestions, please, please comment.

OK, it’s 6pm here and the walk up the hill takes 50 minutes. It gets dark in 45 minutes. I’m offski!

OK then, after a blogging break caused by being on the road and in places where even CellOne (India’s rural – but crap – cellphone service) won’t reach, I’m back in Nedumkandam for a few days to do laundry, dry out and arrange the next bit of travel. Meanwhile, here’s an enhanced version of what made it into my diary over the past week or so. Some of this goes over time I’ve already blogged about but I’m sure you can synthesise the two into one coherent account. If not, remember the secret is to keep banging the rocks together.

Yet again, I’m appalled at my prose…

Thursday 15th (Calangute, Goa)
We’d originally come to Calangute so that I could meet up with a former colleague who was visiting India. I hadn’t heard from her after she arrived in India and was beginning to get concerned but this morning she sent me a text: it turns out she got sick and escaped Calangute the day before we arrived. Hope you’re fine now, Ms F!

This was also a very tense day. Ajeesh and I hired a bike from the guest-house owner so we could go further without being at the mercy of Goas’s bus company (Kadamba Road Transport Company). We didn’t sign a hire agreement and Ajeesh (who did the negotiations in Konkani or Tamil) assumed that the 150 rupees per day he was quoted for a 100cc bike would also apply to the 150cc bike he eventually got from the guest-house owner. Both lead to trouble later and not checking the bike immediately led to extra expense. I’m annoyed with myself for not insisting we take the bike half a kilometre or so to check it. If we had checked it, we might have noticed that the fuel gauge wasn’t working and so not have bought a lot of petrol which we didn’t then use. Also, I’m sure I would have seen that the speedometer wasn’t working and insisted on another bike so that I could just tell Ajeesh “keep below 40kpmh and I’ll not leave a brown vapour trail or scream at you to SLOW DOWN!”. Finally, I’d have insisted that the helmet rack be removed from the passenger hand-grip so I could hold on properly!

Ahem. So we went on our merry way to Anjuna and had a look for the famed flea market. H’mm – something wrong here. My diary says Thursday but the market’s on a Wednesday. Perhaps that (and not it being off-season) explains why the market ground was empty. We biked through Anjuna’s back paths and over a grassy and rock headland, then came back via the sea front, passing some paragliders on the wat. We also amazed a California who’se now resident in Anjuna that we arrived where he was from this direction.

He recommended we head up the coast to Arambol. With no other thoughts as to what to do and a whopping three litres of petrol in the tank (ooh!), off we went. The beach was deserted apart from Ajeesh and I and two para-surfers, the sand was scorching hot and the surf was fun and warm. I know this mightn’t amaze you but after 20 years of living in a seaside town but only once braving the sea, it’s brilliant to me.

On the way back (a journey punctuated by Ajeesh’s search for paan), I persuaded him to keep slow but he asked me to hold his shoulders rather than reach back. I’m not sure I felt any safer. However, just outside Baga, our luck ran out. We, along with others, were signalled to stop by a police-person. Their fun for the day was checking that motorists passing this spot weren’t driving stolen vehicles or committing other offences . The papers proving that the bike belonged to the hotel owner were locked in a side compartment we couldn’t open. With hindsight, this was probably a good thing: the papers would have shown for sure that the bike wasn’t ours and we had nothing to prove we hadn’t stolen it! The police-person dealing with us didn’t seem to hear or understand my suggestion that he phone the owner and get him to confirm we’d got the bike from him legally.

As we were struggling with the compartment door, a bloke in an orange shirt came over and asked me what the problem was. Ajeesh and I replied, mentioning that we couldn’t get at the papers we needed and that we didn’t have any hire documents. The bloke replied “you shouldn’t say this: that’s illegal too and you’ll get a bigger fine.” Ajeesh replied to him but I wasn’t sure we should carry on the conversation: who was this bloke. I asked the uniformed officer who beckoned us back to him whether the Orangeman was a police-person. I received a mouthful of abuse for this: apparently I shouldn’t have talked to him if I had doubts. Pointing out that I didn’t start the conversation led to more tongue-lashing. Ajeesh tried to intervene, mentioning his social work in the hope that we’d get off because of his good character. This may have helped – we were fined 100 rupees while a couple of Mumbaikars were fined 500 rupees for exactly the same offences.

The police weren’t very thorough: to start with, the bike wouldn’t have passed a UK MOT. Nor did they check our ID or luggage. I’m sure Indian law says you should wear a helmet and I’m sure I never want a run-in with foreign police ever again.

Later Ajeesh got on the wrong side of my tension from this event and from breaking British (telephonic) social conventions he couldn’t have known about. I’m embarrassed to say I went on about it for some time. I’ve apologised profusely since and I think that what I said was true but I’m still embarrassed by this.

Friday 16th (Calangute, Goa)
I hate being stupid. For about the fourth time, I went swimming in the sea while wearing the ring my father made for me over 20 years ago. The inevitable finally happened. I didn’t notice until we got back to our hotel room – and then I cried and cried. How could I be so careless? I feel like I’ve thrown away parts of me and my father: stupidity almost to the point of being evil. I hate being this stupid. I know logically this ring is just a thing, that I wasn’t born with it and that I can’t take it with me but right now my emotions are over-ruling logic.

Saturday 16th (Calangute, then ‘Old Goa’)
We packed and left Calangute after being gouged for an extra 150 rupees for the bigger bike. We bussed to Panjim and then to Old Goa. This is the former capital city of the Portuguese colony and a few centuries ago was a throbbing metropolis. However now it consists of a few huge Portuguese/Catholic churches, a few chai-stalls, a grotty hotel and a few shops. A hotel tout took us to the hotel and charged us 30 ruppes for a 500-metre drive: The outside of the hotel looks ok but ht eroom we were offered was so filthy we rejected it immediately. We were offered another but this too was too manky even for me. We accepted a third on condition that they brought clean bedclothes, used some disinfectant and swept the floor, especially to get rid of the used condom in the bathroom.

I was in need of some solitude so Ajeesh went for a walk while I stayed in the room for a while and then watched the Portugal/Ivory Coast football match. After Ajeesh returned, we at indifferent curry and chapattis and crashed out.

Sunday 17th (‘Old Goa’, then Panjim)
We looked around the cathedrals and churches. The amount of gold and other riches in these places made me feel slightly nauseated. I must admit I have difficulties with Christianity at the best of times. (It‘s the religion that most informs my atheism), especially with hierarchical and sexist versions. When so much wealth is wasted glorifying a deity that doesn’t exist while all around there is poverty, I tend to get very annoyed. I think I better avoid South America and the southern US for the rest of my days. Ajeesh and I had a long talk about our reactions to people we’d met in Goa. He told me some about some things he’d discussed (in Indian languages) with people there. They didn’t seem to square with the snippets of English that had been in those conversations: I felt depressed and confused because I’d also received other impressions when talking in (admittedly very broken) English with these people. I don’t like being split between people: this feeling continued to dog me for the next few days, on top of my ongoing feelings of loss about my ring.

We bussed to Panjim: there was no need to stay any longer in Old Goa and the room was still unappealing. At the local tourist office, we asked a guide if she could recommend somewhere within our budget. While she was sorting this, we were bothered by a piss-head who used to be PA to the former tourism minister and now comes to the tourist office to mourn his lost job. We went to where the guide had said she’d booked us: this turned out to be piece of dilapidated street with no sign of a guest-house or hotel. A stall-keeper beckoned us and asked me in reasonable English if I spoke English. I’m sorry to say that I replied ‘better than anyone else in India, mate: it’s my mother tongue and my profession demands perfect English’. The stall-keeper replied ‘I doubt this’ and then went on to say that he was a local person and had never heard of the guest-house in which we’d been booked. He beckoned his mate, a motorbike/taxi driver: he took Ajeesh around looking for potential guest-houses. This seemed to work: we got a room for 250 rupees. H’mm: I’m sure the owner was being racist against his own country-folk when he said that he only rented to us when he saw me. Maybe I’m wrong: maybe he could sniff a fellow journalist.* Whatever, the room was clean, had its own mozzie nets, a TV, almost non-flaky electricity supply, a balcony, separate beds and a clean bathroom with a flushing squat toilet.
*yep, I’m a paid-up member of the National Union of Journalists, for whatever that’s worth!

Just in case you’re ever in Panjim, here’s the details of the guest house: Vincent Residency, behind Tourist Residency, Near Secretariat, Panaji-Goa 403001, phone 0091-832-222-3928, email vincent5552004 @ @ yahoo.com, proprietor Vincent De Souza.

We ate at a restaurant that’s apparently run by high-caste/Brahmin folk from Karnataka. It was clean, the service was fast and the frankincense they used frequently was beautiful. Ajeesh is interested in trying to build links between the different states by bringing Keralan children here (and letting them experience trains and boats), so he negotiated with the restaurant owners about packages for feeding his ‘tourists’ and got a good potential deal. Just in case you need to eat in Panjim, it’s the Kamat Restaurant, 1st Floor, Dr. Joao-De-Castro Road, Near Tourist Hostel (Panjim Residency), Panaji-Goa 403001, phone 0091-832-242-2077.

Monday 19th (Panjim, then train to Kerala)
See previous entry for our run-in with baksheesh. One thing I didn’t mention there was that I finally lost my patience with people pushing into the queue ahead of us and pushed someone back behind me. I didn’t manage to dissuade the arse who barged into the middle of my transaction with the ticket vendor and I’m annoyed that he just sold the bloke a ticket, rather than telling him to wait.

Tuesday 20th (train to Kerala, then Nedumkandam)
We arrived in Ernakulam roughly on time, feeling grotty and sleepy (even though I’d slept for 7 hours on the train). Ajeesh had arranged for Shaji and DS (his journalist and social-worker friends) to drive his car to Ernakulam to meet us. They’d been delayed by a puncture: this gave us time to eat at the station’s vegetarian restaurant (Yummy dosas, as I recall).

About an hour into the journey, we stopped in a place called Muvattpuzha and took a kettu valam (old-style boat/taxi) across the local river to a landing stage. DS and Shaji stripped to their underwear and Ajeesh changed into a very short lunghi. (I’d changed into trunks back at the car). We swam and washed in the river – it was brilliant to float and drift in the current, but quite hard work to get back to the landing-stage. However, I felt clean again: hoorah!

We also called in at a Maruti/Suzuki service station where Ajeesh negotiated about a replacement tyre – apparently Shaji hadn’t know he carried a spare wheel and had had a new tyre put onto the afflicted wheel. Also these tyres were still under guarantee and Ajeesh naturally wanted his friend to be reimbursed. We stopped later for lunch at a small restaurant: boiled tapioca with onion, tomato and chilli salad. (The others also had beef[!], chicken and fish dishes.) We arrived at Nedumkandam late in the evening: I don’t recall much else about the day.

Wednesday 21st (Nedumkandam)
I woke at 10 am and read some more of the Mahabharata (I guess I must have started it the previous night). I’m not sure it really taught me anything other than the basic caste system was already in place by the time the book’s events took place (assuming they ever did, of course). A strange sound turned out to be Ajeesh’s mother grading peppercorns by shaking them in a flat-ish tray. The bigger corns don’t move so much as their shaken: this and gravity concentrate them near the shaker. Ajeesh and his father (Gopalakrishna) loaded a sack of home-grown coffee beans and a sack of the graded pepper into an autorickshaw that had brought some visitors, then Gopalakrishna and the produce were taken to town. Jaya (Ajeesh’s youngest sister) had cooked rice noodles and sambal containing jackfruit seeds.

I have to say that the best food I’ve eaten in India has been home-cooked. Small cafes make good masala dosas with sambal and chatni but Suria’s tomato bhaji (amongst other things) is delicious and Jaya has given me at least two food-gasms.

Ajeesh and I took an auto to town: the whole town’s internet connection was down so that bullet point was postponed. I had a severe haircut and beard-trim (please comment if you want to see before and after photos) and was persuaded to buy a dhoti and matching shirt. Apparently it’s socially unacceptable for Brahmins to wear lunghis except when at home or doing manual work: dhotis appear to be the equivalent of a UK white-collar worker’s suit. Also, apparently, I’m nearly a Brahmin because of my dietary choice, although I suspect my educational and (former) professional status may have something to do with it, as (I believe) will Ajeesh’s family being Brahmin.

We met up with Gopalakrishna and Ajeesh’s neighbour and drank yet more khardum chaya. I bought a fine comb and raked my itching scalp: I badly wanted the shower I’d been persuaded to postpone until after my haircut. Meanwhile Radio Bruce was playing Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting. The video to this song has always moved me to tears. I just wish today I could have echoed her feeling that

Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen.
And I don’t know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen

Ajeesh took me to see a Malayalam film at Nedumkandam’s other, posher cinema. It was a police/political intrigue/action movie full of interchangeable fat gits with moustaches hitting each other for good and not-so-good reasons. (Male Malayalam film-stars, despite being slimmer than their Tamil counterparts, appear to all be fat gits who pack punches like mules.)

Thursday 22nd (Munnar)
Shaji had invited Ajeesh and I to lunch. He lives in a tiny house with his wife (Mini), their son and Shaji’s(?) mother. Their house is one of many that’s reached by following fairly perilous tracks up from minor roads and has plastic sheeting instead of glass in the windows: even so, this is better than many I’ve seen. Again, my blog is a victim of my poor memory and not diary habits: I can hardly picture Mini, I know I was told the boy’s name and I’ve completely forgotten what we ate and talked about.

Ajeesh and I then set off towards Munnar: we wanted to show me more of Kerala and the place where he hopes to build a restaurant and toilet block. He has a tiny piece of land on the main road between Idukki’s two main (and much-visited) tourist spots, Kumily/Thekaddi and Munnar. They’re over 100 km apart but there’s no clean restaurant on the way and the road demands you take breaks. He wants to create this so he can find a job for an orphan his parents house and fund some social projects. So if anyone feels like investing in India and has two lakhs of rupees (about 2500 UK pounds) to invest, please let me know! Failing this, can anyone offer him a job?

Ajeesh dearly wants to live up to the financial aspects of his social responsibilities: these include Jaya’s dowry [another 2 lakhs] on top of the dowries for the older two sisters who are already married. I’ve met Rajesh, Jaya’s fiancée, and I can see there’s enough love there for him not to reject her if the dowry doesn’t materialise but the rest of his family apparently would never accept this. Ajeesh is very happy to do anything that will enable him and doesn’t want ‘charity’: he says ‘don’t give me fish: give or lend me a fishing-rod so I can feed myself’.

I think my brain was switched off most of the journey to Munnar. I vaguely recall us trying to get into a nearby national park but finding it closed for the evening. After we’d met up with two of Ajeesh’s friends who are teachers at Munnar, Ajeesh coaxed his car up some impossible-seeming paths to a grotty-looking school and hostel for tribal kids. They put me in front of a classroom full of kids and asked me to give an impromptu spoken English lesson. I thought the best way to start this was to get each of them to tell me their names and hopes for the future and hear their opinions and feelings about Kerala: things they could speak about. I was also given a few addresses and I’m sure I’ll be getting more by email and snail-mail: anyone else want a pen-pal in Kerala?

Back in Munnar, we collected some food froma restarant and ate at the local government school with Ajeesh’s teacher pals and some of their colleagues. By now exhaustion at being bombarded with Malayalam conversation (which no-one stopped to explain) and other tensions had reduced my conversational abilities to monosyllables. One of these tensions was the appearance of a bottle of brandy. I slammed about 10 ml for appearances’ sake and made sure I ate lots.

Again, Ajeesh had conjured us a decent room at a price within our very limited budget in another hotel that in places was a building-site. Rooms in Munnar tend to cost over Rs600 per night and can run to several thousands: this was all of 300! I slept quite well despite the unbroken sound of pouring rain.

Friday 23rd (Kanthaloor)
Munnar’s two ATMs were out of order and both of us were short of cash. We were also very low on petrol but fortunately (it seemed) an Indian Oil garage took mastercard. 10 litres were already in the tank when I got nervous about a UK card being accepted here (I’d had some problems in the US a few years ago). The transaction went through OK so we got another 10 litres. Problem: we’d either have to wait an hour to make another credit-card transaction or pay some other way. I showed the cashier I had traveller’s cheques and so all they needed to do was wait a bit while I cashed one. He seemed to accept this but the manager came out and started giving us abuse. Eventually Ajeesh scrapped up enough cash to pay for this petrol and we escaped.

I can understand a bit of the garage-manager’s annoyance because cashing regular travellers cheques at a national bank in a well-known tourist resort took 30 minutes, interminable-seeming paper-shuffling and at least three staff gabbling at each other. Efficiency appears not to be a priority in this bank (State Bank of Travancore)

We drove to a place called Echo Point, near Mattupetty Dam. I was eventually persuaded to try chewing tobacco – bleurgh. There was also a wonderful ‘no shit, Sherlock’ moment: on the dam, a sign saying ‘Mattupetty Dam: 0 km’. Love it to bits. The way Ajeesh had planned to go had been blocked last night by a landslide so we drove the long way to a tiny village called Kanthaloor (the nearest town is Marayoor/Maraiyur) in the north-east of Idukki district, where one of Ajeesh’s many cousins lives. On the way we passed many tea-plantation workers, working outdoors without waterproofs in absolutely filthy weather. Most of the plantations in this area are owned by the Kanan Devan brand/division of Tata: apparently it’s a relatively good employer: it pays its workers twice the usual rates (90 Rs per day) along with accommodation, sick pay and pension contributions. Others pay Rs50 per day with no such benefits. Bear in mind that 1 UK pound is Rs80 and that a night in hospital here might cost Rs500.

Around Marayoor is India’s best sandalwood growing area: apparently nowhere else has the combination of altitude and rain shadow this area enjoys. It’s under heavy government protection: taking a sandalwood tree could net you 2 lakhs but also entitles you to around 12 years at Mr Gandhi’s boarding house. We stopped briefly at Kovilkadavu to visit a Tamil-style temple (many people here are Tamils – it’s about 12 km from the Kerala/Tamil Nadu border) and look at some ancient structures that are apparently prehistoric houses and graves. (When I get to place that offers broadband, I’ll put up some photos.)

We also stopped at a one of the local jaggery (raw cane-sugar) outfits. Local sugar-cane is pressed to extract the juice. A pan about 10 metres in diameter and 1 meter deep is heated over a fire fuelled with pressed cane for a couple of hours to evaporate most of the water. The residue is then poured into a cooling pan where the still-hot product is shaped by hand into balls. We were given some: it’s bloody delicious!

Ajeesh’s cousin, Suresh, lives with his wife and their young son in a house behind the telephone office he runs in Kanthaloor. Behind this, he grows cardomom, tree-tomatoes, brinjal, peaches, apples and plums: This flabbergasts me: his house is at about 2000 metres above sea-level yet he can grow crops that rival Worcestershire’s and it’s at only 50 to 100 metres. The secret is apparently that this area is in rain-shadow, sheltered by 2500-metre mountains in all directions.

Just as we arrived, the local police commandeered Ajeesh and his car to take away a bloke who’d been caught running an illegal still: spirits are a government monopoly in Kerala. There’s also the fear that the products are cut with meths and other nasties. The police and the arrestee reappeared in a police jeep a few later minutes later. This was a great relief – all my stuff apart from my passport, cash and ticket home were still in the car and I certainly didn’t want the police going through it.

Various locals (apparently village-level politicians) came out to argue with the police. (Ajeesh reckoned they profit from such stills.) I suppose I’m lucky that my camera batteries had just run out – otherwise I might have really pissed off the police, the arrestee or the local politicians. Hmmmm………..

A local bloke took us to a tribal village below Kanthaloor. Most of the houses are made of mud plastered onto wooden frames and have roofs woven from leaves and earthen floors. They’re about 2 or 3 square metres in area with the roofs and very low – it’s just possible to stand under the ridge but everywhere else you have to crawl, sit or crouch. Such houses are homes for families of 5 or 6 people. This is also the first time I’ve been in the presence of royalty: one of these houses, in which I was incredibly warmly greeted and offered local coffee, is home to the ‘village-king’ and his family. It didn’t appear to be any bigger than the others. There are some government-funded cement houses in the village but the locals don’t like these because they’re insufferably hot in summer. Screens of woven leaves alleviate some of this but don’t do anything about the poor quality of the cement. I was told that outsiders (both Indian and European) have bought much of this village’s land very cheaply and now its former owners are poorly-paid labourers on it. It looks a fantastic place to live: 2000 metres up yet surrounded by fertile (but severe) slopes and effectively isolated from much of the modern world but sadly hit by our old enemy, capitalism. Ajeesh wants to set up an eco-development committee here so that the locals can effectively combine to deal with outsiders.

We spent the night at the hotel ‘Mountain Shine’. It’s apparently run by a Scotsman who’s settled here because he likes the local produce: no further comment m’lud. It’s clean and fine apart from the lack of hot water: probably because the electicrity supply had been cut off by the same landslide that had delayed us.

Saturday 24th (back to Nedumkandam)
We walked through a ‘semi-tribal’ area near to the hotel: kids were playing with kites made of paper and old twine or cassette-tape. I stopped to fix one for a young child and got some appreciative laughs from nearby adults and one of the best smiles I’ve ever received. Most houses here are cement but there’s a few traditional ones. However, this area’s more organised or fortunate than the one we visited yesterday: the apparently well-made sewers and water supply are quite recent and should last a decent time and some of the children have been to school for, ooh, 8 years! There’s also a big resort and a large house owned by a European woman: I’m told that inside it’s plush and has all mod cons: outside it looks like a traditional tribal structure apart from having two stories.

On the way back we stopped at Evrakulam park to try to get a glimpse of Nilgiri Tahirs – a very endangered species of deer that lives only here. It was pissing down so all we saw were the insides of umbrellas and sodden hillsides. Not much for Rs300 but they did warn us that seeing the deer was far from guaranteed.

We spent most of the rest of the journey listening to a female singer who makes devotional songs well-worth hearing. I’ll try to buy a copy of the CD.

About 10km from Nedumkandam we stopped at the house where ‘Bhindu 2’ (i.e. not the Bindhu who invited me to her wedding but the Bindhu who Ajeesh took me to visit in hospital. Her mother and Ajeesh’s mother are sisters.) She invited us to stay the night and fed us tapioca, chapattis, chatni and fried bitter gourd: yum. We watched Tamil TV and played with her children: a great way to relax. It rained hard from 6pm this evening until 6.30 the following morning and hasn’t actually stopped. I woke many times in the night due to my own eructations and flatus: Bhindu told me I sounded like a rifle-range! I also had a weird dream involving a bloke who’s intgerned at L&L several times and I being in school together (I was older and a prefect!). His mac was away for repairs so he’d constructed one ENTIRELY from modelling-clay and got it to run a screen-saver!

Sunday 25th (Nedumkandam)
Now back in Nedumkandam, airing out my head, about to do some dhobi and get ready to move on!See you later, space-cats!