Somehow I found time to write an (annotated) diary entry
On bus to Rasipuram (met Selvam, Suriya’s distant cousin [Suriya and his grandfathers were brothers], who gave us a lift to the main road).

MDMK(?) propaganda in abundance.

MDMK(?) poster

Last night phone was f***** – bad news because I really wanted to call home. In my absence, dad calls me at Nitya and Balaji’s house.

I’d been missing contact with home so Priya, Rajesh and Nitya took me to an international phone booth, even though it was late at night. Earlier Bobby had given me the addresses [and phone numbers where available] of all the places I’d be staying for the wedding and I’d emailed them to my parents. The international phone didn’t work and there was a brief discussion over whether I was dialling my parents’ number correctly. I kept my cool, despite feeling slightly insulted. My parents have had the same number for at least 20 years and I’d been calling them regularly from India.

TV/DVD-equipped bus, Tamil/Bollywood/disco music

This is probably a contradiction. Tamil Nadu has a large cinema industry centred on Chennai.

Then meet David Padmanaban and his orphanage/bus/church.

David and his wife Shakila (Suriya’s neice) are (Protestant?) Christians whose house in the in the compound of the orphanage they own(?) and run. They also have property (a single-story apartment building and possibly a tea plantation) in the Nilgiris, some farmland in the outskirts of Rasipuram and a bus service.

David and Shakila Padmanaban

He showed me around the orphanage. I couldn’t help cringing when he asked them to line up and then come forward in turn to shake my hand. I wonder if this was as embarrassing for them as it was for me? I don’t fault David and Shakila’s aims or kindness and given the chance, I would like to support this work: these kids would probably have been on the streets or dead without this place.

some of the orphans – the rest were on holiday with distant relatives

There seemed also to be a disparity between the orphanage quarters and its owners’ house which seemed to tacitly say “I’m rich: you’re not”. I’m well aware that this disparity is nothing compared to the disparity between the orphans’ apparent lives and the cost of the camera slung around my waist or the amount of money I’m spending on what’s basically a holiday.

I was also curious why Suriya lives in a tiny rented house in Goa and has serious financial difficulties (she’d shown me her bank book) when David and Shakila were well off in Tamil Nadu. I did ask Suriya about this later: if I put her answer here, I might be libelling David and Shakila. This would be totally out of order: they fed and watered me, treated me kindly and I’m just a random stranger who can’t (currently) do anything for them except advertise their help for kids who otherwise have nothing while I’m (currently) doing nothing at all for anyone.

David then took me on the back of his scooter to his church, his school and to the bus station to show me (one of?) his bus(es?).

	David Padmanaban’s church
	David Padmanaban’s school
	David Padmanban’s bus

He also took me to his nearby farmland where his staff grow bananas, coconuts and sugar-cane. The land is separated from a lake by a dyke that carries a main road. David told me that this had leaked, ruining half of this year’s sugar-cane crop. He also offered me coconut milk. This was another cringe-making event: one of his staff walked barefoot through ankle-deep, dirty-looking puddles puddles to a tree, climbed it and cut down two coconuts. He brought them back to the verandah where David and I were sitting (while the staff stood, almost to attention, around us), chopped off some of the husk and pierced the nut with a lethal-looking machete. After all this, the milk was watery and unpleasant, not a patch on how I believe the coconut flesh would have tasted.

I say bananas, you say baneenas

After this, David took me back to his house where I met Venkatesh (his father-in-law and Suriya’s brother-in-law) and Tukin, David and Shakila’s son. I doubt you’ll really want to know this but it was about now that I noticed I was constipated!

All this time Rajesh had been at the house. This was also embarrassing: obviously I didn’t know that much about the relationships but I did know that Rajesh was from north-east Karnataka but worked as a waiter in Goa and had been friends with Suriya and Raju for much, much longer than I. He had also never been to Tamil Nadu before. This preferential treatment continued during the week and at least twice I mentioned to Rajesh and Suriya that I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want it. I also tried to make it plain to everyone that I appreciated what they were doing for me but that there was an imbalance because I couldn’t return the favours unless any of them ever visited the UK and that I didn’t want to be even an unwilling cause of upset for Rajesh. All through this trip, he was generous and perfectly decent.

Onwards to nuptiality
Suriya, Rajesh and I then bussed back to Salem where we were joined by Laxmi and Priya. We then all bussed to Mettur Dam, where I managed to photograph poorly a ‘khala sanyassin’, then another bus to Kholetur and finally, as night fell, bussed to within 10 minutes’ walk of Savaryapalyam, Raju’s home village. During the walk, we met a wedding guest (probably a relative) who was an english and maths teacher. He took me on the back of his motorbike to the house where Raju was staying, then went back to collect others.

khala sanyassin (black-clothed mendicant priest)

At the house, I met Raju (the groom) for the second ever time and was also was introduced to more of his and Suriya’s friends and relations, including:

• Lily and Sakya-Raj (who live in Mettur Dam but are originally, I believe, from Suriya’s home village) and their children Leonie (aged 14) and Lizzie (aged 11)
• Leema (Suriya’s ‘best friend’ from her home village) and her daughter Selma.

I asked if there was an international phone-booth in the village (they seem to be incredibly common) but was told that the nearest was in Kholetur. I was taken by bike back to Kholetur (3 km in the dark at around 30 km/h was fine – until the driver answered his cellphone without stopping). After returning from this and getting grounded, we were given our evening meal. I have to say that until you’ve eaten real south Indian food with your fingers from a banana leaf you’ve missed one of the world’s best treats.

	Leema and Suriya
	Rajesh, Priya, Laxmi, Sakya-Raj, Raju, Suriya and Lily

Rajesh, Suriya and I were put up in a house belonging to Raju’s grand-parents. Rajesh and I were indoors on metal beds, while other folk slept on the verandah on wood-and-string beds or on mats.

Priya and Lizzie sharing a wood-and-string bed

We also got to watch a bit of cricket (I think highlights of the recent one-day series between India and Pakistan) while the family-folk were chatting out on the verandah. I was kept awake by this for a while and eventually went out to join them. Leema, a woman was smoking a cigar. She offered me one and I tried it: she must have lungs of cast iron to smoke these things! Finally I got to sleep around midnight – not too soon because the wedding was due to kick off at 8 am the next day.

Of all the experiences I could have in India, tonight’s meal has to be one of the wierdest. I have just drunk a MUG* of tea with soya milk and brown sugar!
*Tea in India is (almost) invariably served in tiny cups (less than 200ml, I guess) with cow milk and white sugar, unless you are nible and quick enough to specify khala chai (Marathi/Hindi for ‘black tea’) or nai cheeni (Hindi for ‘no sugar’) or nai sagar (Marathi for ‘no sugar’).

To complete the trip, my meal was

• grilled TOFU with a peanut sauce
• boiled sweet potatoes
• carrot sticks
• green salad
• millet chapati
• a blend of freshly-prepared beetroot, carrot and orange juice. (These three were my choices – I think I’ll try something else next time.)

The whole meal was organic and vegan. And there was me not believing in miracles.

TRAVEL

	Gautami, Suriya, Bobby, Laxmi, Rajesh and Dhanush
	Bobby, Gautami, Suriya and Laxmi

I can’t remember much about this journey. I know we (I, Laxmi, Rajesh, Suriya, Bobby, Goutami and Dhanush) took trains from Margao to Mangalore (i.e. south along the west coast from Goa to southern Karnataka) and thence to Salem in Tamil Nadu. The first train officially departed Margao at 1.35pm. (In reality, it was an hour late, leading me to worry that we’d not make our connection.) Just before we left, Bobby announced that she and her children would leave the second train at Coimbatore in west Tamil Nadu: Ravi had changed job, which necessitated them moving house, so she had to attend to that and would probably miss the wedding. I was quite saddened by this – I’d been utterly smitten by Dhanush and Gautami.

Suriya and Bobby had spent a lot of time making food for the journey: lemon rice, chapattis and mango chutney, all of which were delicious. Reserved seats were wonderful – no overcrowding, no insane fights to get through the doors, space for luggage, fold-down tables, the works!

reserved-seat carriage

We made our connection at Mangalore in plenty of time and I was introduced to the delights of three-tier sleepers. The carriages are divided into booths (not compartments: there are no doors). In each booth, the seats (which are perpendicular to the carriage sides) double as bottom bunks. The seat-backs swing up to become the second tiers and the third tiers are at about head-hight. Across the aisle from the ends of the three tiers, parallel to the carriage sides and perpendicular to the three-tier bunks, are two more bunks: one at seat height and one at head-height. There’s no luggage racks but there are chains under the lowest bunks to which you can lock your bags. The bunks have some padding and are covered in vinyl – just what you need in this climate!

I don’t know how we wangled getting a complete booth to ourselves: the numbers on the beds didn’t quite tally with the numbers on our ticket. Bobby and Dhanush* were on a bottom bunk, with Gautami above them and Rajesh on the top bunk. Suriya was on the bottom bunk across the booth from Bobby and Dhanush, Laxmi was above her and I had the top bunk. There’s absolutely no privacy: not even curtains separate the bunks in a booth from each other and there’s only a wire mesh divider between booths at top-bunk level. Indian Rail doesn’t provide bedding** so most folk slept in their clothes. I had a sheet sleeping bag so I crawled into it, changed into lycra shorts and bedded down: I think I even got 5 hours’ sleep.
*under-5s don’t have need tickets and so don’t necessarily have their own seats or bunks
**Well, it may do in 1st class sleepers

The high spot of the journey was eating banana bhajis (slices of banana coated in gram-flour batter, then lightly fried) bought from a vendor at one of the stations. The bananas here are short, thick and not as sweet as ‘UK’ bananas but very filling. By the way, a banana tree isn’t a tree at all, it’s an annual grass. So don’t tell them your guilty secrets.

The low spot was the difference in opinions between Bobby and I on corporal punishment of children. I think it’s always unacceptable. I’d be interested to hear the views of any parents out there.

Bobby, Dhanush and Goutami were met by Ravi: he’d started growing a beard, and joked this was in my honour.

	Bobby, Dhanush, Ravi, Gautami, Rajesh, Suriya, Laxmi
	I’d had a hair-cut and beard-trim. I felt almost presentable.

By now dawn had broken and we were travelling through Tamil Nadu’s plains. There were some wonderfully wierd trees and in the distance, some attractive hills.

Tamil plains

POLITICS
Tamil Nadu is in the grip of election fever. The main parties seem to be the MDMK and the AIADMK: two factions formed from the pro-Tamil/Dravidian, anti-Hindi and central government DMK party. One of the recurring images is of Jayalalithaa, leader of the AIADMK.

The parties appear to be falling over themselves to offer the electorate more and more subsidised or free rice, free colour TVs and other largesse. From what I’ve heard* this largesse may only go to people who actually vote for whoever wins**. No-one I’ve talked to can say accurately how whoever forms the new state government will pay for it. (Most don’t seem to understand the question!***) A few are downright cynical about whether it will actually arrive. Suriya’s brother, Gopal, suggested Delhi would subsidise it. If so, this seems remarkably unfair on the rest of India and seems to fly in the face of the independence part of the Dravidian parties’ policies.
*I may well have mis-understood
**in which case, so much for secret ballots
***It’s quite possible this is due to the way I ask it.

Congress seems to have an alliance with the MDMK – their posters feature Kalaignar Muthuvel Karunanidhi. I can’t say the images would make me want to vote for him. I’ve seen lorry-loads of people being driven to rallies and party symbols* painted on just about any wall that’s available. I haven’t been able to find out whether the parties pay people for the use of their walls. I have been told that there is no limit to election spending.
*MDMK is a sun rising between two hills in red and black, someone else uses a multi-coloured mango and AIADMK uses two green leaves.

SALEM
At Salem, we overloaded an autorickshaw and put-putted our way to the house where Suriya’s middle daughter (Nitya) lives with her husband (Balaji), their one-year-old son (Kaushik), Suriya’s husband (Rangan) and Suriya’s brother (Gopal). Gopal’s a (retired?) electrical engineer and Balaji works nights at a courier. Nitya was obviously queen of the house, despite being only 17.

Again, I was given a fantastically warm welcome. For example, I was given one of the two beds in the house: everyone else apart from Gopal slept on mats on the floor. I did say that I was happy to be like everyone else and that I certainly didn’t want to put anyone else out of their own bed. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t gel with Gopal (a clash of mannerisms: he didn’t do anything that was actually bad).

Priya, Kaushik, Suriya and Nitya

Suriya had brought some brandy for her relatives (it costs twice the price in Tamil Nadu that it costs in Goa). Balaji gave a quarter of his bottle to Rangan and/or Gopal (I didn’t see who took it) and then invited Rajesh and I to drink with him. Someone had prepared a lot of pakora and rice, so once I’d put a decent lining in my stomach and was sure I would be safe, I joined in. (Rajesh managed to refuse all offers of alcohol.)

Balaji would pour a finger of brandy into a plastic cup, then fill the cup with water. I was dubious about the water and didn’t like the taste of this mixture anyway*, so I slammed half-finger shots, followed with cups of water from my filter bottle. I also kept on eating to make sure I got no more than merry. (This was a mistake in that later Suriya and Nitya would try to force-feed me a full meal. At each meal this week I had to repeat that I was full, that more food would spoil my enjoyment of what I’d already eaten and that perpetual argument about it was very unpleasant.)
*subliminal tastes make me yearn to taste the undiluted thing

By the end of the session Balaji and I had got the bottle down to about half-empty. Balaji then showered and went to work, while Suriya, Nitya, Laxmi, Priya, Rajesh and I went to the city centre so that Suriya could buy Kaushik’s birthday present, a wee trike.

Kaushik

This was the first time I saw a Tamil temple close-up. They’re fantastically ornate and I may go back to Tamil Nadu just to photograph some.

A temple in Salem

All this week the following lyrics from Amused to Death had been rattling through my head. Perhaps I should have realised this was an omen.

PERFECT SENSE

And the Germans killed Jews
And the Jews killed the Arabs
And the Arabs killed the hostages
And that is the news
And is it any wonder
That the monkey’s confused
He said Mama Mama
The President’s a fool
Why do I have to keep reading
These technical manuals
And the joint chiefs of staff
And the brokers on Wall Street said
Don’t make us laugh
You’re a smart kid
Time is linear
Memory’s a stranger
History’s for fools
Man is a tool in the hands
Of the great God Almighty
And they gave him command
Of a nuclear submarine
And sent him back in search of
The Garden of Eden

Can’t you see
It all makes perfect sense?

Back in Colva tonight so that tomorrow I can travel to the Salem area of Tamil Nadu for a wedding between a bloke I’ve met once and a woman who I’ve never met before, who believe in a religion/religions I don’t follow, while the service will be in a language I don’t understand. WTHF??

I received the following email a few days ago from a woman who’s been living in Nicaragua for a few years. For the moment she’s back in St Andrews with her Nicaraguan partner, Polo. I thought it best to leave her email exactly as it was – I don’t think I can or should add to or take from it.

Dear all,

Obviously it was hard to leave everyone in Limon knowing how vulnerable they are in so many ways. When we left, the full public health sector strike had been going on for just over five months. Now Nicaragua’s poor have spent six months without access to healthcare (those who can, go to private clinics but that is a luxury the 80% of the population living on less than US$2 a day can’t afford). 23,000 of the 24,000 public sector health workers declared a full strike on November 14th 2005. Their demand? Initially an 160% pay rise (while in all other countries in Central America doctors earn between US$500 – US$1,000 a month, Nicaraguan doctors earn on average US$300 a month while nurses and other health workers earn less than US$100 a month). By March this year most health workers had reduced their demand to a 30% rise while doctors maintained their demand at 43.25%. Last week the government agreed to raise salaries for all health workers by 30% and 20,000 nurses and other health workers have slowly but surely been returning to work. The 3,000 public sector doctors, however, are still on strike.

Every day for the last six months the Nicaraguan newspapers have told the stories of people with bleeding wounds, women in the final stages of labour and children who have passed out after severe bouts of diarrhoea being turned away from public hospitals. Government figures say 80 people have died so far as a result of the health strike. Unfortunately that is nowhere near the actual figure.

A full health sector strike is inconceivable in the UK. The government would have to do something to bring the strike to an end should such stories start filling the British newspapers. Even in Nicaragua where people are used to being treated like s**t by their government, it has been a shocking six months. So why has the government still not been able to come up with a measly US$39.75 extra for each of their 3,000 doctors each month?

The answer is simple. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) won’t allow it. Yes I know, the G8 ordered the IMF to cancel Nicaragua’s debt (along with another 17 highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs)). And that’s what they did… for a period of 17 days. On Dec. 21, just in time for Christmas, the IMF cancelled the US$201 million that Nicaragua owed. On Jan. 7, however, Nicaragua was given another IMF loan of US$192 million. Along with this loan came all the regular conditions, including the prohibition of public sector pay rises above the rate of inflation. Of course the Nicaraguan government didn’t have to accept the loan. But then the governments which accepted the original loans (the ones that have just be ‘cancelled’) didn’t have to either. So where does the problem lie here? In my opinion any responsible international institution which claims it works towards ‘poverty reduction’ in developing countries (as both the World Bank and the IMF claim) would have a look at how a government treats its people before decided whether or not their another US$190 million loan is actually going to make any difference. And if (as in Nicaragua’s case) they find out that each member of parliament is given US$500 a month in petrol on top of their US$5,000 a month salary while state school teachers earn US$100 a month and 50% of people live on less than US$1 a day, then surely they would have to conclude that such a government cannot be trusted to act in the name of its people. But then, the IMF and the World Bank are… well banks, so it’s not really their job to care about the consequences of their actions, just to celebrate as the cash flows in.

I think most people in the UK felt pretty good about the G8 decision to cancel 100% of the poorest countries’ loans with the IMF and the World Bank. And so we should have. It was a wonderful achievement after so many of us dedicated so much to the Make Poverty history campaign. But, as always, the struggle doesn’t stop at the end of one action, no matter how big. And unlike what the Live 8 promoters had us believe, July 4 – 10th was not the ‘week poverty can end’(!). Governments the world over have a tendency not to follow through on their promises once the public’s attention is elsewhere.

What is happening is Nicaragua is shameful and it is something we should all at least have the chance to find out about. Jubilee Scotland is following up the G8 promise and what the (G8 controlled) IMF and World Bank are doing in the 18 HIPCs. For more information about the reality of the debt relief promise you can visit their website (www.jubileescotland.org.uk).

One more thing before I go. Some of you may know that Polo and members of his family have a musical group called Felipe Urrutia y sus Cachorros (Felipe Urrutia and his Litter!) which comprises Polo’s dad (Felipe Urrutia), three sons and five grandsons. They play traditional folk music from the Estelí region (where they’re from). The pieces they play would all have been lost by now if it weren’t for Don Felipe’s incredible memory and dedication to his guitar and the melodies he learnt from older musicians as a child. The vast majority of Nicaragua’s traditional music was lost when radios and jukeboxes arrived in the country bringing with them songs and melodies imported from Mexico, Argentina and the US. And although local musicians were no longer asked to play at parties or gatherings, Felipe never forgot the music and when he had enough children to form a group (!) he taught them to play all the melodies. He’s become nationally famous as a result and the music forms part of the country’s cultural identity.

The group has recorded two CDs of their music, Antologia and La Fuerza del Amor. Polo has several copies with him which he is keen to sell. If you or anyone you know would like to buy a copy please send us a cheque for 10 pounds (or twenty pounds if you want a copy of both) to 52 Hepburn Gardens, St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9DF).

Thanks for reading.

Take care, Hannah

Walking back from the beach this evening, I met one of the Karnatakan clothing & nick-nacks vendors who had hassled me last night. She asked me to look at her shop (this was on the beach front), claiming that I hadn’t done so last night. I thought she had told me last night that she was returning to Karnataka today so that last night was her one chance to sell me anything and got very annoyed with what appeared to have been a lie. I told her that while I could see fine well where her shop was, I was going away from it, not into it.

whose karma ran over my dogma?
Tonight a band near my lodging is playing third-rate cover versions of classics from Jimi Hendrix songs – it’s painful and shutting the door of my room doesn’t block it out at all. I fled towards the beach and just happened to pass where the vendor I’ve mentioned above lives. She asked me to explain why I’d walked away earlier. Her response was that the vendor who left today was Tina – she was Anita and that I hadn’t looked at her wares, despite promising to do so last night. I couldn’t deny this was a possibility, because her beach-shop wasn’t next to the stalls I’d been led through last night. Anita told me that she had most of her wares in her shop, so I said I would fulfill the promise to look but that I didn’t promise to buy anything I didn’t want and/or need. The conversation included such delightful exchanges as

“how about this bag?”
“I have two rucksacs – I don’t need and can’t carry another bag”
“what price will you give me”
“none – it’s not the price that’s an issue. I don’t need or want a bag”
“I’ll give you a good price”
“Er, you’re not listening. You don’t need a nuclear reactor and I don’t need a bag.”
“I’ll give you a good discount.”

and

“what will you give me for this?”
“I already have one of those – it cost X, so if I wanted yours, I’d pay the same.”
“Ahh but mine’s better.”

yeah right!
I don’t mind people trying to make a living out of me. I do mind them them talking crap as they do so.

…probably isn’t worth the bother of trying to get past extremely insistant young Karnatakan women trying to sell you stuff. The flipside is that my beard is now darker than it’s been in years and my room cost 100 rupees.

I’m staying at the Manali guest-house: 0832 227 4421. They have clean, neat rooms, a bookshop (non-ensuite but very welcome) showers and toilets and a (currently non-runctional) cybercafe.

I have contracted…

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Saturday Night Fever

…This gruesome disorder is marked by a tendency to shake it to disco.

Find out what you’ve contracted!