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Lard Air

Rhymer1
2005-03-26 19:10:04

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Like good tourists, we e scored a Ganesh for the bathroom.

Down by the shore temple and there's a pleasant beach, although signs warn you not to swim, citing the number of drownings per year, but these are to be taken with a pinch of sea salt. Modesty means that most Indians enter the water with their clothes on - and very few actually know how to swim, which makes it rather easier to drown.

rich food, poor food

In Mallappapuram, we also fully discovered the delight that is south Indian food. We had eaten in the hotels in Chennai, food which was OK, but unspectacular. We had eaten in a middle class restaurant, which was pretty good, although we were the centre of attention as honkies in Chennai are few and far between. But in Mallappuram we realised that, within certain limits, the less you pay the better the food is. Pay a lot and you will get something blandish with an internationalised taste; pay a little and you will get something like the fabulous dhosas I have fallen in love with, which come with no fewer than eight condiments and cost about 30p. Of course, there are limits to this rule: pay too little and you will spend a week on the can wailing that your God has forsaken you..

Although Mallapapurum is pleasant, it's a bit of a one-day town. Plus they were digging up the sewers, which, well, you can imagine - so we took a real taxi down to the former French colony of Pondicherry. Evidence of Babu's duplicity, it cost half as much to go twice the distance. The southern Indian landscape outside towns is a restful one: hazy post monsoon greens, fields and surprisingly, even the odd forest. It's dotted with villages still largely constructed with natural materials and goats and pigs scurry about everywhere. I can't quite account for the presence of the latter for although they do eat garbage (of which India has a superabundance) porkers no good unless you want to eat them. There aren't many folk who do in these parts and, city boy though I am, I'm guessing you can't milk a pig.

caffiend

I was immensely relived to get to Pondy. Over the past three days I had been experiencing all sorts of problems. My body ached, I had trouble getting up in the morning and I had started more or less involuntarily falling asleep in the afternoon. A bit like My Own Private Idaho, without being a rent boy. Jane, I think, was finding this combination of lethargy and narcolepsy rather irksome; for myself I thought it was the heat or jet lag, although it seemed to be getting worse, not better. Then, just after I'd dozed off mid-sentence, Jane woke me and said, 'Darling when was the last time you had a cup of coffee?'

'Err, I replied, about three days ago.' Indian coffee is pretty awful, usually a cup of over-sugared milk with a few grains of Nescafe. Luckily Pondy is a former French colony and, as such, espresso is available everywhere. I had one cup and, within about five minutes was my witty, animated self again - worse, that evening, I even slept better. Now some would say that this is rather worrying and I would be inclined to agree, so I will try and reduce my coffee intake. But it's also given me a valuable, if rather neutered and middle class insight into the shocking world of drug addiction. I will never make fun of a crack 'ho or smack head again.

October 16, 2003

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