Bobby, Dhanush and Goutami were met at Coimbatore by Ravi: he'd started growing a beard, and joked this was in my honour. 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 Nadu was in the grip of election fever. The main parties appeared to be the DMK and the AIADMK: two factions formed from the pro-Tamil/Dravidian, anti-Hindi and central government DK party. One of the recurring images was of Jayalalithaa, leader of the AIADMK.
The parties appeared 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 heard* this largesse would only go to people who actually voted for whoever won**. No-one I talked to could say accurately how whoever forms the new state government would pay for it. (Most didn't seem to understand the question!***) A few were downright cynical about whether it would 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 was due to the way I asked it.
Congress seemed to have an alliance with the DMK - their posters featured Kalaignar Muthuvel Karunanidhi. I can't say the images would make me want to vote for him. I saw lorry-loads of people being driven to rallies and party symbols* painted on just about any available wall. I wasn't able to find out whether the parties paid people for the use of their walls. I was told that there is no limit to election spending.
*DMK's symbol was a sun rising between two hills in red and black, someone else used a multi-coloured mango and AIADMK used two green leaves.
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. As best I understand it, here's Suriya's family tree.
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).
Suriya had brought some brandy for her relatives (in Tamil Nadu it costs twice the Goan price). 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 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.
This was the first time I saw a Tamil temple close-up. They're fantastically ornate and I wanted go back to Tamil Nadu just to photograph some. (I eventually did in July when I went to Madurai.)
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006