I don't know who the children
are but the adults are Rajesh
and Venkatesh (He is Suriya's
brother-in-law and Shakila's
father.)
an Ayappa devotee
in Mettur bus station
Last night was not a good night for international communication. I had felt a great need to phone home so Priya, Rajesh and Nitya took me to an international phone booth, even though it was very 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 phone didn't work and, while I was away from Nithya and Balaji's house trying to phone my parents, my dad halled phone the house to try to speak with me.
On the bus to Rasipuram, Rajesh, Suriya and I met Selvam, Suriya's distant cousin (Suriya's and his grandfathers were brothers), who gave us a lift to the main road. (I have no idea which main road this was, except that the driving was appaling.
There's a note in my diary from when I tried to get Priya to translate into Tamil a message to the driver:
To the arsehole at the front of the bus who has the cheek to pretend he can drive: If you use your horn unnecessarily (and I will be the judge of that, not you) or if you make any stupid, law- and sense-defying manouvre, I will break the horn off and shove it up your shitty arsehole.
With no love at all from the homicidal maniac in the purple shirt.
I wonder why Priya demurred?
At Rasipuram, Rajesh and I were introduced to David and Shakila Padmanaban. David and Shakila (Suriya's neice) are Christians whose house is 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, a church* and some farmland in the outskirts of Rasipuram and a bus service.
*Emmanual Full Gospel Mission Trust, 8-D Kumarasamy Street, Rasipuram, Namakkal district, Tamil Nadu, 637408
David showed me around the orphanage. I couldn't help cringing when he asked the children 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 their work: these kids would probably have been on the streets or dead without this place.
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 was 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: I don't feel I can repeat her answer here.
David then took me on the back of his scooter to show me his church, his school and to the bus station to show me one of his buses. He then 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 the dyke had leaked thhis year, ruining half of his 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.
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 greatly 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.
Suriya, Rajesh and I then bussed back to Salem where we were joined by Laxmi and Priya. We then all bussed to Mettur, where I managed to photograph an Ayappa devotee (they wear black lunghis), then took another bus to Kholetur and, 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.
At the house, I met Raju for the second ever time and was also was introduced to more of his and Suriya's friends and relations, including
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 motorbike 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.
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. 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. I was amazed to see Leema, an Indian woman, 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.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006