Before the wedding, Suriya had told me she'd arranged for me to see the Nilgiri hills. Being a complete tea-head, I was very keen to go there, even though I was still distressed by what had happened on the night of the wedding.
I was insistent that I needed to get a new cellphone before we moved on. Suriya and others took me to a cellphone shop in Salem which looked as though it should be able to help. They offered tri-band Nokias which would take my previous phone's SIM card at affordable prices. I was able to confirm that my SIM card was still working but I couldn't get any of the models I was offered to dial out. (With rather bitter hindsight, I realise this may have been because I didn't try to make the phones roam: they may have defaulted to a network that didn't get on with my UK service provider.)
I couldn't find out why I couldn't dial out because the shop workers spoke almost no English and I spoke no Tamil but I was, as far as I can recall and could understand at the time, promised another try once we got to Nilgiri.
Suriya, Rajesh and I took buses from Salem to Coimbatore and thence to Metturpalayam. All of this journey was intensely hot. A final bus wound up and up into the hills to Kotagiri.
When we arrived at Kotagiri, we then went to a single-story building that I was told is owned by David Padmanaban. It has a closed verandah behind which are four apartments and a shower/toilet room. There's a double garage next to it, in which were kept the cars belonging to my latest hosts, Rajmohan and Geetha. Again, I was given a warm greeting and I got on well with Geetha especially. Her english is very good, as is her cooking (even though she said she was embarrassed by it). Rajmohan let me try my SIM card in his cellphone and I was able to call home, so I now knew that the card hadn't been at fault this morning.
I can't recall what we ate that evening but I do know that I enjoyed it. I talked quite a bit with Geetha while Rajesh spent a lot of time playing with Madhumeeta, Geetha and Rajmohan two-year-old daughter. (I seemed to scare her no matter what I did.) Geetha told me that she and Rajmohan had married when she was about 17 and he was 27 because her father was dying and she needed to be associated with a man. When I protested that this was 'bullshit', she said that she was well aware what this word meant, that she understood what I meant (and tended to agree: it wasn't legally necessary) but that she needed a man for many important social functions. Fortunately, she had already met Rajmohan and they had a strong, loving, relationship. She jokingly said that if, however, he even looked at another woman she'd divorce him like a shot. Rajmohan contrived to look suitably innocent and injured before laughing with her.
She's been able to continue her education since her marriage, eventually earning a degree in history. She now works in 'data conversion' which interested me because of some of the things I'd seen and heard about after Leckie & Leckie became part of Granada Learning. She and her family were about to move to Trichy in southern Tamil Nadu (which apparently didn't please her landlord: her brother-in-law) and so she was looking for new data-conversion projects.
Now I've found the place in my diary where I put Rajmohan and Geetha's address, I can finally get off my arse and write to them!
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006