Asia 2006: Random Bozo returns to lovely Kerala

Shaji had invited Ajeesh and I to lunch. He lives in a tiny house with his wife (Mini), their son and Shaji's(?) mother. Their house is one of many that's reached by following fairly perilous tracks up from minor roads and has plastic sheeting instead of glass in the windows: even so, this is better than many I've seen. Again, this website is a victim of my poor memory and diary habits: I can hardly picture Mini, I know I was told the boy's name and I've completely forgotten what we ate and talked about.

Ajeesh and I then set off towards Munnar (about 50 miles north of Nedumkandam): he wanted to show me more of Kerala and the place where he hopes to build a restaurant and toilet block. He has a small piece of land on the main road between Idukki's two main (and much-visited) tourist spots, Kumily/Thekaddi and Munnar. They're over 100 km apart but there's no clean restaurant on the way and the road demands you take breaks. He wants to create this so he can find a job for an orphan his parents house and fund some social projects. So if anyone feels like investing in India and has two lakhs of rupees (about £2500) to invest, please let me know! Failing this, can anyone offer him a job?

Ajeesh dearly wants to live up to the financial aspects of his social responsibilities: these include Jaya's dowry [another 2 lakhs] on top of the dowries for the older two sisters who are already married. I've met Rajesh, Jaya's fiancée, and I can see there's enough love there for him not to reject her if the dowry doesn't materialise but the rest of his family apparently would never accept this. Ajeesh is very happy to do anything that will enable him and doesn't want 'charity': he says 'don't give me fish: give or lend me a fishing-rod so I can feed myself'.

I think my brain was switched off most of the journey to Munnar. On the way, we met Rajesh and his siblings Manchu (), Mahesh () and Sushila ().

I vaguely recall us trying to get into a national park near Munnar but finding it closed for the evening. After we'd met up with two of Ajeesh's friends who are teachers at Munnar, Ajeesh coaxed his car up some impossible-seeming paths to a grotty-looking school and hostel for tribal kids.

They put me in front of a classroom full of kids and asked me to give an impromptu spoken English lesson. I thought the best way to start this was to get each of them to tell me their names and hopes for the future and hear their opinions and feelings about Kerala: things they could speak about. I was also given a few addresses: anyone else want a pen-pal in Kerala?

Back in Munnar, we collected some food from a restarant and ate at the local government school with Ajeesh's teacher pals and some of their colleagues. By now exhaustion at being bombarded with Malayalam conversation (which no-one stopped to explain) and other tensions had reduced my conversational abilities to monosyllables. One of these tensions was the appearance of a bottle of brandy. I slammed about 10 ml for appearances' sake and made sure I ate lots.

Again, Ajeesh had conjured us a decent room at a price within our very limited budget in another hotel that in places was a building-site. Rooms in Munnar tend to cost over Rs600 per night and can run to several thousands: this was all of Rs300! I slept quite well despite the unbroken sound of pouring rain.