(It appears I had to apologise to my blog-readers for not getting some lj-cuts right first time. I did try to correct them but the town's dial-up connection had died, along with my retinae, just as I was about to submit the updated entry.)
The piece 'abdicating my divinity' hides a long and probably tedious examination of gender roles and treatment of guests in India. You have been warned.
It may seem that I'm perpetually upset and not enjoying myself here. I think there's bias in the reporting. On the whole I am very much enjoying my time here. Every now and then I get a bit miserable, especially when I lose things or get too tired to want to be here, but every now and then, something happens to make me say to myself 'shut up moaning, you pampered so-and-so' or I see again some of Kerala's beauty and the enjoyment restarts. I've been invited to stay indefinitely and offered, even encouraged to make a life here. It's tempting but there are too many people and things in the UK I'd miss.
I think the friendships I've made here will continue: I hope they can be strengthened by some sort of fair/ethical trade set-up. Anyone out there interested in buying coffee, tea, vanilla, cardomom, jaggery, etc from here. I've enjoyed the food immensely here and would like others to have the chance to do so.
After finally getting to wash my clothes this morning, Ajeesh drove me, Jaya, his mum and niece into town to watch another movie. This was filmed in Idukki district and appeared to be about a carpenter who shelters a woman from unjust legal penalties by getting her to dress up as a bloke and become his apprentice. The song-and-dance piece where she acts as a bloke trying to dance a 'normal woman's movie dance' were hysterical.
I lost interest when she put her (own) clothes back on and the inevitable matching happened. However my interest perked up again when the woman (by now still female but appearing to have gotten through 2 tragic marriages [I'm sure appearances are deceptive here]) then fell in love with the carpenter. During the interval (movies here tend to last over 2 hours), I fell about laughing again to a techno version of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'. I'm sure I'm going to have to explain my amusement to Ajeesh and co later.
In another hysterical piece, she pressed her suit towards the carpenter while he politely tried to evade her clutches and escape. Eventually he returned her love and they pedalled off into the sunset. The part I enjoyed most was when the projectionist fell asleep and delayed a reel-change for 5 minutes: the audience's cat-calls have been recorded for posterity.
I don't care who is looking over my shoulder as I key this. If you have the nerve to pick up my diary or look over my shoulder when I'm keying in my banking password, don't be upset by what you read here.
There's a bloody great caveat about my fondness for Kerala. People have been wonderfully friendly and welcoming (if far too nosey) so it may seem unfair to criticise but I think it's right to record and report my complete impression.
The caveat is that, outside of restaurants and chair-stalls, if a woman is fit and available, she'll do all the domestic work. A man won't even take his dirty dishes to the sink and will drop (for example) his cigarette-packet wrapper on the floor and expect a wife, sister or mother to sweep up after him.
I don't know if men living on their own don't do any (I have no experience of this to report) but I know they're capable of doing it. However, I've been told that domestic work is basically a woman's role and that it is 'balanced' by men's work in the fields, etc.
I might be able to accept this if I didn't see evidence of lack of balance: women certainly do work in men's 'province'. I've not seen a single man return the favour. (I did later on.) For example, many women work in fields, carry huge loads of wood barefoot up extreme slopes and labour on roads. I don't know who does the domestic duties in their houses but I'd be prepared to bet the cost of my next week's food that it isn't their husbands.
OK, it's 6pm here and the walk up the hill takes 50 minutes. It gets dark in 45 minutes. I'm offski!
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006