There's a lot I want to say about the last 36 hours in Madurai. I thoroughly recommend it as a place you could easily spend a week, mostly just getting your head around the Meenaksi temple.
However, I've just been highly amused by something and wanted to share it with you.
I phoned home from an open international call-box just outside the temple. The call-box owner's son and his mates were there. We got talking and one of them offered me a palm reading. (The palmist spoke no english but his mate, Ramesh, spoke very good english.) Most of the predictions were 'your life will/can be nice, especially if you do (various sensible things)' and 'something very nice will happen in November/December' but the thing that caught me was the prediction of me fathering 2 or 3 children; i.e definitely not by adoption but 'by your own sperm'. (This is a verbatim quote.)
I have the interlocutor's email address so I will be very pleased to keep in contact about the number of children I sire, even if I end up less than pleased about what that number turns out to be.
Grinning like a loon, as ever!
Kashmiri carpet doesn't cut!
Back to temple. On the way intercepted by a tailoring vendor. 'Do I want anything?' Not really but he offers me a tour of the flower market. I finally got to the temple around 8·30pm. A procession passed me and someone asked me if I wanted a magic snake. I told them I had been born with one.
On the way back to my hotel, I saw there was a crowd watching a snake act. As I watched, someone asked me if I wanted to see the act close-up. He took me through a barrier into an audience in a wide roofed alley. The snake act ended and some dancers took to the stage. The bloke who took me into the crowd kept asking me 'you liking? Rs200' I wasn't sure what he was on about and tried to find out over the noise of the dance music, even though I was afraid he was either trying to pimp me a girl or sell me some cannabis.
I got back to my hotel about 3am< My diary tells me I was itching to hell but doesn't tell me where.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006