A question about children

I had an Ayurvedic oil massage. It involves being hit with a cloth covered stick all over your body and lying on your back and having aromatic oil poured on your forehead for about 30 minutes. Then you sit in this box filled with steam and watch the lovely girl who did your massage clear up the room. She is slight with dark hair, long in a ponytail. Skin like cream. . We have communicated in smiles during the two hours. Hers is wide and exquisite. Now she says to me, “ Auntie, you marry?” “ No” I say. “ Good thing” she says back at me , smiling. I learn that she lives in a hostel here in Thekkady. She is twenty three. She works seven days a week and her home is in a village some 30 miles away. She gets back once a month for four days and she really loves her job. I ask her, “ are you married’ “ Oh no “ she says. “ But I will marry. Fixed.” “ Ah, “ I say. “ when will that be? “ “ April 28th, she says. “ Have you met him? “ I ask. “ No” she says. “ Fixed. We text.” I know the answer to this next question, but I ask it anyway. “ will you work after marry?” “ No” she says. “ No more this work.” “ you will live with your husbands parents. yes?” I ask “ Yes.” She says. “ That will home from now.”

I knew the answer because the woman who was taking our tour was a beautiful strong independent woman called Usha Mary. She is now 42. She was brought up Roman Catholic. She is the older of two girls. Her mother died a year ago from cancer. Usha is married to a man called Aardi. He is Hindu. He is also a guide and they married for love some 14 years ago. She has converted to Hindu in principle. And she lives with his parents. Because that’s what brides do in India. She said she was grateful for the British for bringing in school uniforms. It meant that for all of her happy schooldays she never knew she was poor. or that many of the girls in her class were of a higher caste than she. Her husband is of a higher caste than she. That is a problem. But the bigger problem is that she hasn’t had a child. In India, you marry. You move into your husbands home. You learn to cook from his mother. You have babies, ideally boys. Because girls involve the expense of a dowry and they don’t look after you in old age. Female infanticide is now outlawed. But when Usha was growing up it wasn’t. She has a problem getting pregnant. Five years ago at the beginning of Covid she sold all her jewelry and special sarees to pay for a course of IVF. She learned she was expecting twin girls. There was a big party with a banner that read. “ Prayed for one. Blessed with two.” She carried them to term and then they died in the hospital; one after a few hours and the other after six days. Her father in law, who once came in and burned his wife with a hot poker because he had called her name three times and she hadn’t answered him, wanted his son to dump Usha and get a second wife. Usha told him she would be happy to step aside and that any child he had with another woman she would give love to. Aardi said he didn’t want another wife. And the mother in law stood up to her husband and said she would kill herself if he made Usha leave.

She told me that when she was at the hospital after the death of her babies there was another young woman whose baby had also died. She was abandoned there. Her husband and his family just left her there as he went to find a new wife. So they still live in a small house in a village outside Madurai. Usha and Aardi at least have their own room and not the curtain that was drawn across the bedroom to separate the two sleeping quarters. Usha wanted to adopt, but her father in law would not sign off on the paperwork. She told me that many women of her mother in laws generation will never say their husbands name because they are like a god. They will sometime have the husbands name tattooed on their arms and when they are asked the name of their husband they will lift up their arm to be read so as not to sully his name by speaking it.

Usha has AARDi tattooed on her arm. Because she loves him. She is a rockstar. She is changing the world because she is talking about what women like her have to go through. I hope she keeps going. India needs her.

Mad dogs and Englishwomen

I am struggling with the heat. Wearing sunblock, wearing mosquito repellent. But frankly not sure what is left on my skin after I have been walking from the hotel to the temple, or from the promenade to the restaurant. I have two hats. A large blue thing which would be shot down by the fashion police. And a small neat straw thing. But sweat is a great leveler. Your hair sticks to your head. Your hat helps not at all. Your face has rivulets of salt that run down from your hairline to your chin. Your trousers cling to your legs even though they are made of the lightest cotton. Your shirt, which should be two sizes larger than your frame, gets damp around your neck and under your arms. You have sprayed your ankles with mosquito repellent. You have also sprayed any areas of your arms that are exposed. You are careful to wash your hands before you touch your face or any food because it lends a chemical overtone to everything. We have dress code instructions every morning. For temples we need to cover our shoulders and our knees. It is called the modesty code. For the sun we need to cover our heads and have our water bottle full and close by. It is the survival code. For rural areas or walks at night we need to to have trousers that cover our ankles. It is called Beat the bloody bugs code. Sometimes we are biking and then we need to wear a hat that shades us from the sun and have to fit the helmet on top of it. Luckily it is so hot I don’t even think how ridiculous I look. When you are dodging the mosquitos and avoiding the sun you don’t look in a mirror. You don’t care. You truly don’t. Then someone takes a photo and sends it to everyone. And I discover I look like a tired convict in polka dots. I have seen photos of fashion shoots on beaches on the Maldives. There are women who flow past me in gauzy fabric that create wind patterns as they move. I have stood next to people who glow and glisten as I scratch and melt. I wish to award myself a medal. For succumbing to the layers of unwanted clothing, the coatings of sunscreen and bug spray. For forging on through as the heat and the mosquitoes win the battle and all grace and beauty passes me by.

Hooray for damp and drizzle . That’s what I say.

Not finding peace in Puducherry

I have been a lover of contemplative places all of of my remembered life. I love unexpected soft patches in forests. Quiet bays where you can watch the waves go in and out and in and out. Old stone churches where feet have worn down the paving stones that lead to the wooden altar. And now I am in the land of temples. Well…there are Hindu temples but there are also monuments , which are no longer used for worship and there are Roman Catholic Churches left behind by the many invaders. I was in Pondicherry. Or Puducherry as it is now known.

It is a separate and small union State. It is the place of French influence. The description is that it is like Nice in the south of France. Just to let you know…it is nothing like Nice. There is a black town and a white town. The black town is much like it’s neighbours north and south. It is crazy, with an ever flowing sea of street dogs, tuk tuks, motorbikes, garbage and unidentified hanging wires.

the white town is very different. It is clean. There are trees. There are tall policeman in smart khaki uniforms walking around. The houses are solid, painted in greys and pinks. It is almost shocking to the system not to be checking for cow pats and uneven pavements underfoot. I am not going to get this right, but it seems that 80% is owned by the ashram that has it’s headquarters there. There was the Indian teacher Sri Aurobindo and then his disciple, a French woman called “ The Mother”, who came to join him and with her considerable wealth bought the majority of white town to preserve it. There are schools and libraries. There are restaurants with open terraces, government buildings white and sparkling. Parks where Napoleon Third built some structure to honor some brothel owner who had to give up her place of work…I didn’t promise accuracy here. And churches. I went to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Shoes off. Phones off. Bossy men keeping you in line. A large plinth covered in a painting of flowers. Women and men kneeling, arms outstretched. A bookshop with books by him and by her. Another room of photos of him and of her. And then back out to put on your shoes again. It seems the main ashram is some 50 miles north, where a community of people live and work. the less well off subsidized by those that are wealthy. And the commitment is to doing good work. I am sure there is wonderful work done there , but down here it left me cold.

I went to the temple for Ganesh. A big brightly painted hall. Smooth marble floors. A central structure where you line up to get a sight of a statue of the deity, receive the Darshan from the sight and then, the monk will wave the flame around in an “ Aarti ‘ style manner and if you choose, you get a swipe of white ash on your forehead. Turns out the white ash is powdered cow dung , so although I appreciated the thought, I wiped it off . There are other smaller chapels where you can collect yellow and red ash.That will go close to the hairline..again, not going attempt to be accurate here, but it does seem that part of the red ash and the Bindi wearing is to ensure the good health of your husband. Widows don’t get to partake. Nor it seems, would I.

Ended up at the Roman Catholic Church. Which was a calm haven of blue and white and if there were no crucifixes and signs saying that donating online with a QR code would be acceptable, it would have been a pastel place of contemplation. Ended up going for a delicious supper at a place called the Coromandel Cafe. Had the best vegetarian pad Thai type salad. And a bottle of beer. and walked back to the hotel on the promenade past a statue of Gandhi, which didn't really look like him.

Obviously I didn’t find peace in a plate full of food. But it certainly cheered me up. So I continue to look.

Bags or Loose Leaves

I am a tea drinker. I always have been. I have never had a home, permanent or temporary, without a tea pot in it. I am not a tea bag tea drinker. Although occasionally I will have a fancy thing in a silk packet that feels ridiculous, and of course there are many times when I pull out a builders tea bag from Yorkshire or somewhere less familiar and show it the boiling water. I’m not that much of a purist. But I am a woman of the tea caddy. The small spoon that delves into those dried leaves, taking only the right amount for that one, first, brilliant and reassuring cup of tea in a morning. .. I buy my tea from a tea importer and I mix them. One flavour for my morning. One for my afternoon pot.

And now here I am six and a half thousand feet in the Nilgiris Hills surrounded by tea bushes as far as the eye can see.

I learn that there are the two tea areas in India. Here in the south and the hills of the north where Darjeeling and it’s cohorts come from. The tea is picked by women. Men would just want to get it done. According to the dictate they either use their fingers to tease off the very top leaf to make the white or the use a pair of shears to slice off the top branches to get the leaves that will make the stronger, darker brew.

The women live in small huts, near the plantations. They are not tall. Weathered faces and hands. They work so very hard.

The plantations are owned by families ( rich), businesses ( richer). They are paid by the weight of the leaves they pick.So they don’t stop. They wear these bags on their backs as they go row by row in the cool early morning, through the warm day. There are stalls on the side of the road where you can dress up in a bright sari, hang one of these bags on your head and have your photo taken. There was a movement started some 20 years ago, brought in by a woman called Supreya Sahu, after she saw cows swallowing plastic bags as they attempted to eat from the garbage. It stopped any single use plastic being brought into the Niligris Mountain park. Young volunteers check every vehicle for offending water bottles and plastic bags as you drive in. There are a few international tourists but there are many, many local tourists. This place, Coonoor and the town one further thousand meters up in the mountains called Ooty, is the place where people come for a special weekend, a popular destination for their honeymoon.

Ooty was once a hill station, laid out in 1848 by the East India Company. there is almost nothing left to show of that world, beyond the reason for it; which is the cooler temperatures and the verdant flowers. There is an army encampment, a Polo Field and a Botanical Garden. There is a chocolate shop and a train line that started chuffing it’s way up and down the 100 feet from Coonoor in 1908. It was until recently a steam train. But all things must change.

Ooty itself is overflowing with Indian chaos. People everywhere. Motorcycles. Everyone honking and driving, walking, weaving, zooming in any direction they wish.

There may not be any plastic allowed, but there are a lot of young men having a riotous time and drinking bottles of beer which they throw into the plantation fields where the women working endlessly can end up with lacerated feet. It’s beautiful. It’s astonishing. It’s chaotic. it’s India.

Trains..but Indian ones this time.

On a train heading north. I think it’s north. It could be sideways and at times on this trip I could have walked faster. Trains are slow in India. There is talk of a high speed one being built in Mumbai. And there are tales of a high falluting one that has a dining car and proper seats. But for everyone else they continue to cross their country slowly in ever-so-long trains made up of some twenty coaches.

It is hot outside. The kind of hot where clothing sticks. The platforms are full of people waiting for trains to arrive. Or for trains to depart.

There are little kiosks selling crisps of many flavours, drinks of many flavours, milk in many sizes. But dominating the platforms are these endless trains with bars on the windows and many people already claiming their place in the unreserved coaches. These are called Chair carriages. These consist of rows of blue benches. Each fit three people. Six across. The windows are open, the doors are wide open. The outside air is in; the inside air is pouring out. A gritty exchange. It must be so easy to fall out, but no one does because this is the way they travel. There are at least thirty fans hanging from the ceiling, whirring around, doing their best.

There is a luggage carriage ,but it must be for official things because it is locked. There is a slice of a car

riage way down the back which is labeled “ Ladies Only.” It is full. There is one carriage that has seats you can reserve. Just the one. they are also rows of three seats on either side but they are plush brown plastic. There is air conditioning, but somehow the backs of your trousers will still end up damp. There is pantry coach right next door and there are a small army of men in white hairnets who carry large trays of food up and down the carriages. Starting with omelette and bread. Which turns out to be exactly what they call out; an omelette inside two slices of white bread. Mid morning, it is the call of “ Biryani, biryani.” The couple sitting opposite me try both. So I can report that the “train biryani” is a lot of yellow infused rice with a couple of pieces of carrot.

The young couple were impressed with neither. But they also had a bag of snacks that I think they bought from the kiosks on the platform. Chocolate Bourbon biscuits without the cream filling called “ Hide and Seek” and bags of tomato flavoured crisps. And of course the Chai. Served in tiny paper cups. Which is actually just tea. Marsala Chai is where you get the cardamom. There are toilets in between all the compartments. A choice of western and squat. We were told to have a roll of toilet paper in our bags. I am rather relieved, that I haven’t had to use them. If I had to, I can do it. But the train rocks around like a fairground ride and I don’t trust my balancing skills.

It all feels very 1960’s. Industrial. Over painted. Sad yet enduring. Surprisingly it turns out that are train was not built in the 60’s. They are not post war. Or leftovers from the enthusiasm that came from the British Raj and it’s class system even when it comes to trains. Our old fashioned train and it’s twenty carriages were built all of 10 years ago. In 2017.

Landing in India

I think I lost two days. I think there was a Wednesday morning where I wandered down the driveway proudly pulling a small suitcase on wheels. Then there was a flight to Amsterdam. And a shower and a cheese and cucumber sandwich grabbed at the Schipol airport lounge. There was a flight to Mumbai, a long wait through immigration. Two hours spent in an airport hotel where you book it by the hour like an illicit affair. Then another flight down the western coast of India to Kochin and now it’s Friday.

I think I also lost my mind. And that all started in India. The wait at immigration was inbetween annoying and silly. But I think you can hurl that at almost anything in India. It was an hour and a half of watching men and women in their glass topped booths take forever, call people forward with no sense of logic, suddenly get up and walk away just because they can. I checked my bag in for the upcoming flight at 1.55 am. And had another shower in my hourly hotel room. My alarm went off at 3.50 and I headed off to departures. What I found at every checkpoint was at least four people looking very polished and proud in uniforms doing the job of one. Four separate young men looked at my boarding pass as if there was a code within that only they could decipher. The security checkpoint was manned by four men in camouflage uniforms who were basically strutting around trying to look as if they had been to war and the line just wasn’t moving. Nobody knew what items to take off, the conveyor belt was jammed because coats and strollers were wider than the opening on the scanner, bells were going off and everyone was waiting in line to be patted down, but the “soldiers” were milling around as if someone had given them a special task and it was your job to guess what it was. So 30 minutes later,when I got to the next barrier where another four young men were waiting, it all became a bit of a panic. “Go to Gate 86.” “ Yes, she must go to 86” then the third got on his walkie talkie and said “ She’s coming now.” So I set off at a brisk pace and found gate 85 but was blowed if I could find it’s neighbour. Eventually the fourth one with his own walkie talkie in hand came running after me. “ It’s this way Ma’am. This way.” And he led me to Gate 86 which was hidden behind a distant pillar. The five people clustered there gave me a form and explained to me that my case had been taken off the plane because it contained something bad. Murmurs of a power pack. I spluttered something about not wanting to leave my case but one of the five, a uniformed woman said “ Madam, we need you to board the plane right now.” And they all looked away as if the conversation was over. So I grumped my way down the walkway and found my seat. When I landed in Kochin I went to the baggage desk, where a pretty young woman in a blue sari and braces on her teeth, went and got a woman in a blue trouser suit and then the blue sari girls multiplied and none of them did anything other than tolerate me as I tried to find out about my missing suitcase. I didn’t handle it well. It is why I am an amateur traveler. When things go wrong, nothing is remotely humorous. It is the world against well-meaning wendy. All is pear shaped and demoralisation is at every turn. I was now a world traveler in a foreign land with just the one blue backpack for a five week trip and the only thing I had in the way of being prepared for a crisis was one pair of Marks and Spencers knickers. Swear to God. The cocky person wheeling her rolling bag full of neat packets of clothing , all divided up into uses and textures, was now a crushed person with a water bottle, every kind of cable and one pair of knickers. The crushed person got her bag back dear reader. At almost midnight that evening. She now had alternatives to the slumpy, salty no-longer white cotton shirt that she had been wearing round half the world. She could explore Kerala as if everything had gone to plan.

The crushed person got her bag back dear reader. At almost midnight that evening. She now had alternatives to the slumpy, salty no-longer white cotton shirt that she had been wearing round half the world. She could explore Kerala as if everything had gone to plan.