Ear wax

Chennai-Delhi flight, 31st Jan 2011

We’re high above the plains of India again, migrating back to the Land of Double-Egg-Chicken-Kathi rolls.  I’m wanting pure veg already. 

Actually we’re looking forward to a month of Independence (and self-catering) living in South Delhi.  A whole month of not staying in hotels or lodges, a whole month of not eating in restaurants and rigid bedtimes.  No more of this hippy children falling asleep in cafés-business!  [Last night, having carried her back from the restaurant deeply asleep, undressed her, put her PJs on and brushed her teeth, all  whilst she remained asleep, L surfaced to oversee packing and her blog publication before crashing out again jammed in the crevice between WD and my twin beds] But I can already feel WD getting a bit fidgety – and planning weekend trips to Rajasthan and Agra and…. for more fieldwork and fun.  I think it’s in reaction to the idea of more time in the archives.  So let’s see if Lado Sarai turns out to be a base from which we travel or actually a solid month in one place.

Bit of a stressful morning, too much clogged-up traffic on the way to Chennai airport from Mamallapuram (we didn’t beat the traffic), the airport terminal is in the process of being rebuilt so lots of running around with wheely luggage looking for the right check-in, getting to security with only 4 boarding cards (W was going to stay in the South it seemed) and then interminable getting through security (WD having to unpack his entire rucksack and go through the body search stage twice) but we made it.  Phew!

Driving up and down the Chennai-Mamallapuram road, we’re starting to recognise landmarks along the way.  Development is so rapid in places here that it hardly feels like you’re in India – massive beach resorts,  luxury apartments and gated communities (‘Visioneering the New India’ runs the banner), Japanese-backed industrial parks and public works (bridges, sewerage) are all being constructed as we watch.  The East Coast Road is smooth with smart toll booths and ladies employed to water the new grass by the curb.  Smart but empty air-con buses run up and down the road, but the locals still go on the crowded older buses where fares are much lower.  Salt works and prawn hatcheries, go-kart racing tracks, Dizzee World (an amusement park we didn’t go to) and a boating lake are all points of reference that could be elsewhere in the world.  Except that you’re not and there are still stretches (like along the fishing community’s strip of the beach in Chennai) when you’re confronted with how many people here are still living in terrible poverty.

Every stretch of wall and housing along roads is painted with looping Tamil script.  Some adverts I can read or recognise the logos – Airtel, Vodafone!  Others are more obscure and I can only guess whether they are political (the DMK or the AI-DMK?) or for local electrical stores or shops.  Rather wonderfully, the street sign painters have discovered the highlighter pen, for there is lots of luminous yellow liberally applied for emphasis.  So much remains outside your understanding as a visitor here.  

Feels like we’re starting to descend – ears popping and painful, I can’t hear anything.  WD’s already gummed up with seawater and wax so mumbles incoherently.  A Delhi task is to have a go at syringing them with a bulb syringe (it’s that or send him to the guys with the spikes in Connaught Place…) I love expedition medicine.  W is very spotty – I think mossie bites, but it could be heat rash or even acne – so he’s not looking his best.  He’s also had his mullet chopped into by a barber he and WD visited in Chennai so has the most excellent bed hair. 

We’ve arrived in Delhi ahead of schedule – our American pilot and young Indian woman co-pilot (so many of the trainee pilots we look after from the Oxford Flying School tell me that they’ll end up clocking up air miles for the new domestic Indian airlines) were allowed a short cut, hence the accelerated descent.   People assume we’re living here now as we find a taxi (pre-paid or post-paid?) to take us into town - very different arriving here a second time.  Oh and the pleasure of a huge and expensive coffee – the first proper caffeine hit for over a month – hello again Delhi!

Iron Shakti

30^th Jan 2011, Mamallapurum

WM: We are all in dire need of the aforementioned shakti or energy (as in ‘Kellogs Cornflakes provides 8 times as much iron shakti as a bowl of spinach’ – the claim seems doubtful but the children have been trying to convince me that, as it’s on the packet, it must be true…)

We have spent today walking and climbing around exquisite rock-cut monuments that I failed to see last time I was here.  Was it inertia, nausea, ennui? – I can’t quite remember why WD and I omitted these important World Heritage sites and instead stuck to banana pancake territory in 1999, but we do recall (and commemorate every time we pass it) the exact spot where I got off the bus and vomited into a parking lot on that occasion.  I’d been holding it all down for two hours from Pondy, so an impressive feat of self-control worthy of daily commemoration.

We’ve also spent about 3 hours swimming today and the end result is that L and W fell asleep after their evening meal, full of pizza, soothed by ambient new age music on comfy floor cushions. Fortunately, it was not so far back to where we are staying and they aren’t so heavy to carry straight to bed….This is the second time we’ve achieved this amazing feat (2/2 visits to Le Yogi) – sea air is soooo exhausting.

This is the last stop on the South India trip.  We fly back to Delhi tomorrow and I already know that I will miss the flowers (even our girls are wearing jasmine in their hair this evening), the banana leaf high-class veg and the smiles that WD’s efforts in Tamil usually bring.   

M: Do you know one thing I’ll really miss from South India?  The heat.  I found the heat enjoyable because I can cope with it.  I had a really nice time in South India eating idlis and chick pea vadai.  I’ll miss the lovely scent of jasmine everywhere.  I prefer South Indian temples because they always seem to have very friendly priests and I like going with dad to Tamil temples.           

L: I’ll miss dosas.

WM: The Wolfgang was given the accolade of being ‘like an Indian family’ yesterday – our quantity, noise levels or food intake, I wonder? - so we’re obviously making progress of a sort here.  WD’s just got nostalgic when someone’s brought him out a Golden Eagle beer  and we’ve had a toast to Dravidian Culture!

So we’ve been enjoying Mam (M has been making me practice pronouncing Mam-alla-puram and I still can’t do it) and its temples-by-the-sea ambience.   It’s the only Tamil flowering of ‘traveller’ culture – think café menus with the obligatory pancakes but also mashed potato, book exchanges (still offering the same titles they always did, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance’, ‘Papillion’, ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ but now also bizarrely the complete works of Joanna Trollope) and baggy trouser emporiums.  The average traveller here has aged quite a lot – think groover in their 50s or even 60s, rather than the eponymous year-offer.  There are still enough beautiful people with tattoos and freaky hair to suffice though.  I am threatening a nose piercing, more to shock my children now rather than my mother, but probably won’t bother. The girls were telling me that it would all go rancid and I’d get some horrible infection.  They know because they’d seen a picture in the BMJ.

Also, we are slightly bemused by the amount of Russians here.  They smoke SOOOOO much and determinedly seem to detach themselves – we haven’t managed eye contact, let alone a verbal, from our next-door neighbours (2 beefy-but-gone-to-seed guys and a woman, archetypal ex-KGB on holiday I say) despite it becoming a bit of a game on our part now to be the first to elicit any sort of greeting or acknowledgement.

L:  Yesterday we went to a crocodile farm*. There were loads in one giant pit. They fighted each other. When they lide on top of each other they dint mind.

Gharials, in case it's not clear!

[*The Madras Centre for Herpetology or Crocodile Bank, a world-renowned conservation and breeding programme, with loads of lovely Mugger crocs and Gharials; not the place to go shopping for that new handbag]

W:  We saw lots of crocodiles.  Mostly they were crocodiles but some snakes and turtles too.  And we went to a Craft village.  All of us ate dosas.  I bought a spinning top.  We saw a dancing peacock – it wasn’t real, it was a person, with a peacock dressing up suit.  We went to lots of old houses from Tamil Nadu and Kerala.  And one was like George Kutty (from the homestay, a Syrian Orthodox Christian)’s grandfather’s house. 

M:  We had mendhi patterns done on our hands.  Mine is a peacock with lots of extra decoration.  It took ages for the henna paste to dry especially W and L’s.  Mine dried the quickest and it felt really itchy and you wanted to scratch it off, and in due course you could, but you had to resist whilst it dried.  The lady did the pattern off by heart.  It was bright orange when you washed the paste off, but it’s now dark brown.  Mine is exquisite with lots of curlywurly patterns. 

W: Mine’s a Lizard and he’s breathing fire.

L: Mine’s a flower with stalks on each finger.

M: Before we had our hands done, we went in to an old Tamil merchant’s house.  A woman showed me how to do Kollam patterns with rice powder and I had a go.

L: I learned how to grind rice with two stones to make rice flour.  That’s for kollam and to make idlis.

WM:  It’s a crocodile pit here – most of the time we lie around lethargically, rolling over each other reasonably tolerantly,  into a pool of sludgey water to cool down and then, just sometimes, out of the blue (or maybe with some preliminary agro) something will REALLY REALLY upset someone and then there’s some tail slapping, teeth baring and crocodile tears.  Living with the family so full time and up close, it has felt at times like I’m making a wildlife documentary – I’d always thought primate behaviour but maybe I’m wrong and we’re actually a load of crocs.

And Development moves on here – further roads of guest houses and beach ‘resorts’ with banks of noisy generators, covered drains and World Heritage Site status means wasteful sprinklers, greenish lawns and landscaping (rather than the scrub from before). The fishermen’s beach remains largely unchanged from what I remember pre-Tsunami – with lots of merry cows (Miss Cow from Cow-cutta? Sorry, this is a L joke) and itsy dogs scrapping in the general debris while the fishermen sit around playing cards.  Their boats have got fancier: proper wooden boats with outboards, rather than the palm trunks strung together –  post-tsunami aid, micro-finance, tourist dollars filtering down? 

Beach boy W

M writing her journal in the beach cafe

M prepares to join Baywatch

You can still buy the morning’s catch to eat with chips or rice that evening – red snapper, king fish, crab masala, the most massive tiger prawns we’ve ever seen – not cheap, but delicious sitting in a hut on the edge of the beach, the wind blowing the fairy lights and W playing in the sand under the table.  The beach (especially the part immediately below where we’re staying, just beyond the boats) is still being used as a toilet in the early morning though.  W dragged me down this morning to look for shells and crab holes so I can confirm this. Hmmm, maybe we shouldn’t be eating the seafood?  But we’re all well thus far and some giant prawns and calamari are on order right now.  Only WD is man enough to take on the Big Surf which is frisky even for him, so the rest of us stick to the swimming pool. Stretch and sweep, Wolfmum! (WD’s parody of my gentle girly breast stroke.)

 

A very pregnant Holly by the Shore Temple

The Shore Temple remains spectacular in its location, rising above the breakers at the end of the beach, even if increasingly protected by fencing, hedging and artificial breakwaters so that its relationship with the sea is all but gone.

WD: For those of you who don’t know, Mamallapuram is a small fishing village that’s now all-but overwhelmed by the tourist industry, the old low-key backpacker element now joined by both domestic Indian and eastern European package tourism. WD can reminisce annoyingly once more about how it was twenty years ago, and for him the enduring reason to come here are the monuments: the most substantial body of early architecture and sculpture dating to the seventh and eighth-century in this part of southern India. Europeans have been visiting and writing about the place since the 1790s: the carving of sensuous lithe figures of gods and demons, elephants, reclining bulls and cats doing yoga from the rock outcrops around the village continue to fascinate and amuse visitors as they’ve been doing for centuries. The children enjoyed the opportunity to scramble around among the man-made cave-temples and rock-cut shrines. “When are we going to look at the art?” W wondered. M was admiring of one lady-warrior’s 6-pack in a huge relief of the battle between the goddess Durga, mounted on her lion, fighting the buffalo-demon Mahisha. She certainly has iron shakti. The girls’ knowledge of Hindu myth is already excellent, the result of daily reading of the mythological comic series, and they are adept at identifying many of sculpted reliefs (WD is very proud).

L studying up on her Hindu mythology with Mam-types in the background

Collapsing Towers

Kalahasti, 26^th January

WD: Much of my fieldwork involves trips to the many Hindu temples that dot the landscape of southern India. These may be at the heart of towns or cities, or in villages in remote areas. A well-worn tourist route through Tamilnadu visits several fantastic examples at Mamallapuram then Chidambaram, Tanjavur, Srirangam and Madurai. Over the years I’ve been revisiting all of these and seeing ever more temples in the places between these well-visited sites. Yes, they do look different.

The research project that’s brought me here this year involves both research in the Tamilnadu State archives in Chennai and further records stored in New Delhi about archaeology and architectural conservation in British colonial India, and fieldwork in the temples discussed in these documents. This is why the whole family has been dragged to some rather off-the-beaten track places so that I can have a good look at a temple or two. Small-town and village Tamilnadu is now familiar to me (and I do love it) but as anticipated, these places are not always relaxing for family stays. Omelette and chips is not on the menu, and the ‘playground’ doesn’t have swings. For there is no menu, it’s tiffin mornings and evenings, vegetarian ‘meals’ off a plantain leaf at lunchtime, eggs don’t qualify as vegetarian and children play in the road or wherever (or they’re working).

So, on one of my final excursions out of Chennai WM and the younger two decided to stay behind while I made a dash north over the border into Andhra Pradesh. One of the richest and most visited temples in all of India is there, at Tirupati, but it was to another less-visited temple that we were headed on this occasion and M decided to come with me on a ‘Daddy-outing’ as my field assistant. So, how did we get on?

M: On our second attempt at getting to Andhra Pradesh we managed to catch the train going over the border. As we were going to catch our train we passed a new express train that was about to set off on its maiden voyage non-stop to Coimbatore [in western Tamilnadu]. It was decorated with balloons and tinsel, and it was painted bright green with all-sorts of rocks, boulders and waterfalls on it. It was our good fortune that we got on at the start of the train as at the second stop lots and lots of people got on until all of the seats were taken and the train was very full. I was squished between Daddy and another man. When I needed the loo I went to look for them at the end of the carriage, there was a ‘western’ loo and three ’Indian’ loos but the ‘western’ one was blocked shut by big bags of rice as were two of the Indian ones. I finally found one that wasn’t jammed which was very lucky as I was desperate by then. Of course I washed my hands with soap (Medimix of course).

During the train journey WD was chatting to a man who said we should get off before Tirupati and take a bus to Kalahasti and stay there instead of Tirupati, as we had planned. We saw the sense in the idea and decided to do just that. This meant we might be able to get the train home next day in time for swimming instead of a longer journey by bus. When we arrived at the stop the man had suggested we waited in a little bus stand for some time and then another man came up and said we should get on another bus to further down the road where there were more buses going our way. I felt a bit scared as it was dark, I was tired and we waiting in a strange place. On the bus the driver stopped suddenly as I was eating an orange and I bumped my lip really hard on the seat in front of me. It wasn’t great but nothing was broken. The seat behind me also fell off. We did find our way to Kalahasti and signed into the nearest hotel from the bus-stop.

The next morning we got up very early to see the temple just round the corner. As usual I took off my shoes and we walked into the innermost parts of the temple. We walked around the main shrine and there was lots of precious metals hollowed and carved into door guards. As we were about to walk into the main shrine there was a man, probably a priest, making a magnificent sound out of his conch shell. It kept on going. Before we walked into the temple we went to see if there were the remains of a magnificent gopura [pyramidal temple gateway] had really collapsed: all that was left where it had been was a big hole in the ground. I enjoyed travelling with Daddy, even with all the hardships and him wearing me out, and I want to do it again.

WM: Is this what is envisaged as a ‘Bring your daughter to work day’? M arrived home absolutely shattered and went to bed for the afternoon.  WD smelt fabulous.

WD: The massive early sixteenth-century gopura  collapsed one night last May. Oh dear. I saw what I needed to see in our brief visit to the temple but 5 hours each way and a poor night in a basic lodge in a scruffy little place was hard on M. She was wonderful though and I’m proud of her stoicism and ability to manage the hard travelling in a strange land. Was I pleased to get back? Oh yes, the idlis are lousy in Andhra.  

Holly's EDD

Chennai, 26^th Jan 2011 (Republic Day)

Today's blog is entirely down to L.

We are in Chennai.  It’s very busy.  Mum stayed up till two o clock and is very tirded. But I din’t  get very much sleep ether because the service man came in four times and W claimed that there was pencil up his nose.  [By the way nothing to worry about because in the end there was only a pencil lead up his nose].

The day before yestaday, wolf dad and M tried to get the train but they missed it.  Today they  have set out again. I think they are sicsessful so that’s good.

 Meanwhile Holly the rabbit has been making babys.  The next ones  due are called  Boobeeno and Milly. The next thing to find out is will they be a Rabo-numtey- monkies?  Because their dad is Max and he’s a monkey.  [Holly's EDD, Estimated Date of Delivery, should you wish to send flowers is 31st January 2011 whilst we are en route to Delhi, hope WM's obstetric/vetinary skills are up to it!]

i am sitting by an over flooded tray of tea bags, biscuits and clinic plus shampoo, free from the hotel.  I am trying to get people to have a cup of coffee so I can make them some discusting  gloop.  W is talking to the lego men and is building cars for them.  Ham the lego pig is farting in Rex the lego dinosaur’s face.  I am enjoying sliding down the slopes of the hotel. But it’s a bit upseting that it’s called New Woodlands but there’s nowhere to run around.  But there is a swimming pool.

So me and W have seted  up a beauty parlour. We do body washs and full body masarges  and special shaving.  We have seted it up because yestaday we went to a real beuty parlour when mum got her legs waxed.  She was very brave.  It looked like it hurt just a little bit.

Yestaday we went to a Mexican restaurant  IN INDIA!!!!  I liked the sour cream and tortiyas. It makes a change from indian food.

Today is repuplic day so we had no school. The swimming pool is packed so we have to act fast. There are a seris of patterns and I’ve token some photos. Also  M and W are writeing their diarys.  I say that M’s is serisos and W’s is intertaining. While mum sorts out me and Ms school books. And also holly the rabbit is sitting by me looking rather grim. Bobeeno is due in about 10 days.

I’ve taken  lots of photos to show you things I’ve seen today.  I hope you like them. (to be posted later).

Visual Aids

So we have finally figured out how to add photos to the blog.  Actually it was more a matter of WD having time to begin sorting and editing his thousands (and I mean thousands) of images so far.  Most are, of course, of v. interesting columns and carvings that look suspiciously similar to the rest of us...We (the family) do feature in some, apart from our role as 'scale', and he does try to take the odd nice snap of us, as difficult as it is - with me usually pulling some appalling unflattering face, M all self-conscious, L apt to perform and W gurn spectacularly in front of the camera. So it's a challenge.  But the photographic record does exist (for some happy archivist of the future).  And I'm endeavouring to set up a web photoalbum for our families to access at their leisure. We will master this technology and if our early efforts are a bit haphazard (which they are), we will become more proficient.  I will also try to add photos to older blogs bit by bit, so do check (if you're interested) from time to time and I hope we're not responsible for any computers out there crashing with the effort of downloading multiple images...

You are welcome to tell us how filthy and unkempt we are becoming.  I tend to wear salwar kameez (long shirt, baggy trousers or variant) as it's cooler in this climate and because it makes me more respectable. We are now having quasi-puritanical reactions to foreign flesh in sympathy with local sensibilities - 'Cover up!'- as well  as worrying about skin sun damage, of course.

Man making chai in Madurai, by L.B aged 6

Even the children are having a go at this photo-graphy lark.  L is our secret photo-journalistic weapon. WolfDad bravely hands her his camera and tells her to go off taking photos of people.  She gets away with (and indeed charms the pants off everyone) sticking a camera up close where an adult doing the same would be intrusive, and her random photos are sometimes very good indeed...I'm going to get the children to do a 'Day in their Indian lives' photoessay and we'll see if the results are worth publishing.

And I've had requests for pictures of the very handsome WolfDad who tends to hide behind the camera.  And I will oblige.  He's away tonight with M (a more successful repeat of their earlier abortive attempt to go to Kalahasti) so he can't stop me! 'Oh bother!' (as W would say), yes he can - you will have to wait because the best pictures of just him alone, he hasn't turned into jpegs yet...  Anyway I took these on a rooftop in Jodphur back in December, messing around with WD's new camera.  I love the ones of M and her dad - they both look like themselves and you can see their connection. M was starting to perk up again after her dysentary and the evening light was gorgeous...

I'm staying up much too late with WD away and instead of watching rubbish telly (as I do when he's away in London overnight), I'm fiddling with the computer doing stuff like linking the photos to Google Earth... L and W were up late as people kept turning up to empty bins, change towels, give me breakfast coupons for tomorrow and then W told me he'd got a pen 'lid' stuck up his nose.  None of the felt tip lids appears missing and after questioning, he then said actually it was just a fragment of an orange pencil lead and I couldn't see anything (apart from normal coloured snot) up his nasal cavity, but nothing much came out with enforced blowing...Let's see what tomorrow brings...

Come to Planet YumYum!

Chennai, 22^nd Jan 2011

It’s quarter to 9 in the evening: L’s demeanour mysteriously changes from sweet girl to tyrant…

L: “It’s wrong to go back on a promise and you promised.  It doesn’t matter that the situation changed.  I want my own bed. I WANT my own bed. I WANT MY OWN BED. I don’t want to share with W and M. I want to share with mum.  It’s all your fault dad for missing the train. I can’t believe you came back and ruined our plans.  It was going to be so much fun and you’ve ruined it.”

(Her 9 o’clock pique is not restricted to us – interestingly, on the last night train, she started to tell off the entire carriage for making too much noise and keeping the lights on and talking on their mobiles, in the very same fierce tone.  She is undoubtedly our ‘little firecracker’, as recognised by an Indian friend)

It’s spot-on 9 O’clock – L has acquiesced to sleeping on the mattresses with her siblings, rather than on the floor, and is now fast asleep.

WD is admitting he actually didn’t want to go to Kalahasti tonight, and maybe, just maybe, he’d subconsciously sabotaged things by missing the train on purpose.  He looks frankly relieved to be sleeping in HIS bed.  Sorry L.   We’d been hard selling the ‘staying here’ option as M was going with WD for the overnighter to another pilgrimage town.  This had seemed the best option of usefully using a weekend in Chennai (when the archives are closed), M getting some individual parent time and avoiding all of us doing the travelling…



We're planning one of these for a few years hence.



We arrived in Chennai on Thursday and are planning to be here about a week.  It’s a big city (6 million+), which has rather deterred us from spending more time here.  But so far, it has been surprisingly pleasant although I haven’t done that much exploring…We are staying in the New Woodlands Hotel, which is a vast hotel warren, more brutalist (concrete runways and screens) than rustic (the few leafy trees in the courtyards don’t really constitute woodland and there’s a small intensively cared-for lawn that is locked up when not in use for corporate functions, ‘puberty parties’ or wedding receptions).  It does have large (‘deluxe’) rooms which suit our needs well, with external windows (truly an oddity in modern Tamil Nadu hotels) and lots of staff (who drop by regularly with complimentary breakfast coupons, receipts and additional loo roll) and facilities (2 veg restaurants, a beauty salon, its own temple, a shoe shine shop, a business centre and, most excitingly, a swimming pool that is in action and has a mosaic of the Little Mermaid on its walls).  Immediately outside the hotel gate is a 6 lane fly-over and an auto-stand of particularly hard-nosed rickshaw drivers.

Chennai autorickshaw drivers have a reputation for being completely mercenary when it comes to fares.  They certainly appear to expect about twice the rate commanded by autos in Delhi, say. WD makes us all hide behind a wall whilst he negotiates in Tamil. Even that fails to work sometimes - especially when they start asking for such large fares, he doesn’t recognise the numbers involved or the auto driver reneges on the deal, insisting that we stop at various places where he gets commission or else he’ll add on at least another 50 rupees… So then we all have to jump out again, and continue the performance.  WD has been figuring out the city’s buses to get to the archives to avoid the hassle (the 27D please).  Having said that, we’ve had some good encounters today with rickshaw drivers who seemed fair and honest and were completely charming to the children so, they’re not all the same and anyway, if they can collectively command a higher rate for their labour than elsewhere in India, they must be doing something right?

Just a bit down the road, but across the thundering traffic flow, are the essentials – a fruit stall which also sells milk and curd, a branch of ‘Hot Breads’ which sells sliced brown bread, a supermarket which sells everything else, several flower sellers for jasmine to put in your hair every morning, an Amul ice-cream parlour for a scoop of ‘Special Kulfi’ and a branch of Saravana Bhavan, purveyor of the finest quality thalis and dosas in town.  

'Meals' at the Saravana Bhavan

I’d thought initially we’d stare longingly across the road, unable to get across the 6 lanes of trucks, autos, mopeds, buses and cars  on my own with the children, but the very fine officers of the Chennai Traffic Police blow their whistles and stop everyone to get me and the ducklings safely across (and back again later).  So with shops, safe passage and a functioning (but noisy) fridge in our room, we are able to semi-self-cater, which is a first for us in India.  Marmite sandwich and watermelon, anyone?

Chennai is also a bit short of parks, outdoor spaces and child-friendly outings.  There’s the beach, where we’ll go tomorrow for a walk, but it’s another long, wide, shade-free band of dirty sand and a no-swim zone.  We were going to go to the Theosophical Society’s park today, to see a famous Banyan tree, only to discover it was only open 8-10 am and we’d already missed it… The Government museum has out-priced itself (875 rupees, over £12, for us to visit as a family) especially with 2 of the 4 sites closed. 

So instead we spent Saturday morning visiting a hospital and going to a shopping mall.  We certainly do know how to have fun.  We ended up having lunch at Planet YumYum (“Are we still on Planet Earth, mum?” ”No, we’re on Planet YumYum!”), a food court at the top of Spencer Plaza.  Very loud music (Scissor Sisters and TakeThat) and doughy pizza but an authentic middle-class Indian experience in the New India. Oh and we went to a super bookshop called Higginbothams to find a book on Krishna for the children (they needed to know a bit more as one of the veg restaurants here has important scenes from the life of Krishna painted on its walls, and they couldn’t quite identify them all so needed to do a bit of reading up…) and an Oxford School atlas for WD.

Swimming every day with the children has been a really great bonus.  L is a shark (Basking, Great White, Hammerhead? – I’m not quite sure).  M swims lengths and chats to exercising American ladies.  W practices hard for Julia (his swimming teacher) back at the Ormerod pool in Barton.  I feel a bit self-conscious splashing around with them. Indian mums seem not to get into the water with their children and instead leave them to it, whilst they read or make calls on their mobile phones.  We even get to feel cold and shivery which is nice.  Actually, the 30-32ᵒC heat isn’t too hard-going with a bit of a breeze and low humidity. But as WD reminds me, this is the coolest time of year here.  We’ve watched the cloud cover, which was bugging us over the last few weeks with miserable, dull overcast skies, finally disappear from the satellite pictures.  Not a single cloud over South India, just blue sky it seems.

It’s 8 am the following morning (Sunday) and a smiley, sleep-refreshed and reinvented L emerges from her bed…

L: I’m really embarrassed that mum has puplished my Pondycherry blog so don’t laugh at it. Well yesterday we went shopping.  We borght Krishna comics, tooth paste, ‘I was a rat’ (by Phillip Pullman) , an Eva ibotson book, and an oxford atlas specail addishon. WELL BYE BYE im off to do some reading.

W’s up too (“Mum, my poo’s all thin not thick today and there was a black seed when I wiped my bottom”) and M, last of all, with gorgon hair.  WD’s just come back with a papaya for breakfast. Good morning Wolf-family. 

Family history

M: Yesterday we all went on a crazy adventure – to a hospital.  It was the Egmore Women and Children’s hospital, the first hospital dedicated to women and children in Asia! We went to see if we could find any sign of my great, great grandfather’s brother, Arthur B, who was a doctor there and the director of the hospital between 1882-1898.  That’s 16 years!  We walked into the hospital, and one of the receptionists helped Dad to find someone who would know anything.  There wasn’t a plaque where Dad remembered but most of the hospital (apart from an old library and lecture theatre) has been knocked down and is being rebuilt.  We met two nice lady doctors, both senior professors, one of whom is now the Director of the hospital, and they showed us the board of names of previous directors including Arthur M B!  It felt like we were being historians tracking down records of old relatives in our family history.  Dad has been archives in the Delhi and has seen small paragraphs on Arthur B and saw that he looked after the [exiled] Queen of Burma when she was having a baby.  

W: Me and Daddy and M and L didn’t even know what Arthur B looked like because he died a long long time ago but I’ll ask Granny Sue and Granpa Antony if they’ve got any pictures of him.  I didn’t mind the Lady Doctors pinching my cheeks there as they only pinched a little bit and didn’t even pinch.  One of the lady doctors said she cried when people pinched her cheeks too hard but it’s how Indian people show they love children and think you’re sweet.

WM: Strange to be anywhere near a hospital  – mothers squatting with poorly looking babies awaiting medical attention and sick women walking round the corridors with drips in their arms, carrying their notes… 20,000 deliveries a year, so a busy place.  And medical students in short white coats, looking like medical students everywhere, bottles of discolouring path specimens and white boards advertising postgrad meetings. I felt awkward being there for a non-medical purpose but we were assured Saturdays were comparatively quiet and doors were unlocked and everyone was very gracious to us.

M: Me and Dad started for Tirupati yesterday evening.  Unfortunately we didn’t get quite there. I’ll explain why.  Firstly, Daddy didn’t quite get the train times right.  So we missed our train by 5 minutes – 5 minutes!! The ticket seller told us to catch the bus.  So we caught a bus from the railway station, 10 kilometres’ ride out of town to the new bus stand.  On the way, when our spirits were already low, a woman asked us where we going when we got to the bus station.  We answered, “Tirupati!” and she said in return, “That’s a very tedious journey!”  This made our spirits even lower.  When we got to the bus stand, we jumped off the bus and asked for a ticket as the conductor hadn’t come up to us and sold us a ticket on the bus.  We asked the man who we thought was the conductor, but he was actually a ticket inspector and he said that we’d have to pay him a fine of 500 rupees each!  Dad pleaded and they let him just buy our tickets.  After all that, we had a small discussion and the end result was ‘Let’s go home!’  The bus journey had been tedious enough already and we didn’t want 4 more hours driving in the dark on a rather cramped bus.  If Dad goes again, he has to take me because we didn’t exactly complete our trip!

WD: Hmmm, yes, didn’t get our travel plans quite right. I’m not keen on long bus rides and travelling at night’s a bad idea so perhaps we’ll try again later in the week. It’s another public holiday on Wednesday (Republic Day) so perhaps M & I will go to Kalahasti then – on the train that we now know leaves at 4.35pm.

I’ve come here to work in the State Archives that contain records of the colonial and Independent governments of southern India from the late eighteenth century on. It’s an extraordinary resource but in a terrible state: files are tied up with string, cats sleep among the shelves, and the paper files are literally disintegrating. No-one knows quite what’s there and computerisation and acid-free, temperature-controlled storage is a long way off. But some of the staff are kind and friendly, and with some persuasion find some good things for me to read. It all takes time though and I know at heart I prefer fieldwork: hopping on buses, dropping in to remote places, chatting at tea stalls and seeing parts of India far from the well-worn tourist trails.

Ok folks, 50 lengths of the pool? The sun might have warmed the water slightly, and indeed if we wait a while the water tank on the roof too, so we can have a hot shower later. Sunday morning and W is building a policeman and Hanuman with Lego, L writing her own newspaper (‘The Small Children Times’: “Parents have been outrageous that their children cannot draw or write.  We say let them learn.”) with cut-out pictures from the Sunday Deccan Herald and M learning to touch-type with dancing and opera-singing hippos. WPs in need of serious caffeine and the Radhakrishnan Salai branch of Café Coffee Day just down the road might just do the trick.   Followed by a stroll on Marina Beach?

Holy Frogitt, it’s still Pongal…

Pondicherry, Jan 18^th 2011

W: Are we still on Pondicherry, mum? Oh brilliant!  I like this place because it’s  got 2 bridges in the garden outside and we found a frog, a crab and 2 newts (I’ve seen loads of newts, more than you…) The other good thing is I like the buttered toast and the spaghetti last night.

WM: We are in Pondicherry (or Puducherry), mostly for the food – see M’s and L’s appreciative blogs below - but also for a few days’ R&R.  WD has used the town for similar in the past (when he was craving non-veg and apple pie, after too long in the wilds of Tamil Nadu), and we came here briefly together in 1999.

M: We are in Pondicherry – think French bakeries, yoga halls and the endless sound of the rolling breakers.  Pondicherry is an ideal place after two weeks of idlis, dosas and puri.  I dropped my only piece of French bread.  I was very upset but the next day we went to the exactly the same place as the day before.  Dad brought home buns and brown bread for lunch yesterday. It was the nicest lunch we’d had for a while…

 WM: I’ve washed our entire bag of clothes.  We were about to have a major dirty pants crisis, which has only narrowly been averted, phew! Although M has just said she and L wore the same pants for three days (stinky girls).  Standards have definitely slipped… There’s something very homely about the lines of washing drying on the porch. 

We are staying at the Park Guest House, part of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram empire here.  All the rooms have rather spooky pictures of Sri Aurobindo and ‘The Mother’ and messages of spiritual encouragement.  Strange place, but definitely restful (lots of rules, including no noise 10 pm-5 am - in India!) with simple rooms (no flat screen TV, no internet access – the wireless is direct to your guru) just behind the seafront.  All the rooms have names like ‘Courage’ and ‘Humility’.  We are staying in ‘Aspiration’ (I guess aspiration to spiritual enlightenment, rather than to material acquisition?) and the children are directly next door in ‘Gentleness’!!! Crows are cawing, waves are crashing onto the shore just the other side of the compound wall, and the odd ashram visitor is meditating in the stone circle or doing yoga stretches or head stands in the sculpture garden (known as the Garden of Good Vibrations – you couldn’t make it up!). You are instructed to leave cell phone, ego, speech and footwear outside but allowed to bring in your full heart, silent mind and bare feet. M loves the fact that she can go into the garden and read a book and commune with geckos (“Mr Lizard”) there in peace, but W&L find a garden that is not for running around and letting rip, a bit of a contradiction in terms. 

WD and I woke up this morning with a tropical pink sun rising through our window.  It’s been a bit frantic, so a bit of calm is now seeping back into our bones.  WD is desperate to catch up on emails – but is thwarted by a lack of wireless internet, so has been forced to read his book (a book about the economic and social recent history of India, rather than anything directly work-related), write up field notes and stare into space, perhaps reflecting on progress so far?

We’d arrived 2 days earlier and run headlong into Pongal Problems. We’d done the night train, seen dawn arrive at a junction station waiting for the connecting morning train, and arrived in Pondi exhausted, hungry and filthy.  Pongal is a four day fest and with the growth of domestic tourism, everywhere was full, not a room to be had anywhere in town.  We drove round town crammed into an auto with all our luggage (we just about fit though some contortion is needed – but we are not even trying as we’ve seen entire classes of school children in the back of an auto, count them – 21,22,23…), getting more and more discouraged.



Eventually we found a very inadequate, tiny room on busy MG Road, charged at extortionate rates and knew it was the best we’d find until the end of the holidays.  We were able to move here (the Ashram Guest House) after I’d passed a test of spiritual fitness. I had to hang out in a waiting room full of mosquitoes for a morning, waiting patiently and humbly, putting aside physical discomfort (deranged itching, hunger), anger and irritation with the reception staff, feeling only calm and love…quite tricky. (The others were meanwhile eating breakfast at ‘Le Club’.)



L: "That's SO disgusting!"



 Pondicherry is an ex-French colonial territory so considers itself somewhat ‘special’ and appears to have absorbed the Gallic shrug of indifference into its character.  It is, without any doubt, the least friendly place we’ve been in India. Even in 2 days here, the examples of frostiness, if not overt rudeness, are numerous.  Elsewhere we’ve had irritation and frustration (but mostly great friendliness), but never such chippiness.  It’s not just about it being a tourist hub, although that may contribute. So, we just laugh in slight disbelief and Carry On enjoying this time-out of India proper (the café-frappes, the private contractors dealing with rubbish around town, heritage walks, internet cafes playing Mozart, the Botanic Gardens, beer not out of a teapot…) but will be happy to throw ourselves back in before very long.  In some ways, it’s harder as we have to keep warning the children that whilst you can get ‘proper’ bread (i.e. not the Asian Bread, a sweet sliced milk loaf that you get elsewhere) and other delicacies (doughnuts, bacon, feta cheese) here, they won’t be elsewhere… Better to get used to not having, or to indulge their missing? 

We’ve invented a ‘swear’ word (the children were wanting to know the ‘F’ word) to fit the situation – ‘Froggit’ – which may be used to vent, as in: ‘Frogging Froggits!’, ‘Holy Froggit!’.  Feel free to try it at home.

L: Lovly freash Pondercherry with yummy French bakerys and restaraunts. High lights of Pondercherry are food, beach, hotels, smell [atully not, it smells the same] and peace. I have made up a song here it is: I love Pondercherry  yeh oh yeh  I love Pondercherry yeh oh yeh I love Pondercherry yeh oh yeh and the world all loves it too.

CHILDREN ONLY NO GROWN UPS. Please email me I want to hear the gossip.  School freands tell me if theres any news because I need it for a magizeine. Wish you were here to play with me.  Me and W had a laugh but I still miss you.

(WM: L and W have just drunk a lot of Sprite; it fizzed up their noses and they played crazy horses on the grass at the Alliance Française and both ended up with hiccups!)

WELL BYE BYE EVREY ONE I’LL WRITE AGAIN TOMORROW

WD: I know I’m avoiding Chennai, a big city that’s certainly interesting but not very peaceful by comparison with Pondy. But, subject to the reception graciously allowing us to stay a day longer, we’ll go there tomorrow and stay till next week. I have some more archival work to do there and some people to meet. In the meantime, I FOUND THE BAKERY and it does have almond croissants (and indeed filled baguettes and olive breadsticks). In all my years coming here, I’d never managed to find a croissant despite all the rumours that they existed. Success!

À bientôt, mes amies!

P.S. Pilgrim update: another year of deaths at Sabarimala (near Kumily where we were earlier) – 102 died in a stampede near the hill-shrine of Lord Ayyapa on Friday (Makarajyothi night, the climatic culmination of the Ayyapa pilgrimage). It’s happened before (53 people died on the same day in 1999) and, this time, up to an estimated 25 lakh (I think that’s 2.5 million) pilgrims had been in Sabarimala, and most were hurrying down the hillside after dark to start their journeys home, with only 4 policemen at the section where the tragedy occurred, according to The Hindu on Monday.

Happy Pongal

Rameshwaram, 15^th January 2011

WM: Greetings from Rameshwaram, a mere leap and a jump (if you’re a god) from Sri Lanka.  It’s an island, connected to the mainland by a road and rail bridge - crossing over you can see the sea lapping close to both sides of the road.  We arrived by bus, at the children’s instigation (they were bored with the back seat of cars; fair enough I say), yesterday afternoon.  And only about 200 rupees (approx. £3) for the lot of us to travel 170 km!

The bus ride was a relatively speedy and manageable affair @ 4 ½ hours from Madurai which was fortunate given the crush and the length of the WP’s femurs.  Everyone was well behaved, except for Wolfdad who nearly missed the bus’ departure while buying oranges and having a piss in the particularly fragrant bus-stand facilities and then did loud, Tamil chatting for most of the way. W slept, all hot and sweaty, across me and his seat and M did non-verbal reasoning and stared out of the window.

L: I did loud chatting with dad.  We chatted about sugar cane and Sri Lanka. Dad chatted to a Tamil man who was learning English.  He had a funny book of English phrases.  Dad was using it to learn useful Tamil phrases, like ‘It’s nothing serious, just rest required’, ‘You’re so rude’ and ‘She learns Geography’!  I’m writing a poem about bus rides now.

 I’m Mozzie Potter as I have a mosquito bite on my forehead.  Last night when we were tucked up in bed, we had a big drama.  All it was, was me losing my tooth (bottom canine); it was very bloody.  Today you can still see the blood stain on the sink.  The Indian tooth fairy was not reliable because she didn’t even bother to come.

WM: Pongal started yesterday – it’s a four day harvest festival that is especially big in Tamil Nadu, with lots of people travelling to spend time with their families (thus overcrowded buses and huge waiting lists for train travel) and many businesses and public facilities closed or going slow for the duration – just like Christmas in the UK.  It’s been a bit of a headache navigating the disruption but apart from the starving hungry Wolfgang (we’d managed not to have lunch on the way) arriving here yesterday afternoon with no food available till 7pm – aahhh!  I say thank goodness for bananas! - no major gliches so far. 

A big part of the Pongal celebrations is Pongal rice (a mushy, cooked rice made with sugar cane and ghee. M tried it this morning and says it was sooo sweet and gloopy, even by Indian standards ) so everywhere there are sugarcanes being sold on the street, strapped to mopeds, autos, cows eating the stuff, even elephants…. You also see Pongal Kollam patterns outside every house in the morning, a bit like the Rangoli patterns that you see in North India – patterns in bright powder, often symmetrical or repeating, featuring Pongal pots (the decorated clay pots overspilling with Pongal rice, think the magic porridge pot…), sugar cane, cows and flowers.

Soggy Wolfgang in Rameshwaram

Rameshwaram is a fishing town with a major temple that Hindus come from all over India to see.  Prior to the Sri Lankan civil war, you could catch a ferry there from here.  We almost have a seaview at the Hotel Seaview.   The seashore looks grey, desolate, windy, drizzly (a bit like South Devon coast out-of-season, only with more palm trees, no cream tea shops and even more rubbish) but when you go out, you realise how hot and steamy it is despite appearances, and the town ‘beach’ is not up to a great deal. Certainly not the place for a swim although along the south coast, there is a marine national park, and I believe turtles and manatees, but I don’t see quite how we’ll be seeing them…It does feel a little like being at the end of the world, one of those Last Stop places and must be susceptible to every typhoon going. 

The children are very excited as I have now sorted out the netbook to play DVDs - it’s been a long and frustrating wait but we now can watch the Simpsons again!  We’re going to have a Rameshwaram cinema matinee in our room of the Aristocats or even the Sound of Music given the rain and imminent night train.  They are all doing so well, coping with the travelling (they’re currently having a conversation about how much they’re looking forward to going on the night train tonight and what a good adventure night trains are…) and everything that throws up, but food is still is an issue, especially for the younger two.  As we go to places further off the tourist trail, they become more conservative and it’s a real challenge. M, of course, is happily eating idli and vadai with the best of them. 

W:I like chapatis but nothing else. 

M: Yesterday we had to starve until 7 o’clock.  We managed to miss lunch AGAIN! Bad things always turn out better as we found out.  We went to the temple to spend time till we could eat.  This worked out better than we thought as the guards to the main shrine liked Dad so much because he spoke Tamil that they let us all go in, where only Hindus are meant to go.  Dad got very excited at this huge privilege.  Dad had always wanted to see the main shrine, especially now after his work in the Delhi archives, and never expected to be let in.  There were very long corridors in the temple, very good for running.  The floors were all wet and on our way out, we saw people bathing in holy water.

WD: I stayed in the temple all evening as I was so surprised to be allowed in at all. It was worth staying a while longer to see the evening procession of the Goddess on a great golden palanquin being carried around the very long corridors that encircle the temple, with a decorated elephant and Ganesha on a smaller palanquin in front of her. Musicians and priests accompanied the men carrying the heavy palanquins with the dressed and garlanded deities, and a large crowd of pilgrims followed along behind.

Eating here is challenging for us all: lunch at the ‘Saravana High-Class Veg Restaurant’ left us wondering how delicious a ‘Low-Class’ veg place would have been.

Hmm, night train doesn’t fill the WPs with great joy (unlike the children) but the thought of Pondicherry food options is a source of delight.  We must make sure to wake up/get off the train at 4.45 am at Vallupuram, to make the connection to Pondicherry, otherwise we’ll end up in Chennai.

Happy Pongal everyone….

Things that seem ordinary after 2 months in India

By M and L

Before we stop noticing, these are things that seemed extraordinary and are now normal:

Eating with the right hand

Crossing roads without zebra crossings or traffic lights

Animals on the street

Liking dosas and lassis

Food on banana leaves

Curries and spicy food

Not trusting walls or fences

Noise all the time

No seat belts (although sometimes there are)

People pinching my cheeks

Having to put up with photos

Temples 

People speaking in different languages

Auto-rickshaws and shared jeeps

Being sick on trains

Travelling (not staying more than 2 weeks anywhere, usually a few days)

Not having the rest of family and friends around

Trying not to fight

Not fiddling with aircon (it’s so tempting…)

Looking out for each other

Squat loos and no loo paper