Last(ing) Impressions

I had planned to spend my last evening in town.  I wanted to look a fish in the eye, and call it dinner.  Off I went in a taxi with fellow guests David and Sylvia.  We had all manner of plans for a nice stroll along the seafront, cup of tea, bit of shopping and then back to a fish restaurant for a non-veg dinner.  About 1km from the hotel, the rain started again.  I was wearing my lovely new red sandals (again).  


When we got to town, David and Sylvia waited in the taxi whilst I repeated my barefoot sandal saving dash to do my errands.  I said my goodbyes and picked up some lemon cake takeaway from my friend Geemon.  We stopped off in just one shop where I admired one of the most beautiful shawls I have ever seen and was "singing bowled" by the owner.  The use of the singing bowl is supposed to free the body of fears. 


 We then stopped at the "Divine Supermarket"  I checked the price of cups.  20 rupees including saucer.  That will be a detail for my email to the hotel manager.  He made the mistake of asking me to give him feedback.


Back to the hotel.  It was still raining. That did not hamper the performance of Indian dance (classical to Bollywood) and Keralan martial arts on the open air stage.  They gave us some tandoori fish for dinner, but it did not have eyes.

cappuccino in Kerala

Not the cup of coffee.  The monk.  2 of them actually, so I suppose I should change the title to cappuccini.  They arrived yesterday in their long brown robes with the pointed hoods.  Not really what you expect to see in a - if not luxurious, shall we say comfortable - resort. I was watching them going around looking holy.  One of them says "God bless you" to everyone who passes. 


My Swiss neighbour explained.  A capuchin monk, Fr. Bernadine started an orphanage in 1989.  There are many "orphans" in India.  They are orphans because they are illegitimate and their  mothers cannot afford to keep them, or they come from the poorest of families and are given up to the orphanage because their parents know that they will be fed there.  Fr. Bernadine had the bright idea to offer accommodation to tourists as a way of raising funds for the orphanage.  The project grew and the hotel grew too.  


The monk I saw strolling around was Fr. Bernadine with a younger colleague.  They also have 2 nuns in tow.  The nuns are old.  They are now starting a project teaching or training girls.  I am glad that the profits from my "holiday" goes to support such worthwhile projects. You can read about the charitable projects here

Bathed in oil

I am now at the end of my stay here.  Beena and Binju have done their worst.  Today, it was a gentle massage followed by an oil bath.  They do not fill a tub with oil and get you to climb in.  You lie on the massage table and they rhythmically pour warm oil over you.  It would be very relaxing.  It is very relaxing.  For most people.  They warm the oil in large pots on a calor gas stove perched on a wobbly stool.  And that is why it is not very relaxing for me.  I lie there and hear the oil sizzling and crackling.  I am just waiting for it to ignite like a chip pan fire of old.  There is no fire blanket.  There is not even a lid for the pot which might kill the flames.  The rickety stool with the calor gas stove is placed directly in the 18 inches of space between me and the door.  There are bars on the windows. I am naked and oily.  How will I get out?  And so I lie there, all slippery, and just a little bit tense.  Every time the pot is removed from the stove, I can relax a bit.  And then the moment comes when they will pour it again.  In my neurotic mind, they have overheated it.  Blisters are forming on my skin before they realise their error.  I am deep fried and truly Scottish.

Swiss Ladies at Full Moon

Everywhere I go there are lots of Swiss people. Here too.  But here, we have only Swiss ladies.  No Swiss men.  I expect they are all busy running banks, making watches, playing alphorns and manufacturing triangular chocolate. 


The Swiss ladies here are of a certain age, but that does not stop them from having fun.  I can understand television Swiss German, but I cannot understand bunchofhystericalwifiesalltalkingatonce Swiss German, so my eavesdropping expeditions have not harvested anything of interest.  So, this little story is based on what they actually told. 


Last Friday night was full moon.  They put the lights out here at 10pm and I stay on my terrace until the mosquitos have been fed.  By 11pm it is really lockdown.  When we cam back from the festival, we were chatting to some of the Swiss ladies and they told us about their Full Moon Party.


And this is what the Swiss ladies did.  Just before midnight, they went down onto the beach and drew a spiral in the sand.  They then summoned the energy of the full moon with rattles and drums.  Some full moon incantations were sung and they spent some time on a big rock "absorbing the powerful energy of the full moon." After that they bathed in the sea.  Naked, they said. 


Next time you are in Switzerland, if you see a spiral drawn in the snow at full moon, you'll know what's up.

Attukal Pongala Festival

Some kindly folk here persuaded me to join them to see the festival. I would normally avoid anywhere crowded and 3 million women with rice is not really my idea of good company for  a Saturday afternoon.  Off we went with a very patient taxi driver.  After about an hour in traffic jams watching busload after busload of ladies pass in the other direction, we feared we may have missed the fun.  We parked somewhere behind the temple and walked.  By the road, the ashes of the rice cooking fires were all around, and unsold cooking pots were piled up.  The atmosphere was festive and the way to the temple entrance was lined with stalls selling the usual pilgrim wares and helium filled zebras and plastic toys.  The Saturday afternoon ceremony seemed to be about little girls getting dressed up with fancy headgear and bringing offerings of small bananas, some grains of rice, sugar cane, and some jasmin flowers.  We were the only white people there and so we were much looked at. Some children, keen to try out their English came and shook our hands and before we knew it, grown ups were shaking our hands too. I felt like the Queen. Here a few photies:

whole groups arrived with the women in front and the men following.  towards the temple entrance drum groups joined the procession and drummed the little girls along

could not figure out why there were all these abandoned shoes quite far from the temple entrance.  I have been searching for a pair of purple sandals, and in the pile I found these ones just my size.  Not quite what I had in mind, but what's a girl to do.

my new sandals

leftover cooking pots

3 Million (30 lakh) Women Making Rice Pudding

A trip into town to buy linen fabric for some trousers was on the agenda for Friday.  As we got closer to town, I started to notice huge piles of clay cooking pots outside nearly every shop.  There was lots of traffic.  As we neared the city centre huge noisy pa systems  on the streets played loud devotional music.  "Is there a festival?" I asked the taxi driver.  "Yes, Madam, 3 millions of womens is coming to temple.  Is big festival of womens"  He went on to tell me that women come from all over India, and from whole Kerala for this festival.  I did my shopping.  As we drove back I noticed little brick piles and kindling all along the side of the road.  I asked the driver again what it was about. "They cooking" he said. Me: "All of them?" "Yes," he answered "they all cooking rice and bring to temple."  My table mates at lunch were planning to go shopping in town on Saturday.  I advised them not to, unless they were prepared to fight their way past 3 million rice cooking "womens". 


Beena and Bindhu had a great treat in store for me today.  Rubbing down with powder.  It was like being sandpapered.  I hope my skin will be soft when I wash the powder off. In any case I am well spiced! They then put me in a wooden box which had a stool in it and a hole on top for my head.  A pressure cooker atop a bunsen burner feeds steam into the box via a plastic hose fitted to the bit where the pressure valve is. And I sat in the box as they steamed me.  I thought I would get away clean, but the banana leaf was applied again.  So 4 hairwashes again today.


I quizzed them about the festival.  Beena is Christian and will not be attending.  But Bindhu will make her rice at home and go along.  The rice is sweet.  The roadside cooking fires will be  used by the out-of-towners.  And all those women really do make rice pudding and take it along to the temple. Transposing the experience to my native Scotland, I found it difficult to visualise the streets of Glasgow lined with little fires on which Mars bars are deep fried in earthenware pots whilst huge speakers blast out "It's only a step to Jesus" and other Salvation Army type hits.


There are some photos on this blog which show just how it looked when I was there on Friday morning.  This Attukal Pongala festival holds the world record for the largest gathering of women.

this is not the rice pudding, it is what they put under the banana leaf

Cleansing day

Today was cleansing day.  Alarm went at 5.40 as I knew that "medicines, Madam" would be there at 6.  Sure enough, I was sitting on the terrace reading when he came along with a glass of warm sludge and told me to drink it.  It tasted of liquorice and pepper and ginger and honey, with an aftertaste of chanel no 5,  but it was still sludge and I had to battle the gagging reflex.  I will not tell more about the effects of the sludge.  After a while I felt a bit queasy, and so I shuffled off to breakfast and had 3 cups of very gingery ginger tea.  


At 10 a waiter appeared at my terrace with a glass of coconut water. "Drink this, Madam" he commanded.  30 minutes later the doctor appeared.  "How are you?" she asked.   "Have you been to the toilet?"  "How many times?"  Not totally satisfied with my answers, she shook her head from side to side and left.  She seemed disappointed that I was fine.  Tired and feeling the effects of the sludge, I went for a wee lie down.  I was just starting to dream of the office, when a loud knock on the door saved me. "Sorry for disturb, Madam, but this is for you" said the smiling waiter.  This, I understood, was my lunch.  A bowl of salty rice gruel and a green ball of something.  I thought it looked like a pistachio sweet of some kind and therefore saved it for after the gruel.  It was coconut and salt and herbs all chopped up very fine and then rolled into a disgusting ball.  Yuck.


2 o'clock torture time soon came round.  I dragged myself up the hill to Beena and Binjhu who greeted me warmly.  Beena: "Have you been to the toilet?"  "How many times?"  "Vomiting?"  When I said no, I had not vomited, Beena sniffed.  That was the wrong answer. When I told her about the ginger tea she shook her head, not from side to side Indian yes fashion, but  western style, eyes heavenward "you stupid woman" fashion.  Beena and Bindhu were kind to me today and did not thump me with anything at all.  A facepack.  Something cold on my eyelids.  I was starting to feel pampered.  "Sit" she  ordered.  And then they brought out a big brass bowl of mud like sludge.  It smelt like the stuff I drank this morning.  They plastered it on my head.  Then the banana leaf was applied.  "One hour keeping" instructed Beena.  As I left, Bindhu put a teatowel round my neck as if it were a jasmine garland.  Back at my terrace, reading my book, I soon realised that brown liquid was running down my face and neck as the sludge was melting in the heat.  That was what the teatowel was for.  4 washes it took to get that sludge out of my hair.  So at least my hair is cleansed.

Kerala is India's Tippler Country

I read in a bbc article that Keralans have the highest consumption of booze in India. The sale of alcohol is a strictly controlled state monopoly.  But the state alcohol shops are open long hours 7 days a week.  There is always a queue outside.  I have also seen quite a few "toddy huts" on my travels.  Toddy is the local homemade tipple. It is fermented coconut sap. They tap the tree trunk near the top and put a little pot to collect the sap.  In the early evening, they climb the tree to collect it. I don't think I shall bother trying it. 

Most of the restaurants along the beach have no licence to serve alcohol, but of course they all do.  I had my first dinner out this trip at at restaurant proudly calling itself "Kingfisher seafood corner" or something like that.  Kingfisher is the vast Indian brewery/airline company.  As I went in, the waiter pointed up to his sign and smiled. "Kingfisher" he said.  "I don't drink" said I, and not a single bolt came from the sky to smite me.  I meant, "I don't drink when I am on holiday in India" but that is just too many words.  As I took my seat he muttered "white wine"  in the same tone as those illegal money changers who accosted tourists in Prague back in the early 90's.  "I'll have a ginger lime soda please," I answered primly.  

The beer comes in enormous bottles - a litre I think.  It is served wrapped in newspaper and the glass comes in coffee mug.  When you have poured your beer, you have to put the bottle under the table.  The lady at the table next to me allowed me to take a photograph of hers.  Cheers.

Yoga with Ludmilla, Svetlana, Heidi and Ursula

There is yoga here twice a day.  6.45 am we shuffle up to the conference hall which has fantastic views over the Arabian Sea.  The mats are laid out on the floor.  I take my place in the back row.  That is the row for the unfit and the unpunctual.  No matter how early you arrive, Ludmilla and Svetlana are there in the front row, in the middle.  They are not young.  They are not slim.  They look like they work in personal security for Russian oligarchs and have a sideline scaring people away from nightclubs on a Saturday night. But these ladies must have been sportswomen in soviet times because no matter what pose, they can do it. They can fold themselves over like flick knives and they can tie their feet behind their heads.  Makes us stiffies in the back row feel even worse about our pathetic attempts to touch our knees or whatever.  Heidi, Ursula and friends are Swiss and German.  They are fit and bronzed and flexible.  They wear figure hugging clothes just so that we all know that they have no flab.  They have never done yoga before, but by the second day they are doing full lotus and scratching their ears with their toes. I've got one up on them all though.  I will not be noticed for the grace of my yoga poses, but I know the words to the sanskrit songs they sing at the beginning and the end.  And my OM is in tune.

trod upon and beaten to a pulp - the way to banana leaf ninja status

They lure you in with those early treatments.  The relaxing massage after the long flight.  The shirodhara after the long year (and it was a very long year because I have not had shirodhara since November 2009).  And then it gets serious. Chavutti Thirumal they call it.  They hang on to a rope and massage you with their feet.  Just Beena walking up and down on me. It is supposed to make you more flexible and unblock any congested energy channels.  5 to 10 and I haven't fallen asleep yet, so maybe it is working.


Spent some time looking up the rest of my plan to see what treats are in store.  There will be beatings with rice and powder, the pouring of warm oil, lime poultice, herbal medicines held in with banana leaf "so that the powerful medicines can penetrate deep in the brain"  The banana leaf bit comes towards the end.  

So here I am after being pounded with limes.  I was quite green.  They put limes in some muslin, and then they heat it up in oil and then they pound you with it.  As you can see from the ninja headgear, they finish off the session with some more shirodhara.  The shirodhara seems to be having an effect.  After the second one I often have nightmares and find myself angry about something.  Anyway, here I am in this beautiful place and I dreamt of the office.  That's enough to make anyone fly into a rage.  Add to that the lack of cups for a whole 10 minutes yesterday at breakfast time.  Swiss ladies were drinking their tea our of soup bowls.  Not those cool looking things favoured by the French.  No, luggies as Burns called them. I was unable to drink my tea out of a soup bowl so I waited the ten minutes and then calculated how much my ten minutes had cost.  That figure would come in handy in my campaign. I was outraged. I spent most of the day plotting my angry campaign.  Trying to decide whether to give the Food and Beverage Manager a chance, or take it straight to the GM.  Should I email my travel agent now about this shocking state of affairs, or should I wait until I get home. At one point I was considering dragging the manager with me into town so that we could shop for cups together and he could see how easy it is to buy cups here, and how cheap they are. The letters were writing themselves in my head, but I was too engrossed in my book (The Help) to actually act on any of it.  And today, there were cups galore at breakfast time, everyone is smiling and efficient.  And I am calm.

ayurvedic ninjas

my little hut and terrace

Finally warmed through after arriving here 2 days ago unable to remember my own name.  I have a nice little room with a private terrace and a view of the sea. This is not my first trip to an ayurvedic resort, so I was quite prepared to see people shuffling around in dressing gowns.  However, this is the first ninja ayurvedic resort I have visited.  As well as the dressing gowns which look a bit like long grey martial arts kimonos, they are wearing white bands round their heads with either white cloth, or a banana leaf covering the crown.  They also have warrior type markings on their forehead and neck.


The doctor shook her head from side to side and told me that my energy is quite well balanced and my immune system is strong.  She then set about drawing up a  programme to shift my 5% excess of one kind of energy back to where it belongs.  Fine with me as long as that programme includes shirodhara.  More about shirodhara later.  Beena and Bindhu would be in charge from now on.


In the afternoon someone knocked at my door with "medicines, Madam"  and handed me a bag of herbal drugs to be taken before and after food.  The package includes a bottle of bitter brown sludge of which 3 tablespoons 3 times daily. I have taken this stuff before.  Not this time.  It is vile.  I will not take it. I only have to decide whether to leave it unconsumed as a symbol of defiance, or tip a little down the sink each day to feign compliance.


The first "treatment" was a thumping from Beena and a subtle re-arrangement of my skeleton.  Next day, Beena and Bindhu ganged up on me and thumped me again.  When I screamed, Beena would ask "Is pain?"  I soon learn that answering yes to "is pain?" only encourages them to inflict more pain.  You have to suffer the pain to earn the shirodhara. And so, I got my shirodhara.  Warm oil is poured rhythmically on the forehead for about 45 minutes. Very relaxing.  By now it was 8.30pm.  The restaurant closes at 9, and so I had to go for dinner in the kimono and ninja head gear.  I had arrived.

some ninjas snapped unawares

Burns Night 2011 in porkandcabbageland

Dr. Who always seems to have strange experiences in familiar places.  Burns Night 2011 was a bit like that.  Here in porkandcabbageland there are some fans who organise a Burns Night.  There is even someone who has gone to the trouble of translating Burns into the local dialect.  So, off I went, dragging along my  friend for what promised to be an interesting experience if nothing else.   


There they were, almost 300 porkandcabbagelanders with a smattering of suitably kilted Scottish Ladies with their leader the redoubtable 86 year old Ruth. She had the frilliest blouse as befits her status as chieftain of the waltzcityscottishladies.  We had not ordered haggis in advance and so we had to order from the standard bill of fare.  We had pork.  And lettuce.  The evening started with Burns songs as set by Beethoven, Haydn, Schumann, Mendelssohn and others.  Then the haggis was ceremoniously piped in by the first waltzcity pipe and drum.  Oh yes, they have their very own pipe band.  A father and son. Not Scottish.  


Our neighbours had ordered haggis and we watched them shrink as if the haggis was going to jump off the plate and wrap itself round their head and press their brains out through their ears.  The haggis looked like its normal furry cute self.  However, it was served with mashed potatoes done the porkandcabbageland way - that is to say sloppy, very sloppy, like school dinner semolina.  Turnip is not a recognised vegetable in porkandcabbageland.  There are few recognised vegetables.  So, our haggis and potato flavoured semolina dish was completed with a spoonful of sliced carrots.  Once the first forkfuls of the puddin' race chieftain were tasted, the fear dissipated and they gobbled it up, as well they should.  


The next part of the evening was mainly Burns songs given the blues treatment and translated into waltzcity dialect. My highlight was one song done in German German, Swiss German, Waltzcitydialect and Lallans.  They have promised us a translation of Tam o Shanter for next year.  My friend went home and ordered Eddie Reader's Burns album.