Seduced..

Five months and she has got to me. The routine has started again, familiarity has grown and so has the attachment..
I think it has taken a little longer this time.. but Kerala has finally got to me..

familiarity with her body, and with her mind, but most of all with her sheer beauty..has taken me in..
Now with the rains still on, some of the scenes are so mesmerizing, it is a little difficult to remind myself that I am here, in that scenery, that the rain outside the window is the real thing, and not a scene from the TV or a National Geographic spread. I have not taken a single photograph since i have come here, but it feels like that is ok, because Kerala has so much beauty to offer, it is okay if i don't capture and save a little of her in my lens..she will be there tomorrow also, in her pristine splendor.

Familiarity is such a sweet thing.. for little routines to set in.. to find a nice breakfast joint, a classy restaurant, a familiar grocer, a well stocked book store.. good hotels for my travels... to know when it will rain, when there would be a power-cut..
It is nice to have roads which leads to places i know, to have a picture in mind when i overhear a conversation about a place

The screwed-up people, the lack of a social life, the smallness of the world here.. things that used to drive me to the brink still do, but they seem little less important now..
Well... i think Kerala has seduced me with her beauty..there is so much to travel..to explore.. now with the car coming in i should get all over the place..

mallu hallo

how does a malayalee say 'excuse me'.. there are three four things they do.. all proven and tested by many malayalis, and apparently better than the excuse me

first for instance if you are standing in someones way, or someone wants to call you.. malayali men and women do what i call the rattle snake.. they hiss.. one 'shhhss shh' noise.. very typical and unmistakable.. move out of way or atleast turn and look back
now if you are from outside, i.e if you happen to be non or fake mal then u obviously dont get this.. you continue to stand there right..

then the second attack comes.. this round starts with the squirrel.. which goes like 'stzu stzu stzu' said in a rapid spurt, this is followed with a set of non-committal giggles (normally looks around at other mals arnd who normally immediately understands the rattle snake, and makes out the outsider who does Not get the rattle snake, and a few silent hellos and muttering..

now, if you are ufortunate enough not have heard and reacted to this, which by the way would be normal for the non/fake mal, the third and dreaded weapon is taken out on the unsuspecting individual.. the scratch!
this is used especially by ladies, you can expect a scratch in the most wierd of places.. like the middle of your back, your fingers!, your waist..
and at this point the panicked innocent has jumped out of the way and in most cases out of his or her skin..

now the victor will walk by the vanquished like nothings happened, like all that was said was "excuse me.."

endodo

dentists! that must be the modern equivalent of the local torturer in the time of our ancestors. what fun it must be to you know.. generally cause people a lot of pain and charge through the roof for it!
today the dentist told me i might have to do a root canal.. while i have heard torture tales of root canals i ventured to ask her what is a root canal procedure..
she coolly tells me an endodontic therapy or whatever it is called is nothing but basically drilling a large hole in that teeth and pulling out the nerve and pulp inside the teeth! wtf!! pulling out the nerve ! and pulp! what is she joking! i told her i was not doing that endodoshit come what may.. so she asks me do i want off-white or tooth coloured filling.. c'mon really when you are talking about pulling out nerves in my mouth you think i care what colour is the filling? jesus! anyways that is closed for now and i hope "there may be pain and if there is then we have to do the root canal procedure" prophecy does not come true..

random mal'nes

There was a time when rice for lunch was a no no.. and suddenly after 3 months in Kerala i now look forward to a good oonu.. the nice round heavy mal rice with loads of sambar and rest of the mal gravies.. i guess it wont be long before the lungi, the "small" and remaining trademark mallu features become internalised.
now places and names in Kerala have a definite place in the mental map of kerala and have images to recall. I know roads there and can share stories of what to eat where and which train to take from there, which by the way is a fav past time of mallus - to quote train names and timings.. it is typical to have conversations of the 'Jayanti will come at 6:25 or the passenger coming at 7' now i am a veteran with experience of all modes of transport available here.. perhaps only the boats and houseboats are left.
initially i used to mix up the superfasts, fasts, limited stops and the malabars.. these being the different classes of buses in the state transport system, i have made the mistake of sitting in a malabar (which by the way is a dead slow bus) and travell6ing a 6half hour worth of 6distance 6in 2 or 3 hours.

shit..have to stop now, my oldie laptop is having a fit and is randomly typings 6's in my sentenses.. ugh..

Conphusian

in three months i still have not figured out roads in ernakulam, i always end up where i want to go, but i never seem to take the same road.. it is like there are always 5-6 roads to most places.

today for instance i drove 45 mins to reach almost exactly where i started, and it is not like i turned back anywhere.. i took a road that kept going and going and apparently was going in circles!

and i could swear that the road looked familiar like i had taken it before but nay.. it was just enticing me to burn some fuel.

Funniest is when you ask for directions, the looks of happy satisfaction on the face of the person you ask as he tells you,.."ayyo sare ningal vazhi thetti poyallo.." or literally 'haha you messed up'.. and that smile as he asks .. 'you are new here na?' and if you dont leave immediately they would want to know where you come from, what you do, what you ate for breakfast and names of your parents. also here people always want to know where you are from! like it is not enough to be me, it is like i am me, from this place! every single person i meet asks sooner or later.. so where are you from.. if you think you can answer vaguely and get away.. no way! they will prise your birthplace with surprising nimbleness. and then it is almost a matter of pride with everyone to say that .."oh yeah, i have been there. in 1976 or something i was there for this or that.. yeah i have seen tat place.." it is like.. ah i have figured you out now!

and in ernakulam you'd never know where the city starts and ends, there are areas in between where there is so much open space and greenery that you'd start freaking out that you have actually ended up outside the city, and then in a few minutes building prop up out of no where!

to add to the general confusion, place names change with alarming speed, in that sense that if you drive 5 mins in any direction, you'd most likely go past five places. I mean like in bombay you have a bandra or malad and these are large places.. there are numbers and roads within the area.. here it isnt like that.. each individual place has a name! yeah i think that is what it is.. local buses for isntance dont have numbers.. they have names.. people wud say "ah alice is comng at 3 and i'l get off at meneka and then walk to whatever next place".. where alice is the bus and meneka is the stop.

because of all this any address in ernakulam will have atleast 3 roads names, 2 place names, 1 house name.. seriously!

House.. Home

The larger your home is more is the number of things you need to fill it up. Since i moved into this house in Ern i'v been hunting for things to fill it up, for gawd is it really difficult to fill up 1000sq feet!
I'v always imagined it might be fun to do up a house.. the 'house - home' thing was always a thing of the future.. like "the day i get a house i am going to have this or that.." a mental picture of that day in the future. but then suddenly that day is here.. a house..all to myself.. and only me to furnish, and not only that. only me to clean, wash, dry, iron, cook, clean again, pay bills, clear garbage, clean again !! dude i finally wonder is it worth all this effort.
Nope.. it isnt. that is the verdict.
even the most intersting part of the entire equation, doing up the house to a cetain taste and style.. TOO much work! I'v been thinking of buying new bedsheets.. and in three months i still havnt got arnd to doing that. I mean i havent even figured out where you buy good bedsheets.
and anyways in the back of the mind there is the big question of how long am i going to hold on here..

I shant deviate into that topic here as that would be an altogether different argument..

And i think houses generally take ages to fill up, and here i am trying to age it in weeks and months. Like my parents house, i wonder if all the things came at once... i am sure item has a story and a soul. when it came into the house, who selected it, why and where.. and i pretty sure the stories are varied and interesting.

I know stories of some items,.. like the small wood elephants that sit on the doorway.. they were picked up by mom in alleppey, by the lake i imagine. she loves elephants and so one day parents were driving to the grandparents house and somewere in alleppey, which is on the way, they stop for a break and on the roadside there is this man selling them, mom wants them, dad grudgingly buys them. sometimes when i am at that house, and generally when i am there i have a lot of time on my hands, i remember looking at those elephants and imagine that story as if it were a recent memory and not a story before i was born, told to me when i was a baby.

louve for fmcg

Why would you want to be in FMCG and in rural markets?

especially if you want that rural market to be Kerala..

> you should love the thrill of seeing buses hurling down 6 feet wide roads and missing the sales officers bike on which you are riding pillion by centimeters..

> you should like hotel clerks who look at you suspiciously when you check in late evening (which by the way is anything after 6Pm), smelling like the combined stale sweat of a football team.. and who insists that you pay up the entire amount and a little more in advance

> the smell of 'Parotta fish curry' in the morning, oily fat drenched 'puffs' for lunch, and of course the sweet smell of 'wine' in the evening should tickle your appetite, and the food smashed down on table by waiters should be the epitome of service

> after travelling for 10 days in a stretch when you come back home you should love the fact that there should be 15 days worth of cleaning up to do, that ants have eaten through the plastic jar holding your sugar and other eatables, and that the window you forgot to close meant that the rain is in your living room

> you should realize that not having paid your cable, newspaper boy and water can dude because you were absent when they came for their dues means you dont have any of these services in the following month

> and primarily you should love the fact that it is you responsibility that every mallu eats your product, and if not you forcible feed your distributors