By about 8am, the sky had brightened and the rain had petered out. I took a bus to Kattappana, a big town south of Cheruthony and north of Kumily, from where I could travel on to Nedumkandam, Ajeesh's home village. It's strung out along a couple of kilometres of the Kumily-Munnar main road. I took a couple of hours' break to blog, email and steel myself for the rest of the journey. I managed to leave my tourist map of Idukki district in the bus-station toilet. I'm never going back there to look for it. Uurrgghh! At Kattappana I made the following blog entry:
Monsoon madness
Well it's started - over eight hours of solid, torrential rain yesterday. The main street of Cheruthony (my residence for the last two nights) was under half an inch of fast-running water in many places. Considering that this street has a 30-degree slope, that's a lot of water. I've broken the habit of a lifetime and bought an umbrella.
I'm taking a break in a bus-journey to Nedumkandam in a big town called Kattappana. My back is currently very sore from sleeping on hard beds so an hour's rattling is all I can take. Time for chai and lunch...
Religious notes
Kerala is apparently equally split between Muslims, Hindus and (mostly catholic) Christians. The amount of Catholic churches I've seen continues to amaze me. In Kumily there's quite a large community of Orthodox christians. Now how did that variety take root here?
Ajeesh had phoned me to say that his father would meet me at the town's main temple because his car had just been taken in for servicing/repair. We hadn't set a time to meet but I had been told his father would collect me and take me to Ajeesh's home. The house, 'Nikunjam' (this may be the name of the small 'suburb' it's in) is about two kilometres up into the mountains to the east of Nedumkandam. I don't quite know what happened but I gave the temple priest a large conumdrum - he hardly spoke English but did his best to try to help me. It seems Ajeesh's very well-known and liked here. Anyway, after a few calls, Ajeesh's journalist friend (Shaji) met me and took me to Nikunjam by auto. This involved some terrifying slopes and stops to let the auto drive on without passengers when the slope got more than 40 degrees.
At Nikunjam, I was met by Ajeesh's parents, youngest sister and niece. Here's their family tree. The house is a six-room brick bungalow (a lounge, a kitchen and 4 bedrooms) in a small plot of land where the family grow spices, bananas, ayurvedic plants and other foods. They also have a goat and two cows in a wall-less byre to the side of the house. The roof is made of corrugated board (possibly asbestos) and leaks terribly in Ajeesh's room where a coconut fell on it and broke one of the sheets. It's also not yet plastered or coated on the outside, so the mortar is suffering from the elements. The windows have the usual Keralan metal bars but no glass - just torn heavy polythene.
We chatted fitfully and watched some Malayalam soap-operas while waiting for Ajeesh to return. He eventually did so about 10pm. Thereafter, presumably, sleep occurred.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006