Ajeesh and his family took me to a puja (Hindu religious service) in an ancient temple that's built under an overhanging rock about 2km from and maybe 500 metres above their house. I wrote the following in my paper diary:
Puja is, I suppose, a cooking sacrament. SOme acolytes(?) cleared an area that had contained a lamp and some offerings and brought in some stones on which they then balanced a cooking pot. Ajeesh began a simple chant (one refrain) which was echoed by the women present as three or four people took rice from a pot in which it had been soaking and put it in the cooking pot.
The fire had been lit using firelighters and paraffin poured from an old brandy bottle. As the chanting continued, apparently random people tended the fire, adding kindling, more paraffin and at least one load of firelighters.
After about 45 minutes, during which apparantly random people continued and echoed the refrain, Ajeesh added a banana to the cooking pot. A young woman then added some jaggery (raw cane or palm sugar). She occasionally stirred the pot until it was time to serve the results - a sweet rice pudding. I'd enjoyed this dish at the wedding yesterday but today didn't take any. It would have been like taking communion or saying 'amen' at a christian service.
After the ceremony, Ajeesh's mother and some other women cooked a meal on an open-air fire a few metres from the temple
Later in the day, Ajeesh, Shaji and DS Salimkumar (a local social-worker/journalist, known as 'DS'), talked at a local pub. It felt a bit like the usual Saturday afternoon gathering of 'the usual suspects' in the Cellar Bar at St Andrews. We exchanged some songs, political theories and local political experiences. At one point DS forcefully said 'real Kerala is starvation. I would see over the next few weeks there's a lot to bear this out. Yet in Kerala at least there's an optimism that it might get better. I hope so, and, so long as Ajeesh and his mates and people like them are around, it will.
For example, Ajeesh was due to meet with tea workers the next day. They had not been able to work for the past two weeks because of the rain and so had not been paid even retainer wages for this time. This is apparently unusual policy. Ajeesh wanted to find out how many people had been affected, what medicines they needed* and then to arrange for the local hospital to supply them. I wasn't able to find out what action the tea-workers could take against their employers.
*Monsoon season is naturally a time when flu is very prevalent.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006