Asia 2006: Random Bozo goes to Kerala

Ajeesh took me to Udumbanchola, a village a few km north along the national highway from Nedumkandam. There he was organising, on behalf of the Indian Red Cross, a blood donation registration drive. Because the local hospital hasn't the facilities to keep blood, people were encouraged to have their blood-group tested. Then, when blood of any type was needed, the hospital would know the potential donors.

Then he took me to Shaji self-help group meeting. (The group is also known as Jyoti.) One of the group members was a panchayat (village/local) politician - there were 14 other members present.

The meeting opened with two prayers. Then the minutes of the last meeting were read out and the president asked each member if he concurred. (I don't recall any women being in this meeting.) Also, members signed an attendance register. Some letters from members were passed to the office-holders and money was passed to the secretary. (I was told that each member contributes Rs20 at each meeting. In four years, this group has raised Rs400,000.) Members stood up to speak, after being invited to speak in turn by the chairman. Then there was some general discussion (I couldn't tell what it was about) followed by a Random Bozo photo-call.

After this, we went back to Udumbanchola to see how the blood donation drive was progressing - I recall that over 200 people from this village had signed up.

I'd mentioned that my colleague from GL would be arriving in Goa. Ajeesh was interested in seeing a bit of Goa to work on possible out-of-state exchanges for Nedumkandam children and I thought Suriya and family might be able to help him there. Suriya and her family are Tamils and Ajeesh speaks fluent Tamil, and there appeared to further possibilities for synergies between them, so he was to come with me to Goa: partly for business, partly because I wanted our friendship to go on.

To take an overnight train to Goa, we made a mad cross-country journey to Ernakulam Junction (the nearest station) in Ajeesh's car over the wildest roads I'd yet experienced. Even rally-drivers might have thought twice about some of these roads, yet Ajeesh has a tiny on-road 4-by-4.

There is nothing in my diary about the overnight train journey but we got sleeper berths by paying the Ticket Collector to upgrade us from unregistered cattle-truck seats. I can't recall if it was this or the return journey where the TC asked for Rs400 apiece but wrote Rs300 on our receipts - thus pocketing himself an extra Rs200. I wasn't too bothered because if we had booked sleeper berths ahead of departure, I would have paid more than the total amount I did pay for our basic tickets, upgrades and the TC's baksheesh.