Almost contiguous electricity struck again! At the time I originally wrote this, I'd been at the cybercafé about four hours: during which the elctricity had been off for about 90 minutes in total and I'd waited 30 minutes for the cybercafé owners to complete some urgent work. The café is also a architectural and DTP studio, running Autocad 2004 and PageMaker 7 under Windows 98!
I was feeling much better but still a bit dozy. Ajeesh had gone with Shaji and Anish to Thrissur for a government/social-work function. Apparently Anish and Shaji were paying for the petrol - Ajeesh is still desperately trying to borrow Jaya's dowry and the bribe he'd need to pay to get it. I'd suggested talking to the policemen who lived halfway between the house and town: I hoped that bringing down the MLA (member of parliament) who wass demanding the bribe would benefit his career.
Before this, Ajeesh's middle sister (Ambali) and her husband and daughter, (Rajiv and Pavitra) visited. Ajeesh told me they had water problems too - the nearest well to their house was 600 metres away. Jaya invited me to try making noodles - a stiff dough is put into a mould the size of a tin of baked beans and then a plunger is used to force the dough through tiny holes at the base of the mould. I could barely get it to move, much to everyone's amusement: Jaya and Ajeesh could squeeze the plunger down with ease.
My next task was to buy ingredients for an ayurvedic cold remedy. Ajeesh's mum was pleased to make this medicine for me.* I wanted to get her and Jaya to give me some domestic chores - I didn't want to work outdoors just then.
So I was walking slowly along the shops where Ajeesh had told me I could buy the medicine ingredients. All of the shop signs were in Malayalam and none of the shops appeared to me to be an ayurvedic pharmacy.
A bloke leaned out of his car and asked me what I was looking for. I showed him the page of my diary where Ajeesh had written the items in malayalam (with english transcriptions). He recognised I was looking for ayurvedic ingredients and told me I was in front of the correct shop. (It has sacks of food such as rice and pulses hiding the more exotic stuff.) He then came into the shop with me and read out the list of ingredients and quantities.
The shop folk got it all together smilingly and explained where possible what each ingredient is:
This little piece of spontaneous niceness, especially of the bloke who guided me, had me almost in tears.
I walked back to the house - mostly avoiding rain (or managing to control my umbrella effectively) but sheltering for 10 minutes at a fish & general stuff stall when it pelted down.
Near the house is another house where someone had wanted Rs10 from Ajeesh or I in the morning. Neither of us had it so I said I'd sort it out on the way home. Slight mishap - I found the right house but none of the family spoke any english so I couldn't make myself understood and so disturbed them for nothing. What's the road to hell paved with?
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006