Ajeesh again had business in and around Nedumkandam so I went with him to town. I blogged and emailed for a while and then decided I wanted to upload some of the photos I took yesterday so that my beloved blog-readers could see them. My usual cybercafé had windows 98 PCs and a reasonable dial-up connection but I'd that found the drivers supplied with my card reader didn't work on their PCs. There was another cybercafé in town: its PC had Windows XP (so it didn't need drivers) and a CD burner but it had a terribly slow and flaky dial-up connection. I realised I'd left my camera in the house so I walked back. I was slightly annoyed that I hadn't had my camera with me - a big political demonstration passed as I was blogging.
Miracle of miracles: I didn't get rained on during my walk back to the house. At the house, Jaya served a lunch based on jackfruit (two different jackfruit curries, rice, sambal, pickles and bean curry). Then Gopalkrishna returned from cutting grass for the cows and we talked about the forthcoming nuptials.
I returned to town around 4pm, promising to be back around 8pm. On the way, I passed many local children who were returning from school. Many of them enjoyed calling out 'hello-how-are-you?' or 'hello-what-is-you-name?' - these seemed to be the two english phrases that everyone learned by rote. I always answered, hoping that it would help them learn something and because they were being friendly and enjoying themselves in a pleasant way.
I bought and posted a birthday-card and then walk through town to the XP-enabled cybercafé. There, I suffered a worse than usual connection and so wasn't able to even write an email to a friend, let alone upload photos or work on DS's essay. (I emailed successive versions to myself so that I could access them on any PC that could connect to the internet.) I made a couple of phonecalls and walked back to the house, arriving utterly soaked with rain and sweat about 8:05. Ajeesh was still away - he was organising the event that involves Periyar's Deputy Director.
I saw on IdukkiVision's news report a piece about plastic litter and illegal use of land at a temple at the top of this suburb's hill. Some of the photos used in the piece were taken by Ajeesh with my camera. I was quite tickled that I'd been able to contribute ever so slightly and pleased that Ajeesh's efforts were getting some notice. (I seem to recall another piece earlier this week about the hooch-makers but that could be a false memory - there's nothing about it in my diary.)
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006