This morning the power was still out - it didn't return to Nedumkandam's main drag until 12·30 today.
Ajeesh told me that a neighbour had died of a heart attack during the night. I didn't think I'd met the man but I was told that he was at most 45 and that he left a widow and three children in their late teens to early twenties. Ajeesh went to visit the family. He didn't ask me to come and I didn't ask to go: I would have hated to intrude on private grief but of course I asked Ajeesh to pass on my condolences.
My immediate task was to wash me and some clothes. Without electricity, washing water was obtained by Jaya and/or Ajeesh in what appeared to be a risky and strenuous process. I didn't want to add to their burden but Ajeesh suggested I use the stream where I'd seen some women washing clothes last weekend.
So, wrapped in my dirty lunghi and carrying a bucket-full of unmentionables, off I went. Washing clothes in a stream has at least one drawback, namely that you have to keep hold of the items. However, the rinse-power more than makes up for this. Washing my clothes didn't take long but plucking up the courage to dunk myself took longer than it should have. However, by mid-day I was clean, my clothes were on the line and I was on my way to town.
On the way I passed a lot of people who were going to the house where the death had occured. Among these were a teacher and his 10th-standard pupils. (1st standard is for children aged 5 to 6. Before this, they can attend Lower and Upper Kindergarten years.) The pupils were class-mates of one of the dead man's sons. The teacher invited me to to come (his actual words were 'if you are interested, you can come') but I still felt it would have been wrong so didn't go.
Ajeesh had planned to do some a lot of work today, including some DTP which I assumed was work on Jay's wedding stationery. He arived at the cybercafé just after I did and told me that his plans had all been postponed because of the Idukki-wide brown-out. The cybercafé owner told us that power was likely to return about 12·30 - I was glad of not having to bus to Kattappana because I'd felt quite motion-sick on the way back yesterday.
Ajeesh and DS also told me about the tsunami in Indonesia. Without power, cellphone and international calls were unavailable and I was frustrated that I couldn't check whether my Indonesian friend's family were OK. (It turns out that they're no-where near the affected area. Dunno what I can say about those who weren't so lucky.) DS borrowed an english-language newspaper from a lawyer's office so I could get the details: thanks for this, mate!
The power returned around the time that had been predicted. The first I saw of it was the twinkling of fairy lights around a shop's picture of a god. DS and Ajeesh got on with their DTP work while I edited and added pictures to a blog entry. (At the same time I'd been using Indian Rail's website to check trains to Kolkatta. This was mind-bogglingly slow because you have to work out a potential route yourself then enquire about trains for each leg. You can't just put in 'overall start', 'overall finish' and 'desired dates', then let the website sort it out like you should be able to. And woe betide you if you don't know the IndianRail spelling of your termini and change-points.) I also got suckered into another on-line argument. I'm so easily wound up.
While I was doing this, DS came over and put a piece of paper in front of me and started to tell me about it. The piece of paper is a flyer for hotels. It tells them about the event on the 25th and asks them to sponsor a newspaper supplement about it. There was an amount of discussion about it, mostly because it had my name on it. Oo-er!
On the way back up the hill, Ajeesh stopped to give a lift to a local panchayat member. There was a tense but blessedly non-shouted exchange between them. Ajeesh later told me that it was about a local boy who has a mental problem which needed treatment in Trivandrum (Kerala's state capital, about 6 hour's drive from here).
Ajeesh told me later that the talk was about getting the boy to Trivandrum. It's supposedly the panchayat's duty to organise this but this member was trying to offload the driving onto Ajeesh, without even offering payment for petrol. Ajeesh was very tired and had his hands full organising the schools event on the 25th. He did offer to contact his Red Cross colleagues at Trivandrum so that they could assist once the boy had got there. Just before we got to the house, we were passed by a jeep which turned out to be the boy's journey starting off.
Incidentally, Ajeesh told me that there are three levels of panchayat:
The people elected to these different levels of panchayat are all called members, even when being polite. Here's a wikipedia article I found about Keralan panchayats.
Above district panchayats are State governments, composed of MLAs (members of legislative assemblies). Above (and apparently often in conflict with) State governments is the 'Centre', i.e. the parliament (and hence the government, curently headed by Manhoman Singh of the Congress party) in New Delhi. (Parliament is composed of the Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.)
Finally, above all of this is
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006