I'd spent quite a lot of dial-up time on Greenpeace's website, identifying abstracts of research done by their labs which might be relevant to the talk I was due to give on the 25th. However, the thought of downloading so many PDFs by dial-up scared the hairy wotsits out of me. I thought it might be better to go to Kattappana: the Rs 27 and two hours on the bus would be amply made up for by the speed of their ISDN connectivity (and it was Rs10 per hour cheaper than Nedumkandam's dial-up anyway). Er, wrong! The local phone carrier and ISP (BSNL, the Indian government telecomms company) wasn't playing in Kattappana today. I stayed until 5pm, hoping that the signal would come back but no such luck.
Instead I had a thoroughly enjoyable (even though otherwise unproductive) time, laughing and joking with the boys who run the cybercafé and their friends.
It also appeared my ability to read Malayalam letters was improving slightly: I could tell that the first bus that passed me was bound for Kottayam (but didn't know that it would pass through Kattappana on the way). Also I could read the sign across the mall from the cybercafé (Jeevan Homeo Clinic), the cybercafé's own sign (Christ Internet Solutions) and a wall sticker for 'Cyrix Systems and Solutions, KHB Shopping Complex, Kattappana'.
I admit that these are only transliterations and that going from spoken to written Malayalam was still nearly impossible for me - for example, there was no difference I could hear between what were referred to as da, ta, tha and double-tha. However you may be interested to see some of my attempts to write Malayalam.
On the bus back to Nedumkandam, I talked with a student whose parents are cardamom farmers. In the past 3 years, he told me, prices for cardamom have fallen to a tenth of their former value (from Rs1000/kg to Rs100/kg). He told me that many people are turning to drink even though toddy, the cheapest alcohol available here, looks and tastes like fermented semen. I tried to ask if many people were tempted to grow other, potentially more profitable (but illegal) crops. Either he didn't understand or he didn't want to say.
Back at Nedumkandam, there was a series of mix-ups as Ajeesh and I tried to meet up to go back to the house. However, it transpired that I may have made the first mistake by leaving Mini's café, even though I phoned Ajeesh to tell him I was doing so. (She had a stormer of a headache, so I bought her some paracetamol and then left, thinking she would close the café.) Also, Ajeesh was suddenly called away to deal with another medical problem. He did try to phone me to tell me about this but couldn't get through.
We arrived back at the house after 10pm. Fortunately Jaya wasn't awake or I'd have almost certainly received a ribbing for arriving much later than 9pm (as I'd told her earlier). I'm not bothered by being ribbed but I would have been bothered if she'd stayed awake to feed me or otherwise been inconvenienced.
Maybe I should have given up reading newspapers.
While waiting for Ajeesh last night, I picked up a copy of The Hindu and read this and this.
As the op-ed piece says
I wondered what the chances of this were. Would the government go into the areas that support the Naxalites with iron fists and jackboots? The letters page carried quite a few letters suggesting that it would be acceptable for 'civilised'/'democratic' rules to be bent or broken in order to combat this menace.
Perhaps it might be better, as the BJP suggests, to look into how the Naxalites came to such strength in these areas, i.e. who or what (if anything) permitted them to grow and what are the reasons for people joining these movements? Why on earth am I in line with a party that's allegedly based on religious fundamentalism and extremism. (I'm told that it does have christian and muslim leaders.)
GRRRRRRRRR again
Whatever the estimates, it cannot be denied that the innocent people, especially the tribals, are the ones who are put to hardship. The Maoists are supposed to be espousing the cause of the tribals. Ironically, because of the continued violence and killings, even the few development projects and facilities they would have got in the normal course, have now been denied to them. The Maoists need to give up the terrorist ways and come to the table for substantive talks, and not continue mindlessly on the path of violence.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006