I first woke up about 2 am with Mughals' revenge churning my stomach and cricket blaring out of the TV. Tossing, turning and other, less savoury, activities kept me occupied for a couple of hours. I fell asleep eventually, waking just before my alarm yelled at me. Although I'd arranged to meet Suriya at 11·30, it took me until then to get into a state where I felt like moving from my room.
At Suriya's house, nothing was moving, not even the foot-long grass now providing ideal cover for the wild pigs that like to meander into her garden and munch her mangoes. I asked at her neighbour/landladies house - Suriya and Priya had gone to the room she'd arranged for Bobby and family to stay in while Ravi's looking for a better job. (He's a trained horticulturalist but was currently working as a waiter in a local hotel. He worked from 7am to 11am, then from 6pm to midnight or later and got two days off each month. GRRRR!)
I didn't quite succeed in creeping up on Dhanush, Bobby and Ravi's 4-year-old son. He saw me at the last moment so I grabbed him and carried him to the house. He was still as delightfully hyperactive as I had remembered.
Bobby had cooked brinjal curry, rice and rassam. I changed into my smart shirt and dhoti so I could make like a south indian gentleman (did I say I'm missing south India by any chance?) and ate one portion with Suriya and the children. When Ravi returned from work, I was encouraged to eat some more with him and bobby. My tongue over-ruled my stomach. The one difference between this meal and a typical tamil meal was that Suriya likes white rice, not 'red' rice. (It's rusty brown when uncooked and cooks to white with flecks of red. The grains are much larger than other rices I've eaten.)
I went with Suriya to set up an email account for Priya. This was when I discovered that at least one of my CDs of photos is, er, problematic and the backup of this CD is, er, non-functional.
Oh yes! My triumph - I got Margaret Mary (Raju's wife) to smile! She doesn't speak english at all and seems not to have much to say to even in Tamil.
Some playing with the kids and rain-dodging later, Ravi went to work and the rest of us made our way to where Rajesh's family live: I'd been invited for a farewell-to-Goa meal by Rajesh. (This Rajesh is a friend of Suriya's from Karnataka who came with us to Raju's wedding back in early May.) I had thought India couldn't shock me any more but I was wrong. Get this: Rajesh's family have moved here to Goa because they can live better than they did in Karnataka. 'Better' for them means living in a brick and roofing sheet lean-to on the side of Rajesh's father's employer's house. This lean-to is maybe 3 metres wide by 8 metres long and houses 9 people. What the hell can Karnataka be like?
Dinner was cooked on an open, twig fire in an awning of roofing sheets at the front of the lean-to. Mariam used a tube to direct her breath onto the flames - much more efficient and less condusive to smoke inhalation than normal blowing. Dinner was tapioca chips (fried in front of me on a hotplate), chapattis, a bean curry and two types of chatni (both based on peanuts rather than coconut.) All delicious, apart from the red-chilli chatni which was even hotter than Jaya's red-chilli pickle and defeated me. All lovely apart from Rajesh not being there - he'd had to go to work before we could get there.
I said goodbye to Bobby, Dhanush and Goutami and walked with Suriya and Priya to their house. After a brief chat and another visit to her facilities, it was time for me to go. I walked along the path, waving and nearly crying. I don't like to think that it could easily be three years before we meet again.
The night was again interspersed with mughal's revenge. What did I ever do to him? I'm so glad I hadn't gone for a cheap hotel!
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006