My time in india, for those with time on their hands

[Mj]

As some of you know, a while ago I went to india. Well, I got an amusing coursework essay out of it!

So, if you have a lot of time on your hands...




An Indian Excursion

India, a land of sun, sand and sea ? palms, rural villages and friendly people ? monsoon rains, mosquitoes and power cuts. Our arrival in India was a memorable one. After being the only people in the plane with white faces, and without over 100kg of ?hand luggage?, we stumbled wearily out of the plane expecting sweltering heat, and an easy coast out of the airport to meet up with our host?s son, who, in my fantasy, had a large air-conditioned car and spoke perfect English. The weather was bleak, the bureaucracy was enormous, and out host?s son had a small, rusting Ambassador as our transport.
Getting out of the airport took long enough, with each of the check-out guards trying to talk with us in halting Englian (English spoken through an almost untranslatable Indian accent) about the premiership (my brother fended off those questions, as I know zero about football), and in particular grinning at us whilst repeating ?Dawid Bekam? in an exited mantra. Exiting through the large double doors of the airport, past the guards armed with assault rifles, was exceedingly scary. The guards weren?t the scary thing, they looked harmless enough, chatting and smoking, but the sea of black faces, and feeling the feeling of being an alien, and having hundreds of people staring at you and follow your every move was really, really frightening. It was with no great relief to have our host?s son pull us out of the fray, and after introducing himself as Aaron; we stuffed out luggage into the boot of the aforementioned Ambassador, and drove away.
Indian driving. They don?t use ?Drive in the left lane? rule over there, they just have it as a preference. It?s more of a big melee of beeping, honking and overtaking, with elephants taking up ?lanes? (they don?t have lines on most roads in India) and the occasional cow meandering across the road amongst the mix of busses, motorbikes, bicycles and Ambassadors. Aaron was honking on his horn like a madman gone mad, as in India they honk to let the car/truck/lorry/elephant in front know that they are going to overtake, and they overtake an amount that would appal most sensible drivers in Britain. The houses and shacks that littered the sides of the road were extremely odd, looking like something a demented child might build out of Lego. Multi-coloured wood held up rusting corrugated iron, next to rain-streaked brick and plaster buildings, often bearing an advertisement on the front of them. Half-finished dull-grey ancient-concrete building-shells, unworked on for what appeared to be decades, added a certain despondent air to the fantastical mix of buildings.
Our destination was a set of moss covered concrete steps, in a small sheltered cove, leading to a small canoe like boat, bobbing minutely on the swell of the sea. This boat held three Indians and a battered old outboard motor on the back. Of these three Indians, we only knew ones name by the end. Anoop, our 24-year-old host on the island was smiling at us from the boat, along with the ?Telephone guy?, dubbed as it was his seemingly only job to answer the phone at the boatyard, and ?Random guy?, as he seemed to perform the random odd jobs on the peninsula for which we were headed. After unsurely clambering into the boat after Telephone guy got into the car, we waved goodbye to Aaron, who looked amused at our wide-eyed fascination of the place we were in. We forced smiles, as Random guy jabbered Englian to us while Anoop searched the waters ahead checking for nets. It was a beautiful 10 minute journey. The late morning sun, casting its golden rays onto the water, whilst we gazed at far shores, idyllically lined with palms and foliage, and the little fish that jumped and frolicked in the boats wake, whilst little cockroach-like creatures scrambled around our feet.
With the Indians agilely hopping out of the boat, onto the small pier that connected to the peninsula, I got my first impressions of the place. Beautiful, scenic and clean, were most definitely not my first choice of adjectives. In two words, the place looked run down. Rain streaked buildings alongside mangy looking palms, and the litter that had accumulated in certain places all contributed to the look. The boatyard was exceedingly disorganised, sheets of metal and piles of wood littered the space between the three suspended boats, and machinery was haphazardly scattered around. A long thin building that contained a small office, and store rooms lay along one side of the yard, whilst one faced the sea and the others faced inland. Walking along a damp sand path that connected the boatyard to our villa, Indians from the nearby village and the employees of the boatyard gazed in our direction; I distinctly felt I was the object of abject scrutiny ? again alienated.
Indians are nice people. Always welcoming, happy, and always smiling, but as these people didn?t see too many whites in their midst, the instinct of curiosity caused them to stare, and jabber away in Malayalam to one another. The house we would be staying in was a single floored brick and plaster building, with three bedrooms ? sparsely furnished, a dining/living space, again sparsely furnished, supporting a long table, chairs and a TV., and lastly, the kitchen. This kitchen was horrific. Ants, large and small scuttled up and down the rough plaster walls and across the dirty tiled floor. The room smelled of decaying fruit, and a large bin under one of the work surfaces held just that. Implements were rusty, pots were dirty and the fridge was just disgusting. It was best not to think about the kitchen whilst eating our three curries a day.
Ants are a big part of Indian life, along with various other creepy-crawlies. Drop some food onto the table, and soon ants would be swarming all over it and clean it up. As I soon unfortunately found out, whilst tramping around in sandals, red ants have vicious bites, which sent me scurrying to the shower cursing to wash the insects off. Spiders also haunted our meagre abode, and one night when my brother was going to the loo, he came across a three inch long spider. He valiantly grabbed the nearest weapon to hand and sprayed the spider into submission, whilst I stood at the doorway laughing. The aftermath of this little encounter was a white, spider shaped mark on the wall.
India was interesting and boring at the same time. Long periods when the boatyard had closed up for the night, and we were waiting for the 9?oclock Bruce Lee movie to come on, little happened. There was an old computer, which had a 56k modem, and through this I connected with all my friends back home, and told them of my experiences, and all were horrified by the fact that my brother and I consumed three courses of curry a day. But, when all was at its most boring, the internet usually crashed (something about crabs eating the phone lines, we were told later by Aaron). And then travelling back to the house along the path, being careful not to step on the multitude of croaking frogs, only to have the power go out and render the TV unwatchable. When this happened I had to resort to re-reading my four Chris Ryan books, or making sketches of India, which by the end was 6 full A4 pages long, and much appraised by the Indians.
As I believe I have said before, eating three curries a day is extremely difficult. Especially as the meat, rather than being carefully parsed from the bone, was mulched up, bones, tendons and all, ready to eat in a sea of mild, watery curry. On the occasional night we had noodles, we wolfed down the whole bowl, hoping guiltily Random guy, our chef most of the time would get the hint, as we were feeling rather guilty leaving lots of curry and rice left uneaten on our plates most days. With, also the water tasting awful, and having to have been boiled before it was drinkable (we usually had the vile tasting warm water with our curry) we were in a rather sticky situation.
Thankfully, through the small village in the middle of the peninsula stretch, about three-quarters of an hour walk away was the village of Kumberlange (this is probably not the correct spelling, but it is correct phonetically). The walk itself was wonderful. Going in the evening when the sun was setting, deep red beams lit the palms and were reflected by the paddy fields, as we past happy, smiling Indians going about there business, and with fire-flies hovering about the grass clumps, it was an amazing experience. Kumberlange itself was as dirty as all the other villages we had seen, and the rescuing aspect of it were shops. My brother and I stacked up rucksacks of amazingly cheap chocolate sweets, and soft drinks to make up for our lack of curry eating.
Our first experience of getting off the peninsula was when Aaron?s cousins of about eighteen, with names I unfortunately can?t remember, came and picked us up on their motorbikes, and we drove through the village, off the peninsula and into Cochin City. Riding on the back was at first frightening, as grabbing onto the seat of a motorbike going over bumpy, potholed roads, swerving through herds of goats, dodging cars and other bikes, and making a cheesy filmstrip style rush between two oncoming busses was seemingly death defying. But, as we relaxed and got used to the pulsating rhythm of the engine and grit in our eyes, we began to have good fun. Our drivers were willing to go wherever we pleased, and were friendly guys. After going to all the traditionally touristy places, so we had something at least slightly cultural to tell our parents, we went and had a good shop, for our favoured commodity of the moment, food.
When thinking of India, people think of sunshine, hot T-shirt wearing weather. In the month we were out there, we only had 5 sunny, T-shirt wearing days. The rest was overcast, and miserable. On one day, we had a storm of apocalyptic scale, as all the palms bent, and rain drummed a relentless tattoo on the roof. The heavens were kind on India whilst we were there, and opened often. Must be all the churches they have over there. Religion is a big thing in Kerala, the part of India we were in, and it was impossible to walk a mile without coming to a church, or some other sort of religious insinuation.





The end

Thanks for reading, leave a comment, as it is coursework!

Mj

[Green Beret]

that was some intersting read...thnx

[Deutsche Dogge]

Now that's a trip.

I really like the "The aftermath of this little encounter was a white, spider shaped mark on the wall." lol

Your text gives a good feeling of the place.

So. how were those chocolates?