Travelling through India

By Michael Field

                                                       ... with the help of Asia New Zealand Foundation

The unglazed small pottery mug rocks gently on the table, its sweet hot South Indian coffee warm and satisfying. And the first of many over the next 26 hours. The mystery of Indian Railways around me, in this AC 2^nd Class sleeper. Above are a Bengali couple who seem to be irritating the guard. Two people, one bunk. Mostly they are indifferent to him and when he is not arguing with them they kind of sing softly to each other. They are polite to the rest of the passengers, but very much involved in just themselves. They are escaping the crowds of Kolkata’s four days of Puja to holiday on a beach in the south. On the two bunks in front of me rest two businessmen. Friendly, but they don’t seem to want to chat about much. One has a very noisy cell phone that lets the carriage know he has a text message. This is a problem in India with so many competing phone companies; as we sweep across the great Ganges Plains we swing through different cells and every company sends a message to bid for the service. They are only on board for three hours. The other two, across the aisle, are a mother and son. He is about 25, I guess. The mother, who has come with all the doings of a complete Indian meal, fusses over him. Later she says she wants him to be a photojournalist.

They have secured their suitcases under the seats with a heavy padlocked chain. Not sure why but middle class India is big on libelling itself and fearing the worst.

Now and again a steady parade of men selling things go by. Magazines and sweets, coffee and chai. I am addicted to the coffee. Dinner is two hours away. An odd cockroach or two scurries around and the squat toilet promises, already, the ultimate discomfort of Indian Rail. But how else could one travel in India except in this most democratic of ways, sweeping down the long Coromandal Coast, forming the western side of the Bay of Bengal. Why any one would want to swap the dreariness of Dumdum Airport for the excitement of Howrah Station is beyond me. Easily one of the great terminus of the world. And a starting point.

This diary though should start at Gate One at Bangkok’s Don Maung Airport just before midnight. In a vast terminal the fact that the Kolkata flight leaves from Gate One suggests something of the low standing the city has, even in the eyes of airline planners. Gate One is a long way off and down a flight of stairs from where everybody else leaves and arrives from. Still, few complaints; Don Maung is about to close, replaced with a swank new giant airport built out in the swamps on the road to Pattaya. The gate is crowded with mainly Indians, and mainly men all with excessive amounts of carry on baggage. All wrapped up in black plastic. From a previous trip I recognise them; the clothes traffickers. They come and go in a day, sweeping in on Bangkok markets and winging back to Kolkata with the takings.

Two hours later we’re coming into Kolkata; passengers are told to stay seated until the aircraft has taxied to a halt. Thai International cabin crew frantically, pointlessly try to keep passengers charging up the aisles. India might well be on the edge of becoming a super economic power, but right now their airports (with perhaps the honourable exception of Bangalore) remain firmly locked in the mid-1950s, DC3 era. One modest moment of triumph for me though; it appears I am one of only a handful of foreign passport holders; I have a choice of immigration officers and are threw in a minute. Big deal. The bags are a long time coming. The clothing traffickers have hundreds of black bags; astonishingly one of the men even has the classic air-craft hijacking box cutting knife on him in order to replace the bags immediately. So much for Thai security - even in the wake of a coup in Bangkok. An hour and a half later - close to 2am - I am finally out to be greeted by my guide and driver.

Kolkata is mostly asleep, although crews are working on tram lines and roads are being paved and every where preparations continue for the four day Puja Festival that is about to hit Kolkata. I am not tempted to stay for it; even on a quiet day Kolkata’s crowds can be daunting for me; a religious festival attracting every Bengali on the planet has little attraction.

The Fairlawn Hotel gates swing open and I am in my hotel for the night. A marvellous old relic of the Raj - perhaps even the East India Company - it rates two stars in the guides. Its easy to see why it cannot have any more; the bathrooms slope away, the rooms are little changed in over a century and the beds are not wildly comfortable. The meals offer no choices; provincial England mostly. But the Fairlawn is about pure character, presided over by an ancient, lively and lovely Armenian Bengali refugee. No where else in Kolkata is worth staying at; a couple of blocks away from Park Street, a short walk from the marvellous Maidan. What more do you need. Its strangely lavish garden shelters guests from the harsh noises outside.

A couple of hours later and my contacts from Bajaj Electricals arrive - driver Arjun Singh and sales executive Swapan Ghosh. Their role was to give me a tour of Kolkata. I had some ideas, but Swapan had others. He was right. For old time sakes we had a quick drive over the Howrah Bridge, that magnificent, ungainly 60-year-old structure over the Ganges. And then it was back into a crowded part of the city where the roads narrowed and the only way to get in was on foot. There was the fantastic site of artists and workers labouring to produce hundreds of giant lavish earthen statues of Hindu gods to be used in the Puja. Vast, they took an army of sweating men to manhandle out to trucks on slightly wider streets. And for four days in great centres built just for the purpose, the statues will do duty to thousands of faithful. And then they will be cast into the Ganges to return to the mud they were moulded from in the first place.

Later we visit a Crematorium on the banks of the Ganges. Having been to Varanasi I was unfazed by public burning of bodies; the point though of this trip was to see the advancement West Bengal was making. The choice was between traditional burning on wooden pyres or cooking down in electric ovens. All around we various people conducting rites; it seemed perfectly functional and unemotional. And here, unlike Varanasi, the last remains don’t get tossed into the Ganges. In Kolkata Bengalis have far too much respect for the living in the river; they make their rightly famous Bengal fish curry out of them.

At one point we called into the railway office. My ticket had been approved, but they needed to see my passport. Only later was explained that I had got a berth on the train under the foreign quota. They needed to see I was foreign. The ticket clerk though had other ideas; he too owned a Nikon digital camera and was keen to discuss techniques.

The afternoon ended with another bridge and over to Kolkata’s utterly divine botanical gardens. One could be fussy and say they were not so much gardens but a kind of urban forest. A place one has to see, a piece of rare beauty made poignant by being surrounded by one of the world’s great cities, densely crowded and polluted. Throughout the park, discrete but beautiful, sat young couples. Courting each other, enjoying each other in the peace of their surrounds. It wasn’t crowded at all and everybody knew the delicacy and sweetness of each couple. Romantic and hopeful.

Back in the heat and dust of Kolkata the day ended at two of my favourite places: Oxford Books on Park Street (three books purchased for the price of perhaps a New Zealand magazine) and the sprawling Newmarket which, despite the name, is around 200 years old. It offers everything, and everything is offered to you by persistent, repetitive hustlers. They do, however, seem to be put off their stride by a smile and inertia. People who just walk around and look and don’t buy must be very vexing.

Today it was an early walk around. Kolkata is a great place to watch people start their day; its inhabitants work hard and their start is determined. A group of western looking girls, in uniform, accompanied by a security guard at the front, and another at the back, walk up the street to school. They turn out to be Armenians; the daughters, granddaughters and even great granddaughters of those who were made refugees by Turkey in one of the 20^th Century’s first genocides. It underscores a simple fact about India; crowded it may be, plagued by poverty always and yet India welcomes refugees in a way no other nation has ever done so. And has done it, without question or protest, for much of its 5000 year history.

Arjun comes back with the car and another Bajaj executive, Gopen San, to take me to the station. Howrah. I am not some kind of train spotting groupe; I have no idea what is hauling this long train through the night but the station at the other side of the Howrah Bridge is astounding. You hear stories of how it can be dangerous; feral children turned into nightmarish beggars and thugs is a popular story. And no doubt there are many homeless children there - some, it seems, even by choice. Twice beggars cling to me but in the sea of people, all moving to different announcements, it was hard to notice them. Platform 14 and the mail train from Bombay is still there. Eventually it moves and the platform is jammed with people waiting for the Coromandal Express. One more ritual is played out though; the lists of passengers with confirmed seats is suddenly posted. People crowd around. Further up the platform poorer people jostle for position waiting for the cheaper carriages. You cannot reserve seats on them; its first in first served. And it can get physical. Indians - perhaps due to the population - know not to be polite at such times. But it comes with no malice and everybody knows the rules. Its not personal. And once everybody has a seat the combat is over and the quiet ritual of a long train journey begins. Those who didn’t get on will wait for the later train, or two.

The food on the Coromandal is simple but tasty. Chicken and rice, or something veg. Endless coffee. Steady flow of sellers of all kinds of things coming through.

Through the night my companions changed. The businessmen got off at 10pm and the two lovers suddenly had two bunks. But not for long. A husband and wife with a son arrived; the bunks were for them. As we settled down a couple of soldiers wandered though; it has to be remembered India suffers from terrorism. Not that those two could have done much about it. One was armed with an ancient .303 Lee Enfield rifle. Noble looking firing piece, but hardly useful in a narrow railway carriage. The other had an old style sten gun. Still, they are here and, I assume protecting us.

Down the Coromandal coast

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Out of Rajahmundry, Andra Pradesh, aboard the Coromandal Express bound for Chennai

Indians are easily among the friendliest people on the planet. Quickly the engage strangers, such as myself, in conversation. They are curious about where I come from and when told, inevitably all they know of it is that it plays cricket. They have too a sense of national pride but are conscious of the image the world has of them.

“Many touristic people,” one man told me on the Rajahmundry platform, “are only seeing the poverty. They do not see the other side.”

He spoke with the infectious accent of South India. I can see I will acquire it quickly.

Another man wanted to know why I was on the train: “You are the only foreigner on the whole train.”

It had not occurred to me, but I think he is right. Although I think he means white person; India is the kind of place where every glance, every sample of people, will contain citizens from around Asia and the Middle East.

The train trip through the night was comfortable. It is like a village here Men snored, the hundreds of bangles on women’s wrists gently sang through the night; babies cried and the coffee and chai sellers moved through, quietly touting their wears.

The guard has just been. Loved the computer.

“Oh, Pentium. Latest model?”

My new best friend, a 10-year-old boy from Orissa, loves my Ipod, phone and computer. Startlingly he zips through them all and its obvious he knews everything to know about them all. His father manufactures incense and the family is going south for a holiday. The boy roams over the train and opens doors. Passing through endless paddies we can see the farmers and their families working.

“Village people use slang words,” the boy observes. “They sound funny.”

“Are you from a village?”

“No,” he replies looking at me as if I was stupid, “I am from the city.”

Off in the distance a line of women, all in colourful saris, carry jars to the water pump. It looked wildly beautiful.

Vijayawada Junction is famous for being that, a junction and a couple of big intercity trains were there, including one heading up to Delhi. It was very clean and brutally hot. Roaming the platform a uniformed man came to me and said he was doing a survey on train toilets. Sigh, no escape these days. It seemed to be a kind of push-polling and his career depended on getting a good result. Any suggestion from me that on a scale from one to five with five being good that the toilets were not a five was going to be resisted.

As it happened, on the Coromandal Express the toilets were and remained clean throughout. Which is, no doubt, a great relief to the army of Indians who have told me about how bad train toilets are. I imagine in places they are; but this time I had no complaint.

Two policeman wandered by escorting a prisoner. It looked all very casual.

At Viyayawada we get a new carriage mate who is told by the guard has to ride in the bunk above me. I had no objection to him sharing my low level bunk now that it was daytime, but the guard was insistent. The passenger was dark and moody and constantly worked his cellphone. Never attempted to chat to any of us. A stranger!

As we neared Chennai every village was winding down for the day and groups were gathering around … the stumps. From the crowded streets of Mumbai to the remotes village on the Tamil Naidu plains, Indians play cricket with such passion. You seldom see any other game being played.

It was with a tinge of sadness that the journey ended; I could kill for a shower, but the place had become homelike and the people pleasant. The Orissa boy raced up too me and quickly gave me two boxes of incense. I was very touched.

Swimming in saris

Sun, sea and saris…

The land that gave the world its first sex manual, the Karma Sutra, has an amusing prudishness when it comes to going to the beach.

This is Chennai, formally Madras and the hopelessly hot capital of Tamil Nadu in south India. Its not an overly attractive city as places go, even by Indian standards. Its strange to reflect that this country, which produced something as exquisite as the Taj Mahal, cannot seem to get basic street design right. Pavements, where they exist, have people living on them, or they are dug up or somebody has set up a stall. Pedestrians are forced onto the roads, to share them with a bewildering array of vehicles. Felt quite possible that death would come under the wheels of a tricycle turned into a pick up truck and driven by a bearded man who felt all destiny, and road sense, was in the control of another deity not currently with us. Survival for foreigners involves hanging close to little old ladies who have survived crossing many a street before.

Auto-rickshaw drivers regard with disbelief people such as me who insist on walking. Its not some environmental statement; in new places the only way to get the necessary sense of direction is to pace out the landscape first. Just across from the hotel, on the banks of a polluted river, is a long line of squatter settlements. My walk past produced some sensation for the children. They were not beggars at all, but intrigued at the sight of a white man with camera, up close. People across India love posing and they do it so naturally. It makes it easy to get close to people and it is not exploitative either. The whole momentary relationship is natural and pleasure for both sides.

My first destination was Higginbothams; Chennai’s finest bookshop. All I wanted was a map but the air conditioning and the impressive selection of books made it more than welcoming.

Later I am at the Asian School of Journalism, right in the middle of Chennai, and near the country’s top circulation English language Hindu newspaper. It has a solid, impressive feel about it and offers training that is balanced between the academic and the practical in journalism, rather than media studies. What they make of me is yet to be established; New Zealand accents plainly puzzle the average Tamil. Speak slowly.

Experience in India has taught that the best survival strategy on the streets is to find your own auto-rickshaw driver. It can be a bit hit-and-miss but once the connection is made, other drivers and touts tend not to bother you and the driver has the street smarts to know to take good care of his customer. So this afternoon I established my ties; inevitably he wanted to take me to one of the big craft emporiums India has. Drivers get a cut from whatever the customer buys. My man also wanted to take in a temple, but its too hot for all that currently.

No, my destination was Marina Beach, billed as the second longest beach in the world. On the train we passed through a station that billed itself as having “the longest platform in the world”. Once that honour was owned by Bulawayo station in Zimbabwe; but Mugabe has probably devalued that too. What is longer than Marina Beach, I don’t know but various people told me not to go. It was dirty and it was too hot, they said.

They were right on the latter, but it did not deter me or several thousand others. Perhaps the saddest part of it were the little shelters on its blazing sand under which lovers huddled. India makes it so hard for courting couples; authorities are quick to claim it is prostitution. Anybody who sits in the blazing heat of Marina Beach and looks lovingly into the eyes of the other is, in my view, passing one of the early tests on love’s long road!

Down at the sea hundreds gathered but it looked, not like a beach, but like some kind of ornate social function. Some women were wearing ornate and beautiful saris, complete with gold edgings and it was in this they were swimming. A madness of cotton and silk in the waves. The men, naturally, were more comfortably dressed in swimwear. But the poor women. You would think that given India’s size the world’s swimsuit manufacturers would come up with something for the women of a culture not given to swim wear… a kind of swimming sari perhaps. Just for safety’s sake surely. Marina Beach is a steeply sloping beach with dumping waves; one imagines more than a few women have been swept away … but suitably attired.

India - land of the urban legend

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Madras Cricket Club, Chennai

Its possible Indians invented the concept of urban legends, as a kind of extension of their own rich religious traditions and an ability to spin fantastic yarns. A quite extraordinary range of people retail the stories too, seemingly believing them, or, at least, hoping to get on over the poor credible foreigner. Expect that in pulling the stunt they also make themselves paranoid.

The trains, of course, offer rich material for urban legends, with tales of robbers and rapists and various ruses. People chain their suitcases to their seats and presumably  sleep lightly in the hope that they catch anybody up to no good. Frankly my own collection of less than exotic shirts and underwear can go to roaming thieves if they are so inclined, although it would be inconvenient. Somewhat akin to an airline losing your bag.

But even out in the streets its dangerous. I bought a Fanta - not my usual drink of choice but the fierce heat gives it a flavour it doesn't normally have - and a woman told me with horror that this was a favourite way of getting at foreigners. It was drugged, no less. How my assailant was to know that I would stop an an entirely obscure stall and buy this particular bottle was not explained. And of course in the wider Hindu mythology no explanation is needed: in a city of 10 million it would be my fate to get the one poisoned bottle of Fanta. So why worry? There is a variation on the theme around India's airport duty free shops which sell mostly whiskey (the Indian fascination with whiskey has me totally beat - it is not the drink for the heat, I would have thought). That bottle of Johnny Walker Red is not what you think, it seems. Clever operators are said to have  drilled into the bottom, drained out the real whiskey and replaced it with something that looks like whiskey. Frankly it seems a big effort for not very great return - and a whole heap of potential problems along the way.

Another new danger are people who offer you biscuits. This is yet to happen to me, but on advice received so far, the idea is not to take the biscuits but to run. They either want to rape me or rob me and the drug laced biscuit is their tool-of-choice. Perhaps it happened sometime. Although some where in the back streets of Chennai today a man offered me marijuana. It seemed very 1960s.

On the train a Tamil told me that hundreds of Bengalis were coming south to Chennai for cheap eye surgery. They needed it, she said, because Bengalis ate lots of sweets and as a result (and no, it didn't especially make sense to me) their eyes fail and they need surgery.

This Urban Legend factory spills over into the mainstream in other ways too. Television and newspapers were today running stories that the Pakistan Air Force now has supremacy over the Indian Air Force. It seems that of late rather too many of India's MiGs have been crashing in assorted landscapes across the land and the subcontinent may now lie defenceless; to raging Pakistanis and their poisoned biscuits.

Pakistan occupies a curious place in the  Indian consciousness; they are mostly dismissive of it as a failed democracy run by raving religious mullahs, and equally they seem outraged that anybody would want to live that way and not share in the joys of India's democracy. Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf's book, In the Line of Fire, hit the shelves this week and promoted a torrent of dismissive commentary from the Indian media. I picked up a copy at Higginbotham's and have managed only the first chapter or so. The man certainly has a vast ego.

The story of the moment though has been the conviction and sentencing of a rather elegant looking actor, Monica Bedi. She was given five years "rigorous imprisonment" on charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy and impersonation in a fake passport case. The Hindu reported that she asked newspapers not to refer to her as anybody's girlfriend: "Please do not link me with anyone. I am not having relationship with anyone, I am single." Given that she has already been in jail 10 months, that is hardly  surprising and the Hindu doesn't make the connections obvious to us out of towners. The Indian Express helpfully points out she is the girlfriend of underworld don Abu Salem who is in custody in Mumbai over his role in the 1993 serial bomb blasts in that city. 

Cannot say I have ever seen Indians publicly fight - they are, as the beach suggests, a very discrete people mostly. Thus my surprise when a walk took me into a sector of town, rather down on its luck, given to repairing motor bike spare parts. Very grimy and industrial and around the corner was a group of around 10 women, furiously yelling at each other and waving their hands about. And a further 20 metres along, a similar sized group in apparently further conference in such a fashion. A tall, thin woman, probably in her 50s, was doing in a dismissive fashion a kind of hula dance. I took this to be a kind of accusation that the other accused woman - who ever it was - had seduced somebody else with her dancing.

I fled across the Line of Control; white man with camera was definitely not needed here. I wanted a biscuit and Fanta.

Temple tourists

Occasionally one goes through an experience which, in its sum total offers a useful lesson on life, one worth sharing. Two came up today; about 60 kilometres is the limit to which the average Western body can endure riding in an auto rickshaw. Lesson two; do not buy your auto rickshaw driver a beer. In lesson two rickshaw driver can also be substituted with Thai boatman. Explanations later.

Mahabalipuram is a World Heritage Site; a collection of stone carvings and temples dating from the 3^rd to 8^th Centuries. A number of kings who ruled the region had artistic bents and exercised them in a series of striking buildings and ornate carvings. In this part of the world they are a prime tourist attraction, not just for foreigners but also for the tens of thousands of domestic tourists who, in an era of discount airlines and widely available cars, not explore the homeland with a strange fierceness. It may well spell doom for Mahabalipuram if this all keeps up.

I found my driver and negotiated a price for the trip; 1200 rupees. As we went on this was, it seems, exclusive of various charges including tolls, drinks and meals. No matter. Heading south he was a good driver in the lose sense that the roads are a challenge to the manhood of every idiot in India who wants to drive. I used to find the apparent anarchy of places like Mumbai and Kolkata bad enough, but in Chennai there are fewer cars. This just not mean more control and reason; it simply means high speed anarchy.

Clear of Chennai we moved down the blistering coast, pounded by unyielding heat without a breath of wind. Little wonder people in these parts hanker for the monsoon. What they got several years ago was the 2002 Boxing Day Asian Tsunami. Its impact can be seen easily with long tracts of coastline stripped of vegetation which only now is beginning to recover. Refugee camps remain, although they are far from full as villages have been rebuilt. Boats sit on the beach, many with the propaganda of an alphabet soup of global NGOs who could not bring themselves to give aid without singing about their charity loudly. Long live the NGO which gives something without putting up its name and a press statement.

The town of Mahabalipuram is a much more recent addition to the landscape. Lord, the tackiness of tourism - and this is far from an Indian speciality - seems to know no bounds. The sheer volume of rubbish being sold in the name of art is quite extraordinary. I was almost inclined to buy the stone “Karma Sutra” thing for the amusement of others. But being made out of granite it could have easily blown my luggage allowance. At one monument I was set upon by an “engineer student” (once assumes that in tourist knickknack school they tell you to come up with a line to appeal) who wanted to sell me a marble elephant. On the way in he failed, but was waiting as I came out. He had a price: 1200 rupees. We walked on and he came up with a good line: “As you are not American, I will give you this for just 800 rupees.” Surely he has a variation on that: “as you are American … etc etc”. As I neared the rickshaw the price was down to 400 rupees. Moments as we were to drive away the price was 200 rupees. What margins they work on!

The statues and temples are worth seeing, absolutely no question, but tourists are crushing them. The Shore Temple - the icon piece of the whole place - is being crawled over, literally, but hundreds of tourists. I am not at all sure many of them seriously care about it all; its just another trophy to visit and chalk up. Rocks are falling apart and being worn out by the ceaseless flow of people each day. At the Five Rathas beautiful stone elephants and lions - nearly 2000 years old - were being used as props for family photos. Children were throwing ice cream containers on the ground and many were simply bored, working their mobile phones instead.

India, by seeking World Heritage listing for Mahabalipuram, owes the world better than this. The places can be seen, but with delicacy; it is unnecessary to have everybody clambering over the buildings.

There is a serious disconnect between the beauty of it all and the management of the sites. Its shown up in the bizarre plaques set up to inform visitors. They are, for the most part, incomprehensible in English. They may well make a useful introduction to a PhD dissertation, but they have no passion, romance or store telling for modern visitors.

Mahabalipuram needs urgent, desperate help. India is a land of exquisite beauties; they could simply all die the death of 10,000 tourist cuts.

In the way of the world, we left and headed north with the rickshaw driver going to his preferred resort for lunch. I felt strange; I was surrounded by all these pasty white people. Italians, Germans. I am not at all sure of the attraction of South Indian beaches; they are unrelentingly hot and featureless. Lunch was on me, it seems. My driver ordered himself a big dish and a Kingfisher. I settled for just the beer and some fruit. All seemed well and we set out for Chennai.

My driver had completely changed from the trip down. The mellow, philosophical man had become all aggressive, loud and distinctly risky to be with. He would yell out at people and act erratically. When he proposed - as all rickshaw drivers do - to take me to a handicraft shop (“just for looking, just for 10 minutes“) I made it clear he would lose his ride at that point if he persisted. He sulked and got even more erratic. And it was only one beer!

Future news off the streets

The news is all good; I will live at least 90 years, I will have multiple sources of income, have many women and am blessed with magnetic sex appeal. That is the hot news off Wallajah Road this morning.

Today is Gandhi Day and most of the shops are closed in honour of the founding father. The sale of alcohol is banned for the day. It had the other blessing too that it was possible to walk the streets without the ever present likelihood of being flattened by something on wheels. A small boy was out on the streets with his mother, learning to ride his new bike. He had better learn fast; its mayhem out there on a normal day. My auto driver was outraged that I wished to walk.

“I take you,” he pleaded, terrified that this walking craze could hurt business, “it is not for money, I take you for free.”

No doubt the trip would have included the enforced visit to more than one handicraft store along the way. I waved it off; you just cannot see the beauty of the buildings in this town while racing through its streets. A lovely 70 year old building up the road saw the owner come running out to be  photographed.

"My grandfather built it," he said proudly. I lacked the courage to question why the grandson didn't maintain it.

The local Zambazar police station was open for business, although judging from the lengthy notice board outside they do not have much to do. A billboard out front defines the Zambazar ward, including an entry: “No. of bad characters”. They have precisely 24. One suspects some cooking of the crime books here.

The flower sellers were out in force; every woman here is less than complete without a garland of fresh flowers in her hair. During the night large convoys of trucks must bring them in from the countryside and by morning flower sellers are on every corner selling them.

Over on Wallajah an old fortune teller sat on the street which was not empty, but which by most Indian city standards suggested some terrible epidemic may have swept the region, driving people away. He wanted to read my palms and give me a horoscope. A range of charges were offered, from the basic future telling for 50 rupees up to 525 rupees for the full works. A small crowd gathered from no where to hear my fate; literally!

He took my birth date and immediately discovered fortune teller and I were Gemini.

“You cunning like a fox,” he said with a toothless grin, “you get into very big trouble but get out of it.”

The year past had been a bad one, but good things lie ahead.

One particular line in my left hand divided and this suggested “you will have more than one source of income”, he proclaimed. Not bad really. He flicked my right hand back and counted the folds in my wrist.

“You will live to 90,” he announced.

Some of was hard to understand; my palms indicate "black money".  My colour is supposed to be green and I am alleged to suffer from jealousy. And I have four children; he got that wrong but was undeterred. Apparently more are on the way. A tribute to medical science that would be.

I am not to eat fish or drink alcohol. Suspecting I would pass on such prohibitions he reached into his bag and pulled out a small vial which contained what he said were talismans. They were odd little pieces of tubular metal and they are to sit in my pocket for the rest of my life - another 40 years or so. 

A series of lines below my thumb gave my past away: “you have had many women.”

Hardly.

He was most struck though with two “x” marks on my palm, below my right index finger.

“This indicates your sexual magnetic attraction, your power. Women flock to you.”

My laugh, and that of some of the audience who understood what he said, was regarded as an affront to his professional skills. He promptly waved his hand, palm outward and said he did not have such x marks on his palms. And plainly, he was implying, he had no sexual magnetism, while his client did.

Tell any passing bald 53 year old that he is a sexual magnet with immense power over women ... and well, of course you can get paid. And a tip too! Clever fellow my fortune teller.

Rained off

It rained hard last night and in the process further saturated the reputation of the grandly named M.A. Chidambaram (MAC) Stadium, headquarters of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association and the Madras Cricket Club - the other MCC.

And, as it happens, the MCC is my home for three weeks and, somewhat unexpectedly, I have found myself cheek-by-jowl with the upper pantheon of India cricket, headed by Saint Sanchin Tendulkar himself.

The squad was divided into India Red, India Green and India Blue and for four days the sides pitted themselves at each other in day- night one dayers.

To the hardened cricket fan - which India offers several tens of millions of - this competition was something of a contrivance and a bit of a trial run for the ICC Championship international series which begins later in the month - and to the north. The problem for MAC is that it has a reputation for losing good cricket time to the rain. It is plainly a jinx for Chennai  can go for weeks without rain, but put on cricket and the heavens open.

Just outside the solid concrete circular stadium a small Hindu temple valiantly tries to order things with the higher bodies so that the game can get underway. And the day before a large squad of police arrive to ensure the "bad characters" stay away. It may mean something, or not, as the case may be, but they locked up the MCC's member's area which had access out to the pitch.

The ground has an aging resident dog, Manju, who spends his days on the oval, watering it in key places and generally trying to keep the crows from doing too much damage. He lies down in the sandy ground (the stadium is a short distance from Marina Beach) and eyes the crowd. The teams put on a bit of a media show as Manju puts his head down and snoozes. A partly paraplegic boy, unable to walk normally but given to moving in a kind of crab like movement, shows up and works out with the team, scuttling across the pitch to chase balls. Several media outlets feature him in later reports.

The day of the first match brings in a decent crowd - although far from capacity. Easily the biggest turn out is in the cheap seats, facing the setting sun. They are loud and educated, watching every ball and offering a noisy critique of ever stroke played.

Chennai cricket fans get to see the giants of cricket and warmly welcome the opportunity. Tendulkar's every movement is followed and commented upon. He performs with seemingly  effortless fours and sixes and a couple of centuries.

In the members seats many children and teenagers fill out places. For a group of teenage girls old hands like Tendulkar are plainly not worth taking notice of. But certain young stars looking toward them brings on loud squeals and excited pointing.

Between overs the big screens show ads for the Tamil versions of Bollywood movies - eliciting excited cheering from crowds who plainly divide their time between cricket and films. 

So much make-up cricket over the following days means fewer spectators - although millions continue to watch it live on television.

Last night was the final - between Blue and Red. Perhaps the signs were already there when Tendulkar was out for a duck, although teammate Virender Schwag knocked up an undefeated 90.

But by 5pm it was plain nature was going to have the last word.

The heat had built during the day; it is so hot here now the local newspapers are writing up temperature stories. The monsoon is a week away or so. Preliminary thrusts are underway and in the afternoon great clouds began forming over the city and then, on sunset, unleashed a barrage. The opening raindrops were surprisingly big and hefty. Early drops flicked up big clods of earth and dust before everything began to get wet.

MAC, being of a simple nature, cannot handle rain like this. Groundsmen - and lots of grounds women - got the covers out, but on the stadium edge waterfalls formed off the roof and the place was awash with water. The game was, in the end, abandoned. Happily too the temperature dropped across the city as the rain set in for the night.

Next morning though the sun was up, and the blistering heat of south India returns.

Temples and silk

Kancheepuramhar, Tamil Nadu

Before the sun rises over the Bay of Bengal, Chennai is almost gentle and heading out on the Bangalore road in the tidy by increasingly vulnerable Ambassador (that is, Morris Oxford) it was obvious a few people have discovered the joys of the pre-dawn. A gentle, cooling breeze wafts in and the land has yet to suck up the heat that, by 10 am will leave you roasting. 

Kancheepuramhar is about 60 kilometres out from Chennai and famous for its 2000 year old Hindu temples, and for its silk shops. Its odd how in the West Hindu temples are shown as spooky, strange places; Indiana Jones always seemed to be lost inside a snake infested temple or two. They are not at all menacing and equally they are not particularly quiet places either. If India has one overwhelming problem its people, over a billion of them, and inevitably even temples end up having big crowds. 

Seven thirty at Kancheepuramhar though was relatively calm and the first temple. Three temple elephants were being prepared for the morning duties. Walking toward one it turned to me and lifted its trunk, bringing it gently down on my head and softly blessing me. A moving experience.

The area features numerous temples and most of them let Non-Hindus in through the gates, but deny entry to the inner part of the temple. It barely matters though because there is much to see within the compounds, including extraordinary art carved out of big chunks of granite. 

No one is sure how long each would have taken to carve - years probably. No one knows either how many unsuccessful attempts were executed before a perfect pillar or panel could be put in place. Early Indian rulers were unrivalled patrons of the arts.

At one temple I was not allowed into the inner part of it, and an old soldier on guard duty engaged me in a conversation.

"I am 88 years old," he said. I could believe it.

"I fight against Japan and China." 

Probably did. He wanted his photo taken and in exchange he suddenly grabbed my hand for his great party trick. Near his guard position was a terrifically graphic piece of ancient pornography, while up some steps and kind of out of the way, a particularly descriptive rendition of oral sex. Plainly this is reserved for we Western men. Its hard to fathom what modern Hindus think of it all; one suspects that in the overload of art and carving, some of the stuff is quite unnoticed. Some of the more extreme Hindu groups would probably smash it up now.

Silk shops cannot be avoid - like the endless handicraft shops of the cities. Something is currently wrong in the sari world; its overrun with polyester and garish designs. One shop was selling saris with Bollywood stars embroidered into its edgings. Superstar teeshirts is one thing; saris?

Few western tourists seem to make it to Kancheepuramhar but busloads a minute of Hindu devotees from all over south India pour in. They have to be fed and the town is full of strictly non-vegetarian restaurants which offer an alluring piece of discrimination; good meals in non-a/c, or good meals, slighly more pricey, in air conditioning. 

Coffee is served in a traditional south Indian fashion. After it is filtered in the little stainless steel filters, you get it boiling hot in milk. The coffee is in one steel cup sitting in another steel bowl. To drink it you pour it back and fourth between the two vessels, getting air into the coffee and cooling it at the same time.

The other great treat is lassi - a kind of millkshake drink made out of curds and assorted bits and pieces. Highly fattening and completely addictive.

 On May 24, 1991, at Sriperumbudur, between Kancheepuramhar and Chennai, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Sri Lankan suicide bomber. The place where the woman bent over, seemingly to touch Gandhi's feet, is now marked with a red piece of granite. The whole place is beautiful and little visited, but poignant and lost. 

Indians get so upset at the indulgence of Americans who seem to feel they are the only people around to suffer the impact of terrorism. Indians have known it for much longer and for so long the west has turned a blind eye to those who carry out these deeds against Indians.

The monument to Rajiv Gandhi is a sober reminder of that.

Politics and liquor - a state with no beer

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

No one in India is going to take pity on politicians. Any kind of political office is a guarantee of prestige, and in a country given to high levels of corruption, extreme wealth. The one source of amazement in India is that they have a prime minister in Manmohan Singh who is so distinctly and obviously different from the rest of the political school he swims in. Truly the exception and along the way, probably the most intellectual and best educated head of government anywhere in the world today.

But he is the exception.

For all that, here in the south various kind of election fevers are jostling for attention along with dengue fever and mysterious African ailment chikungunya. A place like Chennai though is overwhelmed with public media; huge billboards, constant advertising and endless promotions. Everywhere you look there is a huge face of Amitabh Bachchan selling anything from a movie to toilet paper, or the vacuous Aishwarya Rai. You can even get her on a sari. 

So getting noticed when running for office in the Chennai Corporation requires some effort. The current approach is to hire a couple of autorickshaws and adorned them with billboards and flags. Then you hire a marching band and hire some peons to enthusiastically march behind -  giving the impression of followers and success.

Now it cannot be said that one particular woman campaigner nearly ran me down with her show on the eve of polling - the truth is everybody with a set of wheels in Chennai has offered several puja in anticipation of being able to run down the foreigner. So this politician was just in a long queue of people who - happily for my sake - managed to fail to run me down.

As she and her little band of noise makers - competing with the diwali fire work exploders who make North Korea look pacifist - wended their way through the lanes, no one was looking. Or taking a blind bit of notice. The candidate, standing on her auto doing Winston Churchill  impersonations, was overwhelmed with excitement when she spied me taking her photo.  Party strategists no doubt worked late into the night trying to figure the polling implications of all this.

Others came by later, complete with flags, loud stereos and assorted hangers-on, but it was impossible to determine whether anybody was getting noticed above the clutter of an Indian street.

Those that did notice though were the hapless people of Tamil Nadu who like alcohol. From 5pm yesterday and for six days the entire state is observing prohibition. Crowds gathered outside the ineptly named "Wine Shops" (ask for a Pinot Noir from the southside of the vineyard, picked late in the season and you will receive an uncomprehending stare) to snatch the last supplies. 

They sell almost exclusively rum and whiskey - with some beer on the side. Most customers drink it straight from the bottle. These tipplers were yesterday getting in emergency supplies - and nearby the police waited. The New Indian Express this morning reports that police in Chromepet were nabbing those whose needs were the greatest, including one Ayyappan and Venu Kumar who left the Wine Shop with 240 quarter bottles of brandy and 240 quarter bottles of rum. 

The story didn't say what the police did with the seized booty. 

© Michael J Field
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