The British and Germans Are the Worst

Ventured out of Kochi yesterday through the backwaters not far to the south. Saw a kingfisher but was moving too fast to get a decent photo. Leaving Tuesday for Munnar and some wildlife preserves. Che is big among much of the youth in Kerala, especially in the smaller villages. A North Indian about my age bemoaned this fact to me after we were talking to some locals about it, denouncing Che as a butcher who killed whoever he wanted. I found out from a woman working in Kollam I've been speaking with online that the timed blackouts are occuring because the first monsoon was a "soft" one, and therefore did not provide enough hydroelectric power at the dams. Not much in the mood for description, but I'll leave you all with some pictures.

Fumez-Vous?

A French family just came to our homestay, with a little girl, and we also happened to eat next to them at a restaurant last night before the blackout. I forgot to mention, the commies here like to conserve energy, so there are mandatory blackouts for a half-hour each night. Each district is designated a different half-hour block, but everyone is prepared and life goes on just fine without the juice. There are also random blackouts now and again due to weather or grid strain, but these generally only last five to fifteen minutes.

I was delighted to speak a bit of French with the little girl, who couldn't keep to her seat at dinner. We chatted a while, but the cutest was at one moment she lept over to me shouting "regardez!" One of her top front teeth was missing, and she was inserting a toothpick in and out of the gap. When they first arrived the girl was wearing Western clothes, but by then her parents had found her some jungle-hippy threads. Then she asked me for a smoke.

Lungi, Not Dr. Murungi

I decided I really wanted a lungi, the long skirt-like articles of clothing worn by many of the men here in Kerala, because they look really comfortable in the heat and humidity. My first mistake was trying to get one in the more touristy Fort Kochi; my second mistake was asking right off the bat if the tailor had any. All of my previous haggling experiences had been fun and successful because I pretended to not be very interested in what I was buying. He started me off at about six and a half times the going rate for a lungi, and wouldn't budge much lower than six times. I should have just walked out, like I had done a few times before to get the prices I had wanted, but I was absolutely sick of jeans. I think maybe he was also worried that if he cut the price too much for me in front of the two annoying women from Maine that were in the shop, he wouldn't be able to get much out of them; they looked ready to spend quite a bit, too.



But it was certainly worth it; the lungi was my golden ticket into the hearts of Keralans.

Where have all the chaiwallas gone?

I'm frequently amazed at the arrogance and condescension the Western tourists here display toward the Malayalees. And they seem to hate one another, as if each other Westerner represents to them the inauthenticity of their retreat into tropical paradise. I even saw a woman who had just arrived in Fort Kochi outright glaring at a small child. There's plenty of yelling, as in that whole volume = understanding idea. The Americans are the absolute worst.



Sarina and I are here for different reasons, obviously, but recently it has become more pronounced. She likes going to places in the tour guide, I use the guide to get an idea of reasonable prices and go elsewhere. She likes travel by autorickshaw, I like walking. I memorize maps in a couple minutes, she frequently goes off on her own and gets lost.

Chai...Chai...Coffee...Coffee...Mirindapepsiwater...Waterwatercoldandsweet...

So it's been a while since I've gone to an Internet Cafe...

First off, I'm in Fort Kochi right now, in Kerala, the only state of India to have democratically voted to be communist. For inspiration I read the second half of Al's essay A Man, which is devoted to a second person rendition of Che's life and death. But let me backtrack a bit.

The day after exploring the markets in Old Rajender Nagar (also spelled Rajinder) we went to Connaught Place, a gargantuan three-tiered traffic circle saddled between Old and New Delhi. I could barely breathe in this choking spiral of unregulated fuel emissions, open sewers, and soul-crushing poverty. Sarina was looking for some specific items in Janpath market,