Two months India

I can hardly believe it is already two months ago that I arrived in India. Although so many things happened, it seems just a few days ago. My hair, though, proves that is has been a while: from black, it turned to brownish with a copper tint and with my own light-brown where it is growing.

Two months ago, that also implies that we arrived in Trivandrum one month ago: one month of internship in which we haven’t accomplished a lot of things, contrarily even. With all these luggage problems, it was quite understandable we didn’t do that much the first weeks, and when it was finally sorted out, it was too close to Onam to start our own project. Then came Onam – one week of holidays (you don’t hear us complaining about that J). But this week we hoped to finally get started. On Monday, it seemed that it would succeed: we would leave on Tuesday and visit the projectsite for some 3 or 4 days, and at the end of the week, give in our first proposal – working hard, but we were really looking forward to doing it.

On Tuesday, however, Mr. Shankar came with the bad news that the person who was responsible for the project – someone of the communist party – was about to die (cancer) and that the project would be postponed until after his funeral. Very sad indeed. The result is that we’re still trying to keep ourselves busy, for our thesis or internship report or… Vincent however started designing and he is enjoying it. I could do that too if I wanted, but since I’m here for anthropological purposes, I’d rather participate in the social projects. The thing is that I’m getting a little bit worried, because I’m almost halfway my internship, and apart from visiting some of the projects, I haven’t done anything useful for internship-purposes yet. But maybe that is part of the internship experience?

Spending quite a lot of time at the office did mean we got to know our colleagues better, especially Archana & Tanu (two girls from Mumbai that are working here), Guru (our contact person when we were in Belgium, trying to arrange the internship) and Manesi (his girlfriend). The last days, they came to our house to cook together, we played some games and went to the movies together (in Hindi, but we arranged to sit in a manner that we all had a personal translator next to us :). We’re planning to do that more often, because we all really enjoyed it.

Onam then: that was quite an experience too. On Sunday, we went to Viji’s marriage. We were surprised to see it, especially the scale of it: about 1500 people, they told us, and 2 filmcrews and about 10 photographers surrounding the couple. Viji looked really beautiful, wearing a traditional sari and loads and loads of golden jewellery and flowers. During the hour or so that it last, she had to change sari three times, since that is the custom here: one for the ceremony (which didn’t last very long, and seemed very unpersonal to us, with only some rituals to be performed – walking circles together, greeting the parents and exchange flowers and a collar – but no speeches or texts to be read), one for the meal, and one when they left. They indeed provided meals for all these 1500 people present, in a typical Indian style: the tables are set in long rows, with people sitting only on one side, but in a way that they face each other every two tables. Thus, in the middle between these tables, there is a long corridor, through which servants, two by two, serve you their part of the dish – rice, curries, vegetables,… – on the banana leaf in front of you. You try to eat it as fast as you can (never fast enough J) in order to be finished together with the Indians, because as soon as they are finished, they leave the table to wash their hands and make place for the next shift.

We also explored Thiruvananthapuram a little further – we even cycled all the way to the beach – some 45 minutes! It was a nice beach, but not for swimming, because the ocean was too rough and the beach was used for the fishing boats. Even when we sat down for just a few minutes, we were immediately surrounded by a heap of lively, excited children, trying to talk with us and showing us their little tricks :).

Monday evening, there was an Onam concert near our place, preceded by a procession (with an elephant!). So many people again, but funny to see you couldn’t buy any drinks (not even non-alcoholic). There were quite some vendors, but they were selling plastic toys or other useless stuff.

On Tuesday, we left for Varkala, a cosy but slightly touristy village on the cliffs. It was still off-season, but that also meant that the ocean came so far that there was only a mini-part of beach left. And even then our towels got wet from one big wave J. It actually was the first time I was really swimming here in India, and the sea was sooo nice. Unfortunately, we were saving on the amount of luggage we took with us, and also saved on the suncream, with the result of kind of a lobster-look after two days in Varkala.

We then went to Mr. Shankar’s native place, where he and Bala, his cousin showed us around. The first evening, they took us to a club, of which Bala was a member – the membership fee was 60 000 (!) Rs annually, he surely is a wealthy man! We went to see some local boat races in Mannar, which were nice, though a little boring, and the day afterwards we went to the famous boat races in Aranmula, quite similar but we really enjoyed it!

On Sunday, we took a ferry from Allapuzha to Kottayam, a trip on the magnificent backwaters of Kerala. That surely was worth a visit! Tired but satisfied, we arrived back at our house late in the evening, relieved to find that everything was still there. The next day, we felt even more relieved, because Mr. Shankar told us that they broke in in Guru’s place. Fortunately, he didn’t keep any valuable things there, so nothing was stolen.

Prospects for the next days: tomorrow we’ll probably visit the Neyyar Dam, and next week we really hope to visit the project site. Fingers crossed!

Els