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Published: April 3rd 2011
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In Kovolam I somehow come to be living in a flat next door to a retired Danish lady and above a (slightly crazy) Norwegian lady whom, if you listen to everything she says, is lucky to not have limbs falling off. She is here to indulge in the Ayurvedic treatments that Kerala is famous for. As far as I can tell this involves filling her sinuses with Ghee and slowly dripping a couple of litres of oil onto her forehead. Both of which I’m sure are Chinese torture methods? The ’doctors’ are incredibly diagnosticians - she went in with blocked sinuses (a side effect of filling them with melted butter?) and comes out with cronic headaches a bad back and a damaged shoulder. Luckily they have cures for them all. Hummm…
No, I’m not cynical at all.
Does make for great entertainment though. As does the Danish ladies (forbidden) love affair with a local shop keeper. It’s all very Mills and Boon, except that he’s meant to be very religious (on Fridays and when it suits) so their affair swings between sneaky weekends away and him telling her she’s dressed inappropriately and will be damned for all eternity if she doesn’t
put trousers on instead of shorts.
My flat is at the top of the hill leading down to the beach. On one side is the Muslim side of town, on the other is the Hindu. Both are trying to out-celebrate each other. On my first night, un beckons to me, the Hindus are starting a week long celebration. This begins at 3am by the setting off of a small arms depot worth of fireworks. I leap out of bed convinced that Pakistan is invading.
At 6am I discover that someone had lined up more amps than you’d find at an ACDC concert under my window (aimed at the Muslim side) and is proceeding to play music at a decibel that reduces all forms of communication to charades. This continues from 6am to midnight every day for a week. My favourite was a trumpet solo that sounded oddly similar to children trying to learn the bagpipes.
When it stops the silence feels odd. Thankfully I don’t have to deal with the problem for long - the next day the Muslims start. They intersperse their songs (which are more tuneful) with long readings from the Koran (not tuneful at all). After
Men pull in the morning catch
Fishing boats go out at night and then people pull them and the nets back in in the morning two days it dawns on me that maybe I should be worrying about subliminal messaging. On the third day they have a big (and frankly, quite scary) parade, then everyone quietens down for a few days until the Hindus start it up all over again.
Indians have a very repressed view of all things feminine (especially skin) and consequently there are only a few places in India where you can sunbathe. Kovalam is one of these places, but they still love to come and gawp. You can handle it one of two ways. Ignore it or don’t go. You could yell at them but it only makes others come to stare at the girl in a bikini yelling. The best bet is to take an i-pod, a good book and a thick skin. Don’t try to stare them down - in India if a man is staring at you and you stare back it means that you ‘want’ them. Apparently. I think it was a man who came to that conclusion.
One day I was happily humming along to the eels deeply absorbed in a sudoku (so cool yet so geeky) when I looked up to find three
nuns staring down at me with displeasure. These ones I did stare back at, as I assume they wouldn’t interpret it as a come-on, eventually they wandered off to tut at the next girl. The way I see it, if people sunbathing offends you why go walking on the only sunbathing beach for a 50mile radius?
Without the school to alleviate my western guilt I decide to try and improve my physical and mental state by learning about yoga (so cliché!!!). This came in the form of a Japanese girl, Emi, who has just finished a teacher training course at the local Ashram (I did toy with the idea of staying at the Ashram but the 4.30am starts and enforced silence didn’t sound as nice as iced coffee and sunbathing). We met on the beach at 6.30am every day (thought I’d drop that in just in case people thought I was slacking on my year off) and for 2 hours we’d bend, stretch and relax while the sun came up. Actually, what we did was ’Vee-laaax’, this is lie on your back while a Japanese girl instructs you to relax. I was scared not to.
So the days passed in
Sophie meets an elephant
and it eats her arm!!!
No, just kidding, arm was fine a reasonably idyllic (if you ignore the competitive festivities) way of chess, swimming and aiming to become 85% freckle.
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