Dinner in Pondicherry
The sheets were damp, my nose was running, and it sounded like rats - in a similar mood, no doubt - were leaping off the aluminum roof to their deaths beside my bed as I tried to grind my eyes shut in the unusual cold of this south Indian hill station, high in the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu.
The cold was brought on by two days of malnutrition, which itself was brought about by one day of violent illness. However, I slept for nearly 12 hours and woke up refreshed and ready to hike.
However, again, the guide cancelled on me because it looked like rain. Sure enough, later, it did rain; this is no excuse, though, as it is only rain.
Enter: Mike Dawson (whose claims follow). The son of a British lady and Indian gentleman (both imprisoned by the Japanese in the Second World War but freed by the Gandhi's violent and lesser known counterpart); he had lived in Ooty since 1952.
Since I was reading Bertrand Russell at the time, and since Mr. Dawson was unusually strange, our converstation cannot be fully recounted here in detail that does it justice; no doubt have ye, however, that it lasted almost all day and consited of Lucipherian conspiracies, Hindus worshipping Nilgiri black magic and witch doctors, the essence and point of religious fervour in more general senses, flaura and fauna, Russell vs. T.S Eliot vs. Jesus, academic unorthodoxy, the history of tea, his rotting, soon to be amputated leg, and motorcycle sprockets.
The man was a veritable fountain of the incredible.
At one point, he started pointing out where - two years earlier - four people had been eaten by tigers. A possible, unconfirmed fifth was only smelled. To understand why they didn't follow up on the smell (beside the possibility of being mauled by a tiger) , one only needs to ask the security guard who discovered the third body - which had been eaten from the chest down; essentially, a hollowed out, grisly skeleton with fleshy shoulders and a nearly intact face - who could not eat for three days. The other victims were all women, but were eaten completely; breasts, eyeballs, arms, thighs - all eaten.
It was around this point that the monsoon - with which I have been playing an unusual game of hide and seek - sought us out and began its downpour. Luckily, it was near the end of the day and provided a misty backdrop for a walk through the tea estates. We came upon a group of about 18 young women employed as teapickers who were finishing their day. Within a few minutes I had been proposed to by every one of them. I was flattered, to say the least, in a country which takes marriage as seriously as does India. My success rate was startling but unlikely to be repeated among women who share my language, and hence, the ability of finding me morally repugnant as well as physically dire.
I took another one of those mountain buses back down into Coimbatore. The experience of riding on one of these buses cannot be overstated, and the skill - or insanity - required to pilot one is beyond my comprehension. At the side of the road, at one point, a man patted his vomitting son on the back and looked around awkwardly.
Regardless, I eventually plodded my way into Pondicherry, at the coast of Tamil Nadu on the Bay of Bengal, south of Madras. The overnight bus trip was intriguing. I was constantly awoken by various things, one of which was the bus driver, outside in the rain, grabbing his vein-bulged forehead, illuminated by lightning with some sort of pronged device in his hand, surrounded by tires of various sorts; one having previously been on our bus before it exploded.
On the bus with me were several members of the Campus Crusade for Christ; people who, like the colonial buildings of south India, are physical remnants of when well-to-do religious nations were less obvious about leaving traces of their exploits.
Pondicherry reminds me a lot of other post-colonial cities, which for some reason I always end up in. Regardless, the town was packed with foreigners seeking enlightened servitude to an invented Church, and a dogma and doctrine unenforced by their parents and nurses and hence more agreeable and exotic. It instantly repulsed me.
The only friendly person was a North Korean, who promptly invited me to dinner. He was staying at the Ashram down the street and approached me as I was walking along the beachfront promenade. I never showed up because the hostels were all full and I left on a bus for a small village further up the coast toward Madras.
That night, I was wracked with the journalistic anguish of not going and suggesting that I record our conversation with my radio equipment. My consolations, however, were twofold; one, I am more intent on living my life than being a journalist; and two, I rank journalism and writing on different levels, the former being a more debased version of the latter, and I was consequently able to milk an amusing piece of fiction (like all my fiction, based somewhat in fact) out of the whole scenario.
Tomorrow I leave for Madras, from whence I will leave via train for Delhi. I will then fly out to Beijing. Today, however, I fooled someone intent on harassing me by pretending that I could not speak. When he asked me, as I walked by silently and forcefully, "Why aren't you talking!? Why won't you talk?!" - I feigned sign-language (shamefully, I know), to which he replied, "Oh. Oh God. Sorry!"
Once in China, however, I will no longer be in India; and once no longer in India, my accounts will hopefully not lose their exuberant absurdity - a turn of phrase, I hope, which is used to describe me by my close friends' future grandchildren.
The cold was brought on by two days of malnutrition, which itself was brought about by one day of violent illness. However, I slept for nearly 12 hours and woke up refreshed and ready to hike.
However, again, the guide cancelled on me because it looked like rain. Sure enough, later, it did rain; this is no excuse, though, as it is only rain.
Enter: Mike Dawson (whose claims follow). The son of a British lady and Indian gentleman (both imprisoned by the Japanese in the Second World War but freed by the Gandhi's violent and lesser known counterpart); he had lived in Ooty since 1952.
Since I was reading Bertrand Russell at the time, and since Mr. Dawson was unusually strange, our converstation cannot be fully recounted here in detail that does it justice; no doubt have ye, however, that it lasted almost all day and consited of Lucipherian conspiracies, Hindus worshipping Nilgiri black magic and witch doctors, the essence and point of religious fervour in more general senses, flaura and fauna, Russell vs. T.S Eliot vs. Jesus, academic unorthodoxy, the history of tea, his rotting, soon to be amputated leg, and motorcycle sprockets.
The man was a veritable fountain of the incredible.
At one point, he started pointing out where - two years earlier - four people had been eaten by tigers. A possible, unconfirmed fifth was only smelled. To understand why they didn't follow up on the smell (beside the possibility of being mauled by a tiger) , one only needs to ask the security guard who discovered the third body - which had been eaten from the chest down; essentially, a hollowed out, grisly skeleton with fleshy shoulders and a nearly intact face - who could not eat for three days. The other victims were all women, but were eaten completely; breasts, eyeballs, arms, thighs - all eaten.
It was around this point that the monsoon - with which I have been playing an unusual game of hide and seek - sought us out and began its downpour. Luckily, it was near the end of the day and provided a misty backdrop for a walk through the tea estates. We came upon a group of about 18 young women employed as teapickers who were finishing their day. Within a few minutes I had been proposed to by every one of them. I was flattered, to say the least, in a country which takes marriage as seriously as does India. My success rate was startling but unlikely to be repeated among women who share my language, and hence, the ability of finding me morally repugnant as well as physically dire.
I took another one of those mountain buses back down into Coimbatore. The experience of riding on one of these buses cannot be overstated, and the skill - or insanity - required to pilot one is beyond my comprehension. At the side of the road, at one point, a man patted his vomitting son on the back and looked around awkwardly.
Regardless, I eventually plodded my way into Pondicherry, at the coast of Tamil Nadu on the Bay of Bengal, south of Madras. The overnight bus trip was intriguing. I was constantly awoken by various things, one of which was the bus driver, outside in the rain, grabbing his vein-bulged forehead, illuminated by lightning with some sort of pronged device in his hand, surrounded by tires of various sorts; one having previously been on our bus before it exploded.
On the bus with me were several members of the Campus Crusade for Christ; people who, like the colonial buildings of south India, are physical remnants of when well-to-do religious nations were less obvious about leaving traces of their exploits.
Pondicherry reminds me a lot of other post-colonial cities, which for some reason I always end up in. Regardless, the town was packed with foreigners seeking enlightened servitude to an invented Church, and a dogma and doctrine unenforced by their parents and nurses and hence more agreeable and exotic. It instantly repulsed me.
The only friendly person was a North Korean, who promptly invited me to dinner. He was staying at the Ashram down the street and approached me as I was walking along the beachfront promenade. I never showed up because the hostels were all full and I left on a bus for a small village further up the coast toward Madras.
That night, I was wracked with the journalistic anguish of not going and suggesting that I record our conversation with my radio equipment. My consolations, however, were twofold; one, I am more intent on living my life than being a journalist; and two, I rank journalism and writing on different levels, the former being a more debased version of the latter, and I was consequently able to milk an amusing piece of fiction (like all my fiction, based somewhat in fact) out of the whole scenario.
Tomorrow I leave for Madras, from whence I will leave via train for Delhi. I will then fly out to Beijing. Today, however, I fooled someone intent on harassing me by pretending that I could not speak. When he asked me, as I walked by silently and forcefully, "Why aren't you talking!? Why won't you talk?!" - I feigned sign-language (shamefully, I know), to which he replied, "Oh. Oh God. Sorry!"
Once in China, however, I will no longer be in India; and once no longer in India, my accounts will hopefully not lose their exuberant absurdity - a turn of phrase, I hope, which is used to describe me by my close friends' future grandchildren.
posted by iain.e.marlow at 3:52 PM
3 Comments:
this is great writing.
keep safe.
x
Sounds like a great time Iain! I usually speak French instead of sign language. Works well enough to confuse the Koreans.
Sounds like the ladies' man strikes again eh! Did Chris tell you our coworker saw your picture, and thought you were handsome? Her exact words:
"Oh...that your brother? He better than you I think! He my type!"
Hahaha.
The dinner invitation was vague deliberately; it was a man, and it was merely a friendly suggestion; the tea ladies, however, oh la la.
Also, score one for minor Marlow. I also, by consensus, look older.
Post a Comment
<< Home