A Century!

So everyone, big big news! Today, at approximately 2.55 pm Indian Standard Time, I saw my hundredth incident of public urination. The sweaty gentleman of the moment had hiked up his dhoti and was urinating onto a wall across from the Comfort Inn Marina Towers. It's a big day.

No Country for Beards

My beard has been a subject of interest for a lot of folks here. Many ask whether I grew it before or after I came to India. Everyone wants to know why I have it. Two days ago I was taking the train and a man made eye contact with me and came over to talk. He wanted to know if I was a Palestinian. He assumed that because I had a beard that I was a Muslim and figured that I was either Palestinian or Afghani. Only my friends and family can know how ridiculous this assumption was on his part. It seems, by and large in the south, that only Muslims sport beards, while Hindus go around with mustaches or clean shaven. Mustaches in fact are so common that a running joke between us exchange students is, "Hey you know who I'm talking about, he's got dark skin, black hair, a mustache..." While of course not all Muslims have beards, many do and also wear white caps indicative of their faith. As for Indian opinions of my beard, they will range from dislike, to approval, to confusion, to "you should shave." Regardless of the wealth of opinions here though, my plans are to go with the status quo. In case you were worried, that is.

A Sea Change

I have seen the Arabian Sea. After coming back to Chennai from Kodaikanal, I found that the government had canceled classes in the city indefinitely. A young man, wishing to raise awareness about the ongoing conflict between Tamils and Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka, set himself on fire in front of a block government buildings. The state government was concerned that students may demonstrate or riot and decided to respond to the young man’s suicide by ordering all universities and colleges in Chennai to shut their doors. Of course, an organized closure did not happen and as a foreign student, had a friend of mine not read an article in The Hindu, I would have never known. Faced with the prospect of waiting amidst the haze of Chennai for an unknown number of days, I decided to repack my bags and head out to Kerala.

When I arrived in Ernakulam, I was tired. Sleep on the train hadn’t been easy. Sarah and I made our way to the jetty and managed to catch the 6.55 ferry to Fort Kochin. Walking through Fort Kochin’s streets of heritage buildings, I was reminded again of Casco Viejo in Panama City. The colonial style buildings looked the same and bore the same wears from the climate.

 

There is a long history here of foreign settlement that goes back to Jews fleeing Palestine after the Roman invasion. A few kilometers away from Fort Kochin, in Mattancherry, you can still see Jew Town. Of course, you have to admit there is an irony to all of the Muslim neighborhoods lined with green crescent banners that you have to pass through to get there. You will pass about three mosques and at least one church to get to the Synagogue. Islam came with Arab traders who sailed to Kerala, like the Europeans, for spices. Christianity got its start here from none other than Saint Thomas, the star of Santhome Church in Chennai. On certain streets, it’s easy to pass by women with bindis, burkhas, and nuns in sky-blue habits.

 

Fort Kochin is a tourist haven. The streets are relatively quiet, the food is good, and the alcohol is easier to find. In a region known for its sea food I could get pasta with fish and squid as well as sample traditional Keralan cuisine. However, one of my favorite restaraunts wasn’t memorable because of the food, but the beer. The Chariot Beach Restaruant doesn’t have a liquor license, but does serve beer. All you have to do is order a Kingfisher, even though it’s not on the menu, and the waiter will bring you a teapot full of beer and a mug to enjoy it from. When you’ve emptied the pot they even ask if you’d like more tea with knowing smiles. The thing that makes this really funny though, is that the tables are on an open patio by the street, with cop cars passing every once in a while, and every table has western tourists sitting behind teapots. 

The News About Booze

Alcohol is scarce in Tamil Nadu. It is a stigmatized substance that some consider to be a drug on par with highly addictive narcotics. Sarah, an American also studying at the University of Madras, has told me that a substantial portion of her Psycology of Addiction class centers on alcohol. Indian perceptions of alcohol, or at least Tamil ones, are largely negative. Men who drink are often abusive to their families and have addictions that can prevent them from providing for their families as well. And although I am know that not all men who drink are abusive, this certainly seems to be the perception of many Hindus as well as the entertainment industry.

 

There isn’t a drinking culture here and I feel that because of this, addictions are common. Young men and women aren’t allowed to learn their limits, to socialize with each other. Any newspaper you read will have several Alcoholic Anonymous notices in it. Drinking is something that only men do. Bars are not friendly places, they are dark, often with loud music even when you are the only customer and it is 5.30 pm, and they are usually tucked away from the street. In the city of Chennai, bars are only allowed in hotels and alcohol can only be purchased in equally sketchy government regulated “Wine Shops.”

Although this is a late breaking addition to this post, I'd like to add that if you look on the labels of beer bottles, you see a small government warning that reads "Drinking ruins country, family, and life." I think that this really sums up many of the attitudes about alcohol in India.

Dino-mite

The dinosaurs here look weird. I’m not sure what’s up with that.

The High Country

The side of the road that slipped past my window alternated with dark trees illuminated only by headlights and moonlight, and towns clustered against the roadside. The bus ride to Kodaikanal was long, and the majority of it was spent passing villages haloed in the bluish light of bare fluorescent tubes. Our longest stop was at a gas station in a town I can’t name at about three in the morning. The gas station’s bathroom urinal emptied from a rubber hose onto the floor below, flooding the floor tiles with about a quarter inch of piss and filling the room with the smell of old and new urine.


It was only in the last two hours that the road started the 7,000 foot climb into the Western Ghats. The villages grew smaller and further apart as the bus drove higher into an invasive forest of Eucalyptus, Mexican Pine, and Acacia. Closing in on Kodaikanal, the stray dogs plodding by the roadside looked healthier. Unlike the scarred, rib-baring dogs of Chennai, these appeared well fed and had full coats.

The morning I was greeted with in Kodaikanal was cold and clear. The days I spent there reminded me of early spring in California. From my time at the Vattakanal Conservation Trust and being driven around the Mountains in an old, blue Mahindra Jeep I learned how much the mountains had changed. Before the British and Indians imported invasive tree species, the ecosystem in the Ghats was grasslands and shola forests in protected ravines and the shadows of the prevailing winds.

The pictures I saw of still unchanged landscapes looked similar, from a distance, to California as well. Of course, at nearly 7,000 feet, the factors shaping life in Kodai are different, but from an atheistic and periodically homesick perspective, I guess I wanted to be reminded of home.

The thirty-minute walk from my friends’ house in Pambapurim to Vattakanal is among the most beautiful I have ever known. Every turn produces new mountain vistas of plunging slopes and when you find yourself right outside of the village, the left-hand side of the road turns into a pear orchard, which was just beginning to blossom with shy, white flowers while I was there.

Vattakanal itself is a strange dead end. The community is a favorite of young Israeli tourists and the sole café at the end of the road has come to serve exclusively Israeli food. From talking to a teacher at the Kodaikanal International School, I came to learn that there are even two rabbis who live in Vattakanal year round to keep the young people from partying too much. Nikola, another volunteer at the Vattakanal Conservation Trust, joked that I would have never guessed that here, at the end of the world, the people would speak Tamil, German, and Yiddish.