The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack
by Lynn Kilcline

'The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack'
Chapter 1	Chapter 2
Chapter 3	Chapter 4
Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8
Chapter 9	Chapter 10
Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14
Chapter 15	Chapter 16
Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20
Chapter 21	Epilogue

CHAPTER NINE - TRIVANDRUM SURPRISE

(Printable version here)

We were never sure if the train we caught that morning was the train we should have caught, or an earlier train that was late. Whatever it was and wherever it had come from it was filled to overflowing. This was the nearest we had come to the train rides depicted on TV documentaries of India, showing a zillion people riding on the roof. There was not, in fact, anyone on the roof, but after 20 minutes inside I would have been happy to climb up there.

We had been sitting nonchalantly on the platform at the station being driven mad by the local leper. He was a terrible sight and we would have felt sorry for him, but his approach with white people was to confront us and then, waving his stumps about, threaten to touch us if we didn't pay up.
This was just another nuisance, and after the initial shock of seeing him it just made us bad-tempered and we grew bored watching him yell and dance about our bench.

When a train arrived and we knew it was heading for Trivandrum, we did our party piece of jumping on to the track with the locals, and skipping across the lines to board the train, but we nearly came unstuck.
The height from the track to the carriage doorstep was almost 4ft I just stared up at the open doorway, which loomed way over my head. I was loaded down with luggage and could perhaps have managed to drag myself up, but not attached to a rucksack and hand luggage. All I could see above me was a sea of brown legs and flip-flops. The train was crammed full, with bodies hanging out of the open doors. Brian was determined we were getting on this train, so he took my bags and gave me a leg up to the doorway. I shoved and pushed to make room for myself, then turned around to hoist up the bags.

I have since childhood had a phobia about trains. I imagine that it came from the days of going to see relations off at Nottingham station. A platform ticket allowed the whole family to board the train to make sure the departing relative was comfortably seated and all the luggage safely stowed. The conductor would then march up and down with his whistle shouting for everyone not travelling to get off. My dad seemed to wait an age before getting off and I was always mortified, thinking we would be whisked away to some strange destination and not be able to get home. I am sure I used to wail: " Get off, get off" and if I didn't say it out loud I was certainly thinking it.

In this little scenario I was screaming: " Get on, get on!!!''
The truth of the matter was there was no room at all. After passing me my bags, Brian happily decided to waltz off down the track and look into other carriages.
I was beside myself. More people were pushing into the doorway where I stood, forcing me backwards so that I couldn't see if he had boarded or not. If the train didn't pull off and run over him and kill him, I certainly would when I got hold of him.
I was sweating like a pig out of anxiety and now I was slowly being engulfed by a horde of even more sweaty little brown men. I was lodged in the corridor against the open door. I managed to get the bags in front of me so that no one could be crammed up against my face. At least this way I was able to breathe.

Unbelievably the train stopped at another station and more people pushed and pushed until they got on. I did think that I might faint, as I really couldn't bear being trapped with no air. The realisation that passing out would mean I would probably be robbed helped me to think positively. At least we had made the journey before and I knew it was only going to take us an hour to reach Trivandrum.

For the entire journey I had what I thought was a door handle sticking in my backside. It turned out to be the very bony hand of an Indian man. I hope it did more for him than it did for me.
The only high spot on the journey was talking to a good-looking young man with blond hair and blue eyes. He had managed to fight his way from somewhere within the depths of the carriage. He looked like I felt; sweaty and anxious. He turned out to be from Israel and spoke good English. I was able to allay his fears as to length of the journey to Trivandrum.
As usual when talking to strangers, I tried to find out as much as I could about his trip so far, and where he had visited. It was useful to try to pick up tips on places to stay or things to see.
He had been to Pondicherry and a place called Auroville, which was some sort of commune. He said he had stayed there three days and it was O.K. He was going to stay just outside Trivandrum at an ashram [a spiritual community or a retreat] where they specialised in yoga.

Well, if Brian was on this train I hoped he would see me get off it with this handsome fellow. It would serve him right for abandoning me.
On the other hand, if he was not on the train I would probably cry. Then, assuming he would not remember which hotel we were going, I would have to wait for him at the station and be driven insane by beggars and rickshaw drivers. He was dead either way.

He was on the train and he didn't see the Israeli, and I didn't have time to nag him as we were driven along with the crowd up the platform and over the bridge to the exit.
We beat off the rickshaw drivers and made our way to the hotel. It now seemed like 3 million degrees and I had a foul banging headache.
At the hotel I checked out yet another room and we dumped our stuff. The room looked all right but I decided when I looked at it about five hours later that my headache must have clouded my vision. The only thing I could do was not look at it too hard from then on. We would only stay a couple of nights.

I had a big surprise planned for Brian that night. I had seen an advertisement for a Valentine's Night Dinner and Dance at a hotel in Trivandrum and tonight was February 14th.
Despite my head feeling it was being attacked internally by a dwarf with a sledgehammer, I suggested we get out of the room. I wanted to have a walk to see if I could spot the hotel in question.
The traffic was horrendous and we could feel the grime building up on our face and arms. We hid in a couple of air-conditioned bookshops for a while. Books were a good buy in India, so much cheaper than in England, but we could not fill our rucksack with them.
I found the hotel with the Dinner and Dance. It looked good and I nipped in to make inquiries as to cost and times. Brian stood outside suspecting nothing, as I had gone in on the pretext of asking directions to Connemara Market.

We returned to The Highlands where I lay on the bed with my head pounding and feeling dirty and disgruntled. I really wanted to take Brian to the dance but didn't feel a bit like going, I hadn't told him anything about it so he would be none the wiser if we didn't go.
I soon had my mind made up for me. I had paid a whole 50p excess on the room tariff to have television and as an indication of how lousy I felt I did not play hell with the management that they did not have cable and therefore no AXN.
As I lay moaning and groaning, Brian sat on the other bed flipping between the 20 Indian channels available which either played loud Indian music as accompaniment to naff Indian films or were showing Indian soaps. The only channel in English was cricket. Given the option of his constant channel changing and the heat in the room I told Brian to get his party frock on. I had a surprise.

It took about 15 minutes for us to walk to the venue for the Valentine's Dance. It was 525 rupees to get in which included a disco and buffet. I had visions of a cavernous room with a Palais de Danse rotating mirrored orb suspended from the ceiling and a horde of gyrating Indians dancing to twangy warbling music.
I was pleasantly surprised, Brian was just surprised.

We were directed to the rooftop. The terrace commanded a view of the whole of Trivandrum and was set with perhaps 15 tables with four chairs to each table. Only one other table was occupied, but did we care? Did we hell!
In front of us was a platform with an Indian D.J. who sounded as if he had been born in the Bronx. In addition to playing records he was operating a laser light show which swirled round the floor and then up in the air. His manic activity along with his mad accent was a scream. He played hits from the European pop charts of the seventies and eighties which suited us fine. Behind us a magnificent buffet was slowly being laid out. A waiter brought us a very potent cocktail of something, that smelled of horse liniment and Brian naturally drank both glasses. I was given a red rose which I thought was a lovely gesture, god knows were it had been grown, I hadn't seen any rose gardens in India so far.

After about half an hour a few more couples arrived, but it was all very furtive. I suppose it was quite an innovative move for the hotel to hold the event as we very rarely saw young couples together. Most young girls have arranged marriages to much older men. A family arrived with two children who ran amok chasing the laser beams. We were too busy singing along to the music or looking at everyone else. When the buffet opened we heaped our plates but avoided all the suspect dishes such as egg, chicken and meat. There were more couples arriving now but they seemed to eat very quickly and rush off.

I was trying desperately to make Brian get up and dance but he would have none of it. Eventually I made him fetch us another helping of sticky cake, and as he went I got up and asked the D.J. if he had the Lambada. To my astonishment he said that he had. There was no way that Brian could refuse to strut his stuff to that. When he returned with the cake I just smiled sweetly at him and waited.
Up to now the only people who had graced the little dance floor were the two children and three Indian boys who danced together. Surprise, surprise! I had a false start when the D.J. played Ba Ba Bamba by Trini Lopez so I had to nip up and sort him out, and I attempted to " La" the tune I wanted him to play. [Well, if he thought his accent was O.K. he would think my singing was terrific.]
Poor Brian was horrified when Lambada was played and he was forced to his feet. Every one else left the floor, which left us whirling around it, trying to perform a sexy version of the passionate Lambada.

Brian was hampered in his seductions by his flip-flops and so wantonly abandoned them at the edge of the dance floor. For a bloke who has played football in front of crowds of thousands, he was seriously inhibited during the initial stages of our exhibition, but as the music continued he put that aside and ended with me clipping him one out of concern that we may get arrested for indecency. At the end of Kilclines Come Dancing we received a round of applause, to which I naturally curtsied and Brian bowed.

When the three single boys and the two children realised we were game for more, they all got up and joined in too. The D.J. played an Indian version of the Lambada next, which sent the three boys into a dance of dervishes. We spent the next four weeks going in to every record shop we passed looking for a copy of it. We had a great time and walked back to our hotel singing: " Do you come from the land down under"' by Men at Work, an Australian band from the early eighties. Those were the days.

The next morning we were up, out of the Highland, and at the bus stop for Kovalam at 6.30a.m. The buses to Kovalam were frequent and took between 20 and 30 minutes to get there depending on traffic and how manic the bus driver was.
We had heard mixed views on Kovalam. It was a beach resort but one that had been commercialised heavily in the last ten years. If rumours were to be believed, package tourists were to be found there in abundance.

We arrived in Kovalam in no time at all as there was little or no traffic about that early. The bus stopped in a small terminus in front of the main entrance to the Ashok Beach Resort Hotel. All Government run hotels are called 'Ashok' something or another. Standards vary from disgusting to quite splendid, but they all have one thing in common: they are grossly overpriced. This one came in to the 'splendid' category with large gardens and prices to match. We had a walk around the grounds and found the tourist information bungalow which was very swish and very closed. We then walked down to the beach and along the sand towards a jumbled assortment of bars and restaurants. There were very few people about, but within minutes someone was asking if we were looking for accommodation. We later found that Kovalam had been one of the most badly affected resorts due to lack of tourism when the Millennium fever never happened.
I checked out a couple of rooms and they were all of a much higher standard than we had seen before, so really it was down to what price I could barter for.

The winner was Green Villas Guest House. This was a single-storey building which had two rooms with balconies on either side of a small reception area. The reception was really just a hallway with stairs leading up to the roof, which we assumed would one day be a second floor.
A young boy was in charge, and after some haggling he said we could have a room for 300 rupees a night. Again, it was more than we had been paying, but the room was large and immaculately clean. These little apartments were set in a tiny garden and five minutes walk from the beach.
This part of Kovalam was built on a criss cross of streams and warren like alleyways. Tracks led along the stream banks, through paddy fields and in and out of the town. Green Villas was down a succession of alleys.

The room wallah at our new des.res. wanted a deposit and we wanted a receipt, and when we all had what we wanted we told the boy we would check in the next morning. We then made our way back to the beach for a cup of tea dust.
While we were taking tea, the waiter told us that there was to be a transport strike the next day and no one would be going anywhere. I did not fancy two more nights in the Highland so we threw our tea down and headed for the bus stop for some verification of this revelation. It was true.
If we could get back to the Highland Hotel before 10.30a.m. we would be within our 24 hour checkout time.

By 10.15a.m. we were packed and standing in the reception of the Highland. Our plan was to leave the luggage there, find breakfast or lunch, and take the bus to Kovalam when it had cooled down later in the afternoon.
We went to see if the helpful girl was on duty in Tourist Information. Our luck was in and we asked her to describe to us once more the way to the Veggy restaurant she had recommended.
We also asked why the streets were lined with men selling small terracotta urn shaped pots and why people were buying them as if they were going out of fashion. She explained that there was to be a very important festival in three days time, it was the Pongal Festival.

Women would travel to Trivandrum from all over India and they would line the streets and cook Pongal in the small earthenware pots.
Pongal is a mixture of rice, coconut and jaggery and it would be blessed by a priest and then offered to friends, family and strangers alike. The festival was for women only and was to ask the gods for success in their marriage or in finding a husband. We thought this sounded like an occasion not to be missed and we decided we would travel back from Kovalam to see it.
We were also directed to Airya Nivas Hotel, one of the best institutional type restaurants we ever ate in. After our first visit, Brian would aim us there at every opportunity. We even came in from Kovalam one morning just for breakfast.

Hotel Airya Nivas was high-rise and very new. From the outside it looked plush but as we now knew this meant little. There was a restaurant on the first floor, which we tried one evening but it was only O.K. We had discovered already that Indians do not do restaurants as we understand them. Indians are most certainly snack and go. But some would chose the restaurant, pay more for the same food, eat it just as quickly and wonder why they were sitting there.

Our favoured restaurant was next to the hotel entrance. We arrived as lunch was being served and Brian thought he had died and gone to pig heaven, which was definitely something to do with the size of the portions. The restaurant was spotless but as usual the waiters had food-spattered jackets, which hadn't seen a ghat in months.
We were given a large palm leaf and on it was a mountain of rice. This was accompanied by several small round stainless steel dishes containing sauces and pickles. Some were delicious, some so hot they made our eyes water, others bland by comparison.
We could identify sambar and coconut chutney but the others were a mystery except for curd, I found it disgusting. It is like sour curdled milk.
What made this all so attractive to Brian was that as he emptied any dish, a boy gave him more at no extra charge. I think they did start to panic a little when Brian was on his third leaf-ful and showed no signs of stopping.

Being traditionally Indian this was all consumed without the aid of knives and forks. I was learning but I thought it was pretty disgusting. I did notice that some people had spoons, so on the next visit I asked for one. Brian thought it was great fun eating with his hands but it wasn't much fun watching him. He has enough difficulty getting food past his moustache when eating conventionally.
I know that there is a Great British tradition of '' When in Rome '' but I began to think that throwing food into our mouths with gravy running down our wrists was just a tad disgusting.
The argument of cleanliness and only eating with the right hand was bunkum; there was never any soap in even the best washrooms, so the ceremonial walk to the sink to wash hands before eating was a waste of time. Brian was forced to agree in the end and wherever possible we would use cutlery.

After a delicious lunch we thought a walk would be good and along the way we bought two items. The first was something I would not be parted from for the duration of my stay in India: it was a sun umberella. It was brick red with a silver reflective lining and it gave me a new lease of life when it came to walking about towns. The second purchase was from an old man squatting in the street with an old suitcase lying open at his feet.
He was selling old and dusty spectacles. Some had no lenses, some had one, and some had one arm and a cracked lens. I squatted down and showed him my sunglasses from which a rubber earpiece was missing. After scrabbling about in his suitcase he found a rubber that would fit. It didn't match of course, but that was half the fun. He charged about 8p and I could tell he thought I was mad to pay that much.

Following a map, which true to form was hopeless, we made for the City Park. The guidebook said it was lush and shady and the map indicated it wasn't far. The map was the bigger deception of the two and it took us 40 minutes hard slog to get there. We were dirty and sweaty by the time we arrived. The park wasn't exactly lush but it wasn't bad. We were encouraged by a sign at the entrance: ''Do not drop litter. '' Despite its being written in Hindu and English, the only places devoid of litter were the litter bins.

There were hordes of men in the park, 90% of them asleep under trees or on shaded benches. We sat on the shady side of a tree and watched the people who were walking about.
Three attractive girls, very well dressed for a walk in the park, came and sat close by us. They all wore crimson saris of different patterns and all three were festooned with bright gold jewellery. They had necklaces, toe rings on every toe and rings on every finger and they were clearly out to impress. One of them had a small baby which was wailing its head off and after five minutes was proving to be a pain in the bum.

We then saw another first for India: women in green saris were patrolling the parks with baskets resting on their hips, and they were picking up litter.
The three girls were joined by three young men, presumably the husbands. They had bought small tubs of ice cream for everyone. It shut the baby up.
To my horror, when the first person in the group finished his ice cream he dropped the empty carton within a few inches of my feet. I stared open mouthed.
I have a fixation with litter. At home I follow people and hand them whatever they have just dropped. I am sure that it is the presence of Brian looming in the background that has saved me from being punched on a number of occasions.

Suffice to say I was dumbstruck. I was on my way to an epileptic fit by the time the sixth person had followed suit. Six cartons and six spoons now surrounded us. Brian looked at me as if to say: ''Don't''. I could not have said or done a thing; I truly was speechless. I had stared at them, then at the cartons and back at them. They had seen me quite clearly and were totally uncomprehending. They got up and walked away smiling happily. No doubt they were going to look for somewhere cleaner to sit!

When the temperatures dropped we made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. The bus to Kovalam was already at the stop, and off we went again.

(Printable version here)

'The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack'
Chapter 1	Chapter 2
Chapter 3	Chapter 4
Chapter 5	Chapter 6
Chapter 7	Chapter 8
Chapter 9	Chapter 10
Chapter 11	Chapter 12
Chapter 13	Chapter 14
Chapter 15	Chapter 16
Chapter 17	Chapter 18
Chapter 19	Chapter 20
Chapter 21	Epilogue