The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack
by Lynn Kilcline

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - HORRORVILLE!

We headed inland. It was a gentle uphill gradient and the old rickshaw was labouring badly. We stopped briefly to pick up the wing mirror that had shaken itself free and bounced off into the undergrowth. A further couple of miles brought us to a busy crossroads and beyond that the scenery changed drastically.
We had previously encountered well-tended gardens, as in the Taj Retreat at Madurai, but this was in a league of its own. As we looked around we wondered if we were still in India.
All around were trees and grass - and not one plastic bottle or scrap of litter. Every Indian we passed was neatly turned out as if they had just been to church. Bullocks were pulling carts that looked as if they had been freshly painted. The horns on the animals were also decorated with colour, either red or green or in stripes of both and with bells attached to the tips.
We could catch the occasional glimpse of really fabulous houses tucked away in the trees or behind high walls. If it hadn’t been for the saris, the carts and the bullocks we might have thought we were in Beverly Hills. The farther we progressed into the greenery, the more deserted it became. It was very strange and a little unsettling.
The rickshaw driver appeared as lost as we felt, and eventually, he stopped at a small gate. A dusty path on the other side led down to a large very 21st century European building. Where the hell were we? It was all very eerie. I volunteered to check the place out.
The building was made up of a number of apartments each with its own balcony. It did not look like somewhere that would have rooms for rent. I saw a tall blonde girl and walked over to her. I asked if there was a caretaker or a porter or someone who could help me with accommodation. She sounded Scandinavian by her accent, and she said that she did not know who managed the apartments or if there were any free. I thanked her and as I walked away she said: “ I just came out to look at the flowers, they are so beautiful aren’t they?’’
There was something about the way she said ‘’out’’ that made me think of a lunatic asylum and I was beginning to feel that I was standing in a very large one.
I went back to the rickshaw and just said: “Hopeless.”
I climbed in and the driver continued along the road. We had driven miles and miles and I could not begin to imagine how much this was going to cost; we could have bought a rickshaw for less. Would this day never end?
Another 15 minutes brought us to a deserted car park and more modern buildings set among formal gardens. A large sign outside said Auroville Information Centre.
I climbed out of the rickshaw yet again. Everything seemed deserted, but I did find one open door and a lady in the process of packing her belongings to leave. She spoke perfect English and suggested I try The College Guest House close by.
There were so many questions I should have asked her, but I was just too tired to think. She did explain to me that there are no signposts in Auroville and that it was easy to become lost.
Back to the rickshaw and a quick summary of events to Brian and we headed off. I directed the driver along tiny leafy tracks and lanes that none of us believed were taking us anywhere. It was a nightmare.
Rounding a bend in the lane we came upon a fence with a large double gate befitting a Cotswold cottage. Beyond was a house surrounded by flowers and roses, and trees that looked like very tall weeping willows. The trees and bushes were so high and thick that the sky was only visible in small patches. It was like the jungle but with the wrong plants.
I really was beginning to feel like Mary and Joseph. I went to the door of the house, knocked, and peeped in at the windows. It was gorgeous inside, like a colour plate for Homes and Gardens. A white woman stuck her head out of an upstairs window and told me to wait a moment. When she appeared at the front door I expected her to say ‘’Good evening. My name is Jean Brodie.’’
She wore a smart skirt, a cardigan and sensible shoes, and appeared to have just popped out of the headmasters study at Rodean. It was all becoming too ridiculous for words.
I explained that we were looking for a room and I was told in a no- nonsense manner that we would be expected to stay for a minimum of three days. Breakfast was included but it was D.I.Y. and the facilities were in a small open-sided shed in the garden.
A meal of bread and soup was available from the same hut in the evening, provided we put our name down in the morning. Washing and toilet facilities were elsewhere in the garden and I would be shown where, if I decided to take a room.
I asked timidly if I might look at what was available, whereupon I was marched along the garden path towards a two-storey building with a thatched roof and a small thatched bungalow.
The building was open plan, with no doors and no privacy. We couldn’t stay there.
Ms. Brodie and I crossed over to the cottage, which was one very large room inside. By using 6ft high thin partitions, it had been split into three, leaving a communal roof space. Fortunately there was no one else staying there, so at least it would be more private and it did have a door. There were mozzy nets, two small single beds, and a light bulb. It looked clean and anyway, what was the alternative?
I said we would take it and nearly choked when Jean Brodie told me the price. It was more expensive than the air conditioned room with television and bathroom en suite in Madurai.
It was almost dark when we paid off the driver and I introduced Brian to his des.res. in the jungle, after which I returned to Ms. Brodie and bravely dared to knock on her door once more.
We were really hungry and I asked her if there was a chance of eating that evening. [We hadn’t got our names down on the bread and gruel list.] She said she would telephone the Centre Guest House and see if they would feed us. They would.
She also advised me that the room came with two bicycles and we would need them to cycle to supper. Could this day get worse?
We would also need to give her extra money for an Auroville Guest Pass which we would need to eat, gain access to the beach, and do everything bar pooh. I asked where the nearest phone was [apart from her lounge] and she told me it was about two miles away.
We unpacked as far as our toiletries and headed towards the showers which were about 100 mtrs away through the trees. The washing facilities and toilets were housed in an open-air block of large cubicles enclosed by a very Seventies gently curving concrete wall. Inside the cubicles were a toilet, a sink and a shower.
In other circumstances I can imagine that a cold moonlit shower with leaves floating down and getting stuck on the soap might have been romantic. As it was, I just put my tooth brush down on the mucky sink and wanted to cry.
Feeling at least cleaner, we changed and made our way farther along the dark garden to the bicycle pound where we fumbled around with the torch and managed to find the bikes with the locks that fitted the keys we had been given. It was like the Krypton Factor.
There was a track leading from the pound and we had been told to follow it. At the end we should turn right and then we should continue along the lane and we would find the Centre Guest House on our left. We may well have found it on our left had it not been pitch black. We ended up cycling down a very narrow bumpy sand path and came to an abrupt halt when we arrived at a wide ditch at the edge of a large open field. Bugger, damn and bugger.
There was a time, I now came to realise, when feelings of misery and desperation turn to anger and dogged determination. We would find this place. We would not be beaten.
We pedalled back the way we had come and with the aid of a motorbike coming in the opposite direction, which nearly killed us, we found Centre Guest House.
Hidden among trees and thick undergrowth we found yet another well appointed building. Not even the lights in the garden had pierced the surrounding darkness. Sitting on a very ornate statue filled patio were seven or eight couples and as many children. Our arrival was greeted by as much cordiality as a bee up your nose.
We found two incredibly uncomfortable seats and a table the size of an ashtray and sat waiting for something to happen. When it didn’t I made my way into the kitchen and explained to a large white lady that we had come from the College Guest House, we didn’t know the form and could she help. Eva Braun, minus her SS uniform, looked at me and said: “ Sit down. I will tell you when you may eat!’’
I was somewhat taken aback by her attitude. Maybe something had been lost in the translation. I repeated what had been said to Brian and we sat back, uncomfortably, and took stock of what we had walked into this time.
Germans and Italians surrounded us. Everyone seemed to know everyone else and they were so chummy with each other it made our exclusion all the more apparent. We were like uninvited guests at a wedding. Moments later there seemed to be a mass movement towards the kitchen and I began to wonder if Eva was indeed going to tell us when to eat and it would be after everyone else. Well, not bloody likely.

I pushed my way into the queue without apology. They were all so ignorant that I thought I might as well upset them and give them some thing to be rude about. I stood like Oliver Twist, with my two plates extended to Eva and Herr Himmler, on the other side of the serving hatch.
If this was the food they fought for every night no wonder they looked so mealy mouthed; aubergine floating in oil, boiled carrots and beetroot, only distinguishable by shape and colour, the taste having left with the boiling water; a piece of tomato and cucumber, half an omelette and a pizza slice. What sort of a concoction was that to put together on a plate?
We ate, paid up, and left, leaving the happy people chatting and laughing over their glasses of water as if they were bottles of wine. Their joviality seemed fake and forced. As soon as we left they probably went back to the real reason for their gathering: conducting experiments on live humans or performing some satanic ritual.
We wobbled back to College Guest House on our bikes, parked and locked them and then stumbled back through the dark gardens to our little cottage.
The cottage looked so quaint with its low white walls and thatched roof. Outside the door was a large slice of tree trunk which made a very low level table; it was about 2ftoff the ground. It looked very arty in the daylight but it didn’t feel so good when it connected with my shins as I walked into it in the dark.
Inside and illuminated by the 1 watt light bulb, things did not look as rosy as they had a few hours earlier. There was a very damp musty smell in the room and when I turned back the bedding on my bed it felt damp and the pillow smelled awful. [In the morning I was able to see damp spots on all the linen.]
There was a host of wild life scratching about in the thatch which was only a few feet overhead, and I was not at all happy with the overly large spider that emerged from under the bed. I knew that everything sharing the room with us was probably more scared of me than I was of it, but my rationality had departed when I opened the door. We both spent the night in one single bed that was no more than 3ft wide and 5ft long. How it didn’t collapse I shall never know, but I had no intention of sleeping alone.
I kept telling Brian not to stick his feet out of the end of the bed as I had tucked the mozzy net tightly under the mattress. I hoped that this would stop anything dropping on us from the roof or creeping up off the floor. The poor man slept on his back with his knees in the air but of course he slept like a log.
I on the other hand lay with my head on a folded fleece jumper and my eyes wide open listening to the scuffling and scratching.
I tried to make some order of my jumbled thoughts. We were in a pretty little house in beautiful gardens, surrounded by trees and forest, what was my problem? My problem was the problem of Auroville where nothing was as it seemed.
Auroville was the brainchild of The Mother and was designed by a French architect. It was conceived as ‘ an experiment in international living where men and women could live in peace and progressive harmony with each other above all creeds, politics and nationalities’.
The project had 70 settlements spread over 20km, and about 1200 residents [two thirds of whom are foreigners] including children.
The settlements all had peculiar names and each was dedicated to a different task. Amongst them were: Forecomers, involved in alternative technology and agriculture; Certitude, working in sports; Aurelec, devoted to computer research; Discipline, an agricultural project; Fertile, Nine Palms and Meadow, all engaged in tree planting and agriculture; Fraternity, a handicraft community working with local villagers; and Aspiration, an educational, health care and village industry project. As the Aurovillians put it: “Auroville is very much an experiment that is in its early stages and it is not meant to be a tourist attraction.”
For a time after Auroville’s opening in 1968 idealism ran high and the project attracted many foreigners, particularly from France, Germany, Britain, The Netherlands and Mexico. Construction of living quarters, schools and an enormous meditation hall known as the Mantrimandir began, and dams, reforestation, orchards and other agricultural projects were started. The amount of time and effort invested in Auroville in those early days and since was obvious and the idealism with which the place began was tangible.
The Mother who was the undisputed spiritual head of the Sri Aurobindo Society and Auroville died in 1973 at the age of 97, and with her death came a power struggle between the society and the Aurovillians for control of Auroville. On two occasions violence led to police intervention.
The Sri Aurobido Society and Ashram was founded by Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The Ashram is one of the most popular in India with Westerners and is also one of the most affluent. After Aurobindo’s death, spiritual authority passed to one of his devotees, a French woman known as The Mother.
At present, the ashram underwrites and promotes a lot of educational and cultural activities in Pondicherry, though there is a certain amount of tension between it and the local people because it owns anything worth owning in the territory but is reluctant to allow local participation in the running of the society.
Though the Aurovillians retain the sympathy of the Pondicherry administration, the odds were stacked against them. All funds for the project were channelled through the society, which had the benefit of powerful friends in the Indian government. In a demonstration of their power over Auroville they withheld funds and construction work came to a halt.
The Aurovillians reacted by forming a fund raising group and pooled their assets to take care of the food and financial needs of residents. However in 1976 things became so bad that ambassadors of France, Germany and the U.S.A. were forced to intervene with offers of help to stop the residents from starving. Finally, an Indian government committee recommended that the powers of the Aurobindo Society be transferred to a committee made up of the representatives of interested groups, including the Aurovillians, with greater local participation.
So there we had it. A community that was conceived for all the right reasons and with good intentions but one, which had turned on itself and was now riddled with contradictions. Each little community was protecting itself, and some of the people who had been there from the onset had done very well for themselves. I was not aware of much equality and understanding as I watched Jean Brodie order her young Indian gardeners about. On the face of things Auroville looked affluent and peaceful but underneath it was full of beaurocracy and greed, just like the real world.
At dawn the next morning I thought I would be the first to the shower block, but I had to join three Indians who were there before me. These young men inhabited a tree house in the garden in exchange for working in the grounds. Lucky old me; I had a dawn chorus of hawking and spitting from the adjoining cubicles.
When we went to the ‘breakfast shed’ we could see that it paid to be early risers. The same three boys helped themselves to the bread and jam and peanut butter on offer and it looked as if they didn’t plan on leaving much for anyone else. When I asked them if they had finished with the preserves they scowled with distaste.
Two men and a girl and a lone girl emerged from the two-storey building at different intervals. The threesome didn’t even acknowledge our presence and breakfasted on cigarettes and coffee. Needless to say they were French. The girl on her own had one slice of toast, smiled weakly and went off to sit by herself. She turned out to be Spanish. Well, weren’t we the happy family.
We soon realised that the Indians had the breakfast lark taped. They could see the Westerners didn’t eat much and Jean Brodie was supplying enough for several people, so they were demolishing most of it before anyone else got a look in.
They hadn’t reckoned on us. I could eat my own weight in brown bread [and the bread was delicious] and Brian could demolish several jars of peanut butter on one slice of toast.
Breakfast for the next two days was a skirmish, with Jean Brodie entering the fray on our last day, wanting to know where all the bread had gone. ‘’Wasn’t me, miss!’’
The next morning before setting off on the bicycles to check out the beach, I stripped all the bedding off the beds and took it to the washing lines set out near the bike store. I had some very strange looks from the cleaning lady; perhaps she thought we had a communal bed-wetting session. I was hoping the sunshine would air everything and get rid of the horrible mouldy smell.
We cycled through Auroville and it really was quite fascinating. Apart from the trees and flowers the place was alive during the day with westerners zooming about on mopeds, motor scooters and motorbikes. There weren’t many nut cases like us on bicycles, but I wasn’t going to risk our life and limb on anything motorised. We saw our fair share of bandaged arms and legs and the odd body part encased in plaster and most of these, we were sure, were due to road accidents. Mind you, Auroville had its own hospital, so if we were going to need a doctor I would have favoured the facilities there rather than out in the real India.
We stopped at a telephone office and I rang the Chentoor in Madurai. It would have been cheaper to phone England. Ripped off again. I gave the hotel the address of the guesthouse and they agreed to send a refund of my deposit immediately.
A little farther on we found a barber and a fruit and veg shop and we agreed that we would stop on the way back for Brian to have a shave and for me to buy food. I would commandeer the breakfast shack that evening and cook our own tea.
The best find of all was the bakery. It was called The German Bakery, as was every bakery we ever saw in India, but this one was actually full of Germans. The bread and cakes were the best I have ever eaten anywhere, but the counter staff were as miserable as hell, and all had sense of humour failure. I can’t think why they were so grumpy; they had the Indians in the back doing all the hard work. Very Auroville.
We crossed the main Chennai road and headed further down through the village and came to a gate with a guard sitting half asleep beside it.
We kept pedalling. It was obvious that the beach was that way. At the end of the sandy path was a glade of palm trees and flowering bushes. Among the trees were five very large tree houses with balconies and thatched roofs. It looked like Hawaii and at one time I would have said: “Wow, let’s stay in one of those,” but now I was sleeping under my very own thatched roof and I couldn’t wait to leave it. The attraction was not what it might have been 24 hours earlier.
In a little clearing was a small snack bar selling fruit juices, cake, and healthy sandwiches. No lager and beef burgers here. We sat in the shade and had a fruit juice and smiled to ourselves at the sign on the gate which read: ‘‘ Private beach. No Entry. Aurovillians Only’’.
Very charitable I’m sure.
The beach was scrubby sand and a murky sea. Courtesy of the ‘Keep Out’ signs, at least the fishermen weren’t poohing on it, but there was an irritating family of about ten Indians that never stopped hassling us to buy fruit.
At about three o’clock each day the Aurovillians would come down to the beach after they had finished work. They would sit and do yoga or swim and dance about in the water in the most affected manner possible.
On the first afternoon we were sitting watching the goings on and muttering: “Oh, will you look at that,” when we had a visitor to our blanket. It was Titsiana, the Italian lady from Varkala. After our initial surprise we bombarded her with questions both about Auroville and her travels in general.
She came to Auroville each year, she had made friends in the community over a long period of time, and would come back to see them. We told her where we were staying, and that we didn’t much care for it, and she agreed that Auroville could be a strange place, but certain settlements were better than others. She mentioned Discipline, but that hardly sounded very friendly, and when she realised we were on bikes she said it was too far out anyway. Titsiana finally suggested we go to see her friend at the Solar Kitchen. Her friend organised the guest services and she would be able to tell us what accommodation was available to us. We thanked her for her help and saw her several more times before we left, either at the beach or zooming around on her motor scooter.
We bought a small mountain of food in the village and cycled back unsteadily, balancing everything precariously on the handlebars.
When we reached the guesthouse the three Indian boys were camped out by the kitchen. I asked them if there was a problem if I used the place to cook our own food. The spokesman didn’t look too happy about it but just said: “Make sure you clean up.”
We showered and covered ourselves in insect repellent. We had been lucky so far, unscathed by bites, but at breakfast that morning something had attacked both of us and had a good feed.
Before going to the kitchen we went to retrieve the bedding from the washing line. To my dismay everything felt damper than when I had hung it out. It was then that we realised the humidity was so high that it would be impossible to stop things becoming damp.
I took to the kitchen and whipped up a feast - quite an achievement as I was constantly flicking away an army of ants off our pineapple and mozzies off my sweating body.
We returned, well fed, to the reptile house to see what would be accompanying us to bed that night.
At first light we were up and out and running the gauntlet with the Indians for the bread and jam. We then pedalled off to the Solar Kitchen.
This was part of another ultra modern building, which housed catering facilities for training purposes and also a computer and e-mail centre with state of the art technology. Titsiana’s friend was lovely, a very attractive and friendly Italian. We explained that we were looking for something between the centre of Auroville and the beach, somewhere with a bathroom attached and ideally self-catering facilities. She came up with two options and we pedalled off post haste to check them out.
The first was in a French commune called Shamga. The small parking area at the end of the dusty track that led to it was full of Enfield motorcycles, which we had come to realise were the westerners’ status symbols in India. We were greeted with hostile looks by the large group of French people still having breakfast on the terrace. I think that was distaste for our old bicycles, but when we opened our mouths and English popped out they looked positively disgusted.
Bruno, the commune’s answer to Jean Brodie, seemed to have disappeared, and two scrawny Indian girls, a couple of children and a male midget surrounded us. They clustered around, pulling at our clothing as if we were on the menu for the next meal.
I didn’t like this place one bit and I could tell Brian was ready to explode. We were on the point of leaving when Bruno appeared and very reluctantly showed us his available accommodation. I felt sure he showed us around only because he wanted the money, and not because he wanted us to stay. He need not have worried. We pedalled off in a cloud of dust with as much dignity as is possible on two pre-war bikes.
The next port of call was Protection where we had to call into the dental surgery to collect the receptionist who had the key to the next possibility - a settlement called Djaima.
We pedalled off, with the young receptionist following slowly on her motor scooter. The lane to Djaima looked like a country lane in rural England.
Djaima must have been a dream 20 years ago. In the centre of the small settlement was a fabulous house, designed on a Japanese theme. It was low level and all the walls comprised sliding screens with tiny frosted glass panels. To the front was a large pond with water lilies floating in the middle.
Sadly on closer inspection the building was in a poor state of repair, as were many of the others. We were shown to a small block of maisonettes. They were sadly in need of paint and general repair but they faced a large grassy area. The centrepiece of the whole settlement would have been the large pool and fountain opposite our prospective accommodation, but it was dried up and the concrete of the pond bed was badly cracked.
We were shown to a studio flat at ground level. It had a patio with a bamboo table and two chairs. This was the dining room.
Inside, in the corner of the room, was a concrete platform with a double mattress on top. An old metal cabinet stood against one wall and a writing desk and chair against another. From this room a doorway opened into a narrow corridor which ran the length of the flat. To the left was the shower with a 3ft wall separating it from the squat down toilet and tap.
Directly in front was a tiny hand basin, a mirror and a two-ring gas cooker, below which was a Calor gas bottle and assorted pots and pans.
The studio was bright and airy inside, there was a toilet with a proper roof, so we decided to take it.
As we were about to leave, Brian noticed a swarm of ants around the window frame above the bed. He pointed them out to our guide who said she would make sure the cleaner got rid of them before we moved in.
Feeling much happier we cycled to the beach to read and study the Tarot cards. We had almost mastered the Major Arcana, which had 26 cards, but I doubted we would manage the remaining 40 something if we stayed in India a year.
I commandeered the kitchen again that evening and created a meal that looked appetising and tasted foul but Brian, the human dustbin, ate his own portion and mine.
I had another miserable night’s sleep and was happy to be up early and packing our bags. Even after such a short stay, our clothes smelt musty and damp. We had booked a car to pick us up at 9 a.m. But by
10 a.m. it still hadn’t appeared. We managed to talk Jean Brodie into letting us use her phone to call the taxi office. At 10.45 a rickshaw appeared and we had yet another steaming argument with the driver when he dropped us off at Djaima and tried to overcharge us.
It was evident that a cleaner had been into the room as the patio had been swept and there was now a rush mat on the floor inside.
Unfortunately there were still ants, and the previous day’s trickle had turned into an invasion. They were coming in a steady stream, three and four wide, through the window, down the wall, across the top of the mattress, down the sides of the bed and across the floor. I bit my lip and smiled bravely. Brian said not to panic and we would call in at the dentist’s and ask the receptionist for some ant killer.
Mild hysteria had set in for me, and I wouldn’t start to unpack until I had taken the mattress off the bed base for a closer examination of the ant trail. This revealed that the mattress cover was ripped, exposing a filling resembling horsehair and twigs which made a wonderful environment for wildlife of all types. My imagination ran riot.
Out went the mattress into the sunshine along with pillows and cushions. Next I opened the metal cabinet. The humidity had caused it to rust inside and consequently the bedding was marked with rust stains and smelt dreadful, so out it all came on to the floor.
The towels and tea towels in the kitchen area were no better and anything made of fabric was being sniffed and rejected with a resounding: “No, no, no!” I decided I would have to wash everything and Brian rolled his eyes heavenward.
In the kitchen was a giant pongola pot which held almost 2 gallons of water. I put it on the stove, filled it, boiled it and had Brian pour the steaming water into a big plastic bucket.
I used my supply of soap powder and spent the rest of the day jumping up and down in the bucket pounding the dirt out of towels, sheets, pillowcases, a bedspread and anything else I could find. We laid it all out in the sun to dry, watched by an amused group of cleaners and gardeners.
We had insect spray from the dentist and I had bought poison powder at the shops, and the area around the window and bed had been liberally treated. I know ants don’t march about after dusk but who knows how early they get up in the morning?
I couldn’t bring myself to sleep on the mattress. I was obsessed with what would crawl out of it, so I put my rubber bedroll on top and tried not to slip off it.
During the night I went to the toilet and found a cockroach crawling across the floor. It had come from the direction of a piece of wood covering the drain under the sink. I woke Brian up to get rid of it, and then lay moaning about all the things scuttling about the room. Brian told me to shut up and go to sleep. He said there wasn’t anything crawling about anywhere now.
I thought I would just go to the toilet again and then I would go to sleep. I put the light back on, and saw at least ten big fat roaches plodding across the floor. When I looked at the drain cover there was another one hauling himself up from the depths to join his mates. I was up on the bed like yelling: “Get them out, get them out!”
The next day was spent seeking advice on poisons and repellents. We returned to our room with enough dangerous chemicals to kill off the population of Auroville.
Although the days in Auroville were pleasant enough I hated the nights and did not sleep properly. Brian on the other hand, was eating well, sleeping well and not concerned about inhaling toxic fumes from a room filled with poisons.
We went back to College Guest House every day of our stay to see if The Chentoor had sent our money but they hadn’t.
Twice a week there was a bus that took Aurovillians and visitors into Pondicherry and we jumped aboard one day and had a tour of the town.
We went to the station to change our Delhi to Jodhpur tickets and the railway station was the most picturesque sight in Pondy. It was clean, quaintly old-fashioned, and the grass and cattle on the tracks were a testament to the lack of trains that passed through.
The final straw for me, apart from an additional invasion of black ants that had moved in to patrol the doorway to the patio, came when we lay on the beach and the self-appointed Mother Earth from the beach settlement came over and told me to wear a bigger swimsuit. She was one of the loonies that bowed and prayed to the sea each day before swimming in it. I was just exasperated but Brian went bonkers and spent all day pointing out women who were wearing less, or who ought to wear more.
The morning of our departure arrived and I was so excited. We had hired a car to take us to Pondicherry where we would board a bus that would drop us off at a place called Mamallapuram.
Escape.