The Lion, The Witch & The Rucksack
by Lynn Kilcline

CHAPTER TEN - KOVALAM

It was a hot walk along the beach and through the alleyways to Green Villas, especially with all our bags. We explained our early arrival to the room boy, who was looking rather sheepish.
This was explained when the owner of the Villas told us that the boy had undercharged us. I was just about to tell him he could stick his room when he started to whisper, saying we could have the room at the agreed price but we must not tell any of the other guests. We agreed, but later, when we had come to know our neighbours Ivan and Betty, we felt terrible, and before we left we told them. They were paying double our rent.
It was not the last mistake the room boy made. He tried to con us over a number of things, such as the laundry and bottles of water we bought from him. We also discovered that he had been into Ivan and Betty’s room poking about.
In the evenings, as we sat on the veranda talking or reading, he would lean on the wall and watch us as if waiting to be included in the conversation. At first we did talk to him but we soon realised that he could speak English words, but had no idea what they meant. He would answer ‘yes’ to any question asked. What is your name? ‘ Yes’. Have you worked here long? “Yes”. Would you like a punch to the side of your head? “Yes”.
He desperately wanted to get into our room to clean it and I wouldn’t let him. I would take the sweeping brush from reception and sweep the room myself. The final straw came when I stripped the bed and asked him for fresh linen. He gave me back the dirty sheets I had given him. I knew because my lipstick was still on the pillowcase. He swore that they were clean. We had a real argument and I said I would tell his boss. He disappeared for two days which was actually a great relief and I didn’t feel guilty at all.
After the first day of his disappearance his boss asked if we had seen him. I told him what had happened and that the boy was hopeless. Unfortunately the little toad came back, but we didn’t speak to each other again.
The first night we carefully picked our way between the paddy fields and streams to a restaurant called The Lonely Planet. It was a veggie restaurant, very large and quite trendy. The roof was thatched and there was an assortment of tables and chairs to seat about 100 people. The floor was covered in uneven coir matting, which made walking to a table eventful as we stumbled over ridges and lumps. A veranda running the length of the restaurant overlooked a large pond surrounded by bushes. Behind that, there were palm trees and moonlight. It all looked very attractive.
Unfortunately the chief waiter was a miserable individual. He took each item of our order like a personal insult. To add to the ambience, the other member of staff was a miserable midget. He would come to the table with the napkins and cutlery and finally the bill. He would look us up and down as if familiarising himself with the appearance of the human race. In true British fashion, we tried to pretend that this fellow was at least 5’6’’ and completely normal, and the fact that his nose was resting on the tabletop when he came for our money was nothing unusual.
We went back to the Lonely Planet for breakfast the next day. The place had three things in its favour: fresh brown bread, good tea, and pleasant background music. The gruesome twosome were a distinct disadvantage and in daylight the pond was a close second.
Very artistically, several carved and painted wooden animals had been secreted in among the bushes. One was a tiger positioned in such a way that he appeared to be drinking from the pond which I thought was a brilliant idea.
Why then, I pondered, had the brains behind this not thought to remove the litter that surrounded the pond and the empty plastic bottles that were bobbing in the water?
Kovalam had a mega litter problem. It was piled high in every direction; I had read that one of the beaches had even been built on it. If we had scratched beneath the surface of Hawah beach we would have found that we were sun bathing on a rubbish tip.
We had an in depth discussion one evening with a local journalist. He owned a restaurant called Shells. Krishna, as he was called and most local people acknowledged that before long Kovalam would be buried in a sea of waste and most of it was not biodegradable. There had been plans to build an enormous incinerator and introduce a rubbish collection. Ironically this had been blocked by objections from Green Peace. They were concerned about the toxic emissions from such a plant, but it would have been helpful if they could have come up with another solution.
The litter problem was likely to become worse as farmers were selling off their land in a bid to get rich quick off the tourists, and more construction would mean more litter. The average Indian seems oblivious to rubbish, and happily throws anything anywhere. Education and a solution are needed badly.
We had a number of interesting discussions with Krishna. On one occasion I asked him about his methods of reporting, especially on a recent story about two local government officials and a case of sexual harassment.
His attitude towards the case was very interesting. He was convinced that the woman was at fault regardless of the facts. He felt that she was most certainly lying but if the allegations were true, she was at fault for bringing it to the public attention and bringing the male official into disrepute. We interpreted his comments to mean that, in his opinion, she should have suffered in silence.
I would have said that Krishna was an intelligent well-educated young man, but we could see from this conversation how the odds are stacked against women in India.
Poor Krishna certainly did not believe the things we told him about the British Press and when we described the sensationalism and content of such papers as The Sun or Star he clearly thought we were potty.
We ate at Shells most days until we had exhausted the menu, and it was Shells that supplied the ultimate Upma. It is their recipe that is the basis for my own Holmfirth Upma.
The young man who was in charge in Krishna’s absence had been trained at the local catering college, which was an interesting concept of which we were to learn more later. He supplied me with many translations of Indian herbs and spices.
The staff at Shells must have liked us, because one night when other diners ousted us from our usual table we sat out in the garden under a coconut tree. Krishna’s assistant came over and suggested we move. He pointed to a huge cluster of coconuts hanging above us and indicated that a coconut might fall and hit one of us. At a height of twenty to thirty feet one of those crashing down on our skulls would defiantly have meant good night and thank you. Permanently. Fancy putting a table there.
The beaches at Kovalam were bloody awful. Light House beach backed on to a jumble of snack bars and gift shops. There had been a concrete promenade along the front but the local council had taken exception to this idea. They had not given planning permission so sent a bulldozer to smash it up. This accounted for the mountain of brick rubble in front of the shops and trailing down on to the beach.
Sadly the area around the two little coves was used as a public toilet and with the amount of pooh there was about, I suppose we should have been grateful that Indians didn’t use toilet paper.
One of the main beaches was allegedly dangerous for undercurrents. There had been a number of tourist deaths and, as a precaution, the local authorities had installed life guards on every beach. We saw the life guards in their uniforms of light blue shirts and navy shorts, and were very sceptical about their ability to swim. But they were very good at sleeping.
The life guard at the beach we favoured spent 90% of his day asleep under a tree that was so far from the sea that a drowning person would have been dragged half way to Bombay by the time he had woken up and kicked off his flip flops.
We spent some smashing evenings talking to our neighbours at Green Villas, Ivan and Betty. Ivan was about 5’6’’ with brown wavy hair, a Van Dyke beard and wonderful R.A.F. moustache. He was in his seventies and had the mannerisms of Biggles. There was a twinkle in his eye and he had excellent tales to tell.
Betty was smaller and just lovely, but she had difficulty with her eyesight and balance.
When they went out, Betty held on to a child’s pushchair which enabled her to keep her balance and also acted as a useful shopping trolley. And shopping was something she excelled at. Betty didn’t venture out very much, she was writing a book about their travels around America. She was writing it in long hand, and she and Ivan had found a man in Trivandrum who typed each draft for next to nothing.
They had lived in Australia for a number of years when Ivan owned a haulage business and while living there they had driven around the entire circumference of Oz. They then decided to drive their huge American Cadillac all the way from Oz to England.
This had all taken place some 30 years ago and Ivan said that when they had driven through India there just wasn’t any traffic. In most countries they had been treated like visiting dignitaries as they had a pennant on the car bonnet. It was an assumption that I am sure Ivan would not have corrected. I asked Betty why she wasn’t writing about Australia and she was quite adamant with her reply. She had hated the place.
Betty might not go out much but when she did she would go on a shopping frenzy in Trivandrum. They would hire a big old Ambassador taxi and have the driver drop them off at their chosen shops.
The pair of them cost us a fortune as Betty aimed us at all sorts of shops in Trivandrum. We called it shopping by proxy. She sent us to Parthas, which was a wonderful shop selling every type of fabric known to man and where we indulged heavily in fabric for trousers, shirts and other items “we couldn’t possibly live without.”
Swami was a haberdashery shop, where it became necessary to buy yards and yards of trimmings because they were beautiful, cheap, and I would regret it if I didn’t buy them. Finally they had convinced us that we should check out the opticians, as they were a fraction of the price of opticians in England.
The next time that we used the e-mail, Mum was able to tell us that Number 81 had been let. On the strength of that we visited the opticians, ostensibly for me to buy some new sunglasses and Brian to have his repaired. We left the shop with a new pair of sunglasses each, Brian’s old ones being mended and me having had my eyes tested by computer for 50p. Brian thought it was great when the optician emerged with the eye test data, and with his head wobbling said: “ and exactly how long has your eyesight been that bad, madam?’’ I ended up with a pair of glasses that I had not known I needed and that Brian chose on the basis of them looking sexy. It was 100% more expensive than England because if I had been at home I wouldn’t have had my bloody eyes tested and I wouldn’t have bought any glasses.
We did go into Trivandrum on a number of occasions. We would leave very early in the morning and try to be back before midday and the unbearable heat. The main reasons for going were Airya Nivas for breakfast and to visit Brian’s barber. This fellow had been man enough to take scissors to Brian’s moustache, which is rather large and on occasion uncontrollable, [not unlike Brian.] The barber was determined to make it curl up in the Rajistani style, and Brian would emerge clean-shaven and with twirls on the ends of his tache that would make Salvador Dali envious.
On one of these little forays into town we called on a travel agent to discover the cost of a flight to Sri Lanka. For various reasons we decided not to go there, but it was the information given by the agent, that gave me another reason to marvel at the blatant racial discrimination practised by Indians.
While at the agent’s, I had been looking at the prices for various flights and destinations. There were some very varied charges and I asked the agent what they represented. I was stunned to find that there were vastly differing charges for Indians and white folk. Just to be completely sure that I understood him I said: ‘’Are you saying that if I book a seat on any Indian airline, I will pay as much as 40% more than an Indian for the same seat?’’ He simply answered, ‘’Yes.’’
Brian carried me out of the door foaming at the mouth.
Later we read a piece in the Hindu Times written by an American businessman. Alongside a vehement attack on the airlines for the outrageous practice of charging white people more than Indians, he slated the standards and prices of so called top class hotels in Delhi and Bombay. The article was printed without comment. I had plenty to add.
In order to cool down in more ways than one we called into the tourist information booth. We didn’t need any information but the place had excellent air conditioning. Lining the street across the road were shoe repair men and as I sat waiting my turn at the Tourist Information, in no hurry whatsoever, Brian offered to take my sandal across to the cobblers. The sole was coming away from the upper, and it seemed like a good idea to invest in a few rupee’s worth of glue before I fell over and broke something. Brian disappeared and moments later returned with the shoe glued. In his wisdom he had allowed the cobbler to put two thumping great studs from the straps straight through the rubber sole. They had decided the straps had looked weak. It may have looked very stylish in a punky sort of way, but I would have lost the ability to walk within a 100 yards if I left the studs in. They were sticking into my feet like sharp pebbles.
I was feeling much cooler after sitting on the air conditioning unit but not amused at the armoury in my footwear and so sent him back to get the studs taken out. He returned with the shoe looking and feeling much better, and with a big grin on his face.
‘’ Come outside and look at this,’’ he said.
Lying on the pavement in an impossible position was a man who resembled a human pancake. The side of his face was flat to the floor as was his chest. His legs were both bent at the knees and intertwined as they would be in a cross-legged position, except the rest of his body was facing the wrong way. One arm was twisted up his back and the other was stretching out begging for money.
Brian was grinning from ear to ear, which seemed unfair even to a callous individual like me. He pulled me to one side and the conversation went something like this.
‘’ See that bloke, see that bloke there?’’ [Well, I couldn’t really miss him.]
‘’ When I took your shoe across the road he was lying there just like that. When I came back he was sitting up on the wall having a cigarette. Nothing wrong with him at all. I didn’t think it could be the same man.
Now he’s back on the floor. Bloody hell, he must have been taking a tea break.’’
It was amazing to look at this chap and imagine he could unravel himself at the end of the day and more than likely walk home. We realised once more that begging was a profession in India, and a profession that some people took very seriously indeed.
We enjoyed every visit we made into Trivandrum for different reasons but the most memorable had to be the day of the Pongola Festival.
It was a Sunday morning and we set off on the first bus. Krishna had told us that he would be taking his wife into town in order for her to take part in the Pongola festival and he would return at night, as it was great fun then with all the people and stalls. We preferred to go in the day. Fighting our way through thousands of people in the evening did not really appeal. As we came closer to the centre of town we could see that all but a few of the main access roads had been closed. Even in side streets some distance from the town centre women were already squatting in front of pots and preparing the Pongal. When the bus arrived finally, we began to realise the extent of the event.
Women lined the roadside three or four deep. No shop entrance, hotel forecourt or alley was unoccupied. Each woman or young girl had before her a cylindrical pot with a lip around the neck. Three bricks where placed in a triangle and twigs were placed in the centre. This formed the basis of the fire that would cook the pongol. The pot, containing water, was placed on top, and during the next few hours the women sat and prepared the ingredients. All the women were chattering and excited.
There was a great deal of borrowing and sharing, especially with a strange tool that was being used to scrape the flesh out of the coconuts.
I had the impression that this was the first time some of these women had been farther than their own backyard since last year.
It was clear from the people we had spoken to about this festival that the men would not have dared to interfere. Given the circumstances of most Indian women, they would be counting themselves lucky to have this type of freedom if only for a day.
Clearly all the women and girls were in their Sunday best. Most wore brightly coloured saris and their hair was garlanded with jasmine blossom. Those who could afford it flaunted gold bangles, nose studs and intricately crafted dangly earrings. Vendors were walking the streets selling the most dreadful trinkets. For some reason plastic tropical fish were featured strongly in souvenirs to take home from the festival.
We walked to Airya Nivas for breakfast and every inch of the way was jam packed with people. After breakfast we decided to walk the length of the main street and if possible down to the temple which was after all the focal point of the whole event. As we set off along the main road Brian found himself a new friend. An old lady looking very much like a bag lady made up her mind to follow him, begging all the way. She was very dirty and carrying bundles of something as dirty as she was. She had a very mischievous look in her eye and although she was filthy didn’t exactly look poor, if that makes any sense. I think she was probably a witch but as Brian could deal with me, I was sure he could cope with her. We all walked along the road and as close to the temple as we could get, Brian, the Witch and I.
By now huge loud speakers had crackled into life and were blasting out music. The fact that the volume was so high it was distorting the sound did not seem to worry anyone.
There were several small tanker lorries loaded with water which had a number of uses. It was being used for pongal water, drinking water, and throw-it-all-over-me-water. Men were lined up filling pots from the tap at the back of the wagon and dousing themselves down. I was envious.
There were three enormous steel vats on our route, full of yellow liquid that resembled urine or flat lucozade. Men that were helping marshal the crowd, were making free with this beverage, drinking from cups hooked to the side of the vat or just sticking their heads in it. It was impossible to push our way through the throng of people near the temple, but as we were close to where the bus should normally leave for Kovalam we thought that we would inquire at the ticket office about transport back. By asking about ten people we used the common denominator from all ten conversations and came to the conclusion that we would be very lucky to find a bus leaving for Kovalam today, but if there was such a bus it would leave from the main bus stand.
We made our way back the way we had come; Brian still had his friend in tow.
As we walked away from the temple an epic spectacle lay before us. The road was relatively clear but the pavements and central reservations were now home to thousands and thousands of women. These rows stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. The heat was becoming intense and the women were covering their heads with old bits of cloth or rearranging their saris to shield themselves from the sun’s glare.
The bus station was choked with women and pots, house bricks and sticks. The terminus had an elevated concrete walkway and along it were the pick-up points for the buses travelling to dozens of different destinations. The destinations were not listed, only the bus number, so it was necessary to ask at the information stand which number went to which destination.
On that particular day the man at the information stand decided he wasn’t going to speak any English. I knew he spoke very good English but he wasn’t going to play ball today. Brian tried, but he wouldn’t speak to him either. Perhaps he didn’t speak English on Sundays. Silly things that like that often happened on our travels. They didn’t make us mad and sometimes they were too potty to comprehend.
We went back to the row of bus stops and thought we would ask one of the many men who were standing there waiting for buses if they had any ideas about buses for Kovalam. We then realised that Brian’s bag lady friend had finally disappeared. She had probably followed him for an hour.
Everyone we asked for advice looked as sweaty and uncomfortable as we felt. There was something of a glazed expression in the eyes of most people. Finally one man told us that he was waiting for the bus to Kovalam. It would be coming, and it would come to where he was standing. We thought that sounded very positive, so we stood right next to him.
For the first 15 minutes it was interesting to watch everyone. For the next 15 it was looking less interesting and becoming more uncomfortable. Even standing still and fanning myself I could feel the sweat dripping down my back.
Suddenly, the crackling booming noise from the loud speakers stopped. It had been going on for hours and turning it off made me think I had gone deaf. It was a momentary respite. Within seconds a male voice could be heard chanting loudly. We thought this must be a broadcast of the priest in the temple. The chanting was quite catchy and we called it The Pongola Song.
When the Pongola Song stopped, all the women and girls stood up and made a high pitched ‘La La La La La ‘ noise. It was very impressive.
We weren’t prepared for what came next or perhaps more accurately, we were not prepared for the results, of what came next and from what we were able to see neither were most of the women.
The very moment the wailing stopped it seemed that as one, every woman bent down and set fire to the sticks beneath her cooking pot.
Flames and smoke belched out in every direction and the temperature quadrupled. I scanned the scene around me in wonder, and thought this is exactly what hell would look and feel like.
Within seconds I was joining the rest of the masses in coughing and spluttering and gasping for breath. Women were wiping their eyes, smoke induced tears streaming down their faces.
Having fully appreciated the spectacle it was now time for us not to be there.’ Suffocation and smoke inhalation were bringing out our survival instincts. We felt we may be dead by the time the bus arrived, if it ever did. Other tactics were required. We moved as quickly as possible given the choking, stumbling array of humanity around us, and headed for the train station. We couldn’t catch a train to Kovalam but a rickshaw at any exorbitant price would be cheap when faced with the alternative of staying in Trivandrum, and we were likely to find one at the station. In exchange for being moderately ripped off we were given a bumpy, dusty, bone-shaking ride back to Kovalam by rickshaw.
What a brilliant day. What a festival. Now that is what I call an experience!
Back at Green Villas, revitalised by a cold shower, we gave Ivan and Betty the full run-down on the Pongola party. Later in the day when Ivan came back from the corner shop where he bought his provisions he also brought what we all laughingly described as a piece of Pong. The woman at the shop had been to the festival and was distributing pong pieces, as per festival instructions. Ivan knew her quite well and she had given him a lump of the stuff wrapped in a piece of palm leaf.
Brian, the chief food taster, sampled the product. I had watched the Pongal being prepared; water from God knows where, jaggery that had lain in the sun covered in flies, and coconut scraped out by a rusty old gadget. Not for me, thanks. Death by Pongola was not going on my tombstone.
We were still chatting to Ivan and Betty as dusk fell and we called a halt only when their taxi arrived to take them to dinner. Three nights a week the local catering college had open evenings and our neighbours were among their best patrons. On these nights there would be a themed menu, Chinese, Italian and so on. Ivan and Betty would go along to each of these events, being offered six or seven courses for a moderate sum in exchange for marking the students’ endeavours.
They kept encouraging us to go, but we explained that we preferred not to eat meat and not many of the dishes were vegetarian. They told us that on Saturday there would be a special carnival night at the college to mark the end of term. There was to be a huge assortment of food, a dance, and all sorts of other entertainment. We said we were game and we would go to the college the next day and buy tickets. We also decided to use that night as a farewell to Kovalam and it would be great to spend it with Ivan and Betty. It was time to move on.
We combined the call at the catering college with a walk to Patchaloor Village.
Reputedly there was a beach there, and trips into the backwaters.
Much was made of Backwater Trips. It was something we had discussed, and the type of craft used looked very interesting.
The reality was that we either crammed on board with a hoard of camera clicking tourists or paid a substantial sum to hire our own boat and crew. The backwaters are small winding streams meandering through the countryside and coconut groves. It sounded lovely. And we had such happy memories of cruising on the Thames in our own narrowboat.
The visit to the catering college was a disappointment. All tickets for the carnival evening were sold.
We continued to follow a path along the coastline towards Patchaloor and before long we came to a disastrous area where four small hotels had been built. The areas surrounding them were scrubby and strewn with rubbish. The hotels looked as if they had been lifted from the Cosmos brochure for Torremolinos; pleasant enough but out of place. The residents had much in common with the hotel. They too looked out of place, and for the most part uncomfortable - and not just because most were lobster red.
This little enclave was much farther from Kovalam than most people would ever walk. At night it would be an impossible journey; the ground was far too rough. By road it would be quite a distance and the taxi drivers would cash in on that.
We were pretty sure that a beach would have been mentioned in the brochure that brought them to Kovalam, but beach was not the word I would have used to describe a 50ft strip of sand.
Five rickety sunloungers were precariously balanced on a hump of sand about 5ft wide, slotted in between fishing nets and dead fish left behind by the fishermen. I imagined arriving in the dead of night and waking up to all this. Refund and compensation were words, which sprang to mind.
We continued along the dusty trail that ran close to a sea wall.
It was a pleasant stroll through the shady trees towards the village of Patchaloor, and as we approached an Indian attached himself to us. He was trying to sell us a backwater trip on his boat and we told him very nicely that we weren’t interested at the moment. He was a pleasant enough chap, about 5ft 4ins tall and rather overweight.
It was pretty obvious that he thought he would talk us into a trip but he didn’t manage to start the hard sell. We didn’t give him time. If he was going to tag along with us, he’d have to answer our questions. What’s this? What’s that for? What are they doing? He was a mine of information.
The village was large, and compared with anything we had seen so far it was like a show village. All the mud houses had neatly thatched palm roofs; the compounds and the gardens and yards were swept clean. Women and girls were working outside spinning rope from baskets of coir and some women were weaving on enormous looms making coir matting. Men were mending nets and sitting around playing cards and there was no litter anywhere.
Although the people didn’t look poor we didn’t think they would be likely to waste money on bottled water, hence no plastic bottles. Their food would be home grown so there was no litter from packaging. Apart from the children who chased us begging, it was a real find, totally unspoilt.
Our uninvited escort was a bonus as he chased the children away, embarrassed by their behaviour. The youngest children seemed to have no idea what they were saying;, they had just learned the words by rote and thought that by holding out their hands, they would get what they wanted; a pen, chocolate, or money.
By the time our escort reached his house he was sweating profusely and gasping for breath. [ The price to be paid when walking with Daddy Long Legs, Brian.]
We had been walking for more than 1 1/2 hours and the promise of hidden sandy coves did not look likely to materialise, so we about turned and made our way back.
By the time we were approaching Kovalam I was feeling shattered. We hadn’t taken any water with us, or had any breakfast. It was now past lunchtime and I was hungry.
Whenever I tell Brian I’m hungry, he says he isn’t. It’s just to make me feel a pig. Anyway, he said he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, but ten minutes later he didn’t put up a fight when I suggested eating.
Brian had found yet another passion in the absence of apple cake. Rice pudding. The Indian version contained cardamom seeds, coconut and banana, and it was so sweet it made me wince. Mr Not Hungry Or Thirsty decided he needed rice pudding and a masala tea. At about 90 degrees in the shade, I could not think of anything I could fancy less than hot rice pudding.
We made a sound decision based on personal needs. He went to his restaurant and ate rice pudding and drank hot spicy tea, and I went to the Lonely Planet for brown toast and bananas.
Brian suggested that after lunch we should walk in a new direction along the coast to see what we could find. Oh goody, more walkies!
We found a small bay, it was nothing special but least it wasn’t full of fishing nets. I made an entry in our diary that day, and I think it is worth quoting. It was typical of how I felt at the time and how I have often felt since our return, even if the circumstances have been different.

24.02.00.
I have just been standing up to my knees in the sea, slightly out of reach of the giant waves crashing shoreward. There is a breeze. The sky is blue. I have thought how bloody lucky I am. No worries, nothing to concern myself with other than where or what we may eat this evening.
Brian has just gone for a play in the sea, and I think: “ don’t forget this moment and why should I ever feel any different wherever I am; Holmfirth, Honolulu, South India or Scarborough. Like someone said, life can be a clear road; why throw rocks into your path?

That evening we told Ivan and Betty the bad news about the Carnival Dance tickets. Ivan and Betty were off to the Catering College that night. Ivan gave us both a wink and said: “Leave it with me.’’
The next morning he was able to report he had secured tickets for us. We were delighted.
We spent the rest of our days in Kovalam on the beach. Initially we had a run-in with the hawkers who peddled their wares there. A gaggle of them sat under the trees and before we had time to remove a sandal they would pounce. Mango, coconut, papaya, banana, deckchair, umberella, lungi, hat? And an hour later it would be the same again.
We had both lost our tempers with the lot of them by the afternoon and they received a tongue-lashing that was not for the faint-hearted. They never bothered us again, but I did bother them one day.
On our third day on the beach we were happily enjoying the sea and sun when two elderly women made their way in our direction carrying striped shopping bags and holding on to their sun hats. They looked as if they should have been at Bridlington, on the sea front in deck chairs eating ice cream.
They turned out to be British. We heard them speaking when they stopped to consider where best to sit. Having chosen their spot and placed their bags on the sand, they were assailed by the hawkers en masse.
“Chair, chair madam, umbrella, you must have an umbrella, madam.”
They could hardly catch their breath as chairs were placed behind them and they were all but pushed down into a sitting position. The chair boy then dived about with his hand out for payment and the instant money changed hand, he moved to the side, making way for a fat Indian woman selling fruit. Before the visitors could speak they had dishes of fruit salad thrust into their laps.
I was fuming; Brian was giving me warning looks.
The moment Big Mama had been paid the next in line came forward. It was the sarong and lungi man. This was too much.
I said to Brian: ‘’Oh, come on, if that was my mum and gran I hope somebody would rescue them’’
He still gave me the evil eye.
Fifteen minutes later the lungi man was still at it, and the women were trying to ignore him by reading their books.
After a further five minutes of torment he packed up. But within 15 minutes a tall thin Indian plonked himself between the two chairs. He was carrying enough fabric under his arms and on his head to supply a small department store. The ladies weakly told him that they didn’t want anything but he continued with his repetitive sales pitch, flinging great sheets of fabric over the women’s laps. I leapt into action and bounded up to the women.
I said: “Hello, I can’t help but notice that you haven’t had a moment’s peace. Do you wish to buy anything from him?”
They said: “ Oh no we don’t. We, er, bought some things yesterday and we really don’t want any thing more, but he just doesn’t seem to understand.’’
I replied: “Oh, I think he does, but I will be only too happy to get rid of him for you.’
I had been crouching beside chairs during this conversation but now I stood up, bent over the pedlar and shouted: “ Sod off!!”
It made me feel better.
The hawker, who had told the women he didn’t speak English,
looked at me squarely and said with a strong Birmingham accent:
“Who are you, then?”
Not only did I find this hilarious, but I was delighted he wanted some more.
‘’I’m their bloody daughter, that’s who, and they don’t want anything so bugger off!’’
He packed up and left, scowling.
I apologised to the women for my language, but explained to them that we had found politeness didn’t work. Being civil was regarded as: “Try me later I may change my mind.” We chatted for a while and then I returned to Brian, expecting an ear-bashing.
But he’d fallen asleep.
Carnival Night arrived and Brian and I dressed ourselves up. Somehow after all these weeks of being beach bums we had both caught the sun that day, and we were very hot and bothered by the time we had walked to our destination, not to mention having faces like beetroots.
We stood outside the college forming an orderly queue with other Brits. When the gates were opened everyone surged forward, only to be stopped at a barrier where we had to exchange our tickets for vouchers.
Normally people sat at tables inside the college and were served by the students, but on this special evening food was al fresco, served from several food stands around a lawn. Each stall served food from a different country and each item of food cost a different number of vouchers.
Each guest received 120 vouchers in multiples of five. So far so good.
Once past the first hurdle of voucher exchange the second was finding a seat. There were going to be about 250 attending this knees-up, and there were only 30 plastic chairs dotted here and there. We nabbed four, conscious of the fact that Barmy Betty and Ivan the Terrible would need to sit.
Brian went to fetch us a drink, only to find out that in the space of five minutes and ten feet he had lost his vouchers.
The fact that none of the stalls had actually started to serve food was in his favour, and they issued him with more vouchers.
With only three pockets in his clothing to check, which he presumably had done, it came as a further surprise when miraculously the lost tickets suddenly reappeared. It seemed a shame to bother the organiser again, so we kept the extra tickets and all just ate more.
Later the event was swamped by Indian families who seemed to be served with food without needing vouchers. They also asked for bags which they filled up with the food they could not eat.
“When in Rome…,” we thought, and we used our remaining vouchers at the end of the evening to purchase cakes and sticky buns to take home for the next day.
When we had finished sampling everything on offer we sat looking around at the other attractions. The entire event was reminiscent of a village charity event run by ten year olds. Lopsided signs hung over the dozen or so stalls advertising Chinese, Afghan and Gujarati food. One sign over a parody of a coconut shy read: Bomb Egypt!! Another read: “Guess my stats” which was on a guess-the-weight-of-the-cake, stall.
Ivan and Brian spotted a double bed and thought that might be an interesting diversion. It turned out to be somewhere to recline while having mehindi/henna designs painted on your hands or feet.
After an hour or so we were subjected to entertainment. This comprised a student dressed in a particularly awful suit making announcements in well-spoken English with no meaning to them at all. He introduced a young magician who stood so far from the mike that we couldn’t hear him and whose tricks all went wrong. The compere than asked the audience for record requests. They were all from boys to other boys; “Gopal would like you to play xxxx for Vickram.”
A small child was ushered on to the stage and sang for 15 minutes about flying his kite in the garden. He reminded me of a singing toothbrush I had once bought from a bargain shop at home, squeaky and amusing but nice when it stopped.
Moments later there was an announcement inviting us to play Tombola. Students were going to pass through the crowd explaining the game and selling tickets.
As far as we four were concerned, Tombola was a game of luck involving a large drum containing numbered tickets and a table loaded with items that are no use to anyone. A really unlucky player can take home a rusty tin of lavender talcum powder or some home made potato and Brussels sprout jam.
Here in Kovalam tombola meant BINGO.
Brian bought tickets for all of us, printed on the thinnest paper imaginable. We were then each given a toothpick the size of a fine sewing needle which had the strength of balsa wood. When the numbers were called we were to prick a hole in the paper. The toothpicks were so brittle they snapped.
The accent of the compere who gave the instructions was a duplicate of the chai wallah in ‘ It ain’t alf ot mum.’ He made the game sound complicated and incomprehensible to us and we knew what he was trying to put across!
Ivan collapsed in laughter when the ticket seller decided to explain the rules to me personally. Her head wobbled from side to side as she said:
“ When your number is called, ma’m, stick it with the toothpick, ma’m. Do be calling out if you are getting the numbers, ma’m. There are cash prizes, ma’m.’’
At 5rupees per ticket the jackpot would be about £12. I wasn’t holding my breath.
The game proceeded and Indians were jumping up and shouting: ‘’Tumboola.” We had no idea who was winning what until Ivan yelled: ‘’Over here!’’
The old bugger had won the first prize, a great big chocolate cake and a 250 rupee voucher for a meal. The cake was brilliant, but the voucher, was for a restaurant in Trivandrum. It would have cost Ivan and Betty double that for a taxi to get there.
The next day, our last in Kovalam, we helped our neighbours demolish the chocolate cake and Brian went on a little adventure of his own.
My dragon ear-ing was in need of repair and Brian went to the e-mail centre to ask the owner where we might get it mended. He offered to take Brian to the jewellery quarter just out of town. Brian rode pillion on a large motorbike to a settlement of craftsmen. The jewellers worked from home, sitting out on the verandas and working on intricate items with the most basic of tools. Brian really enjoyed his visit and stayed watching them for quite some time.
We left the apartment in the dark at six a.m. As I struggled up the hill to the bus stop, with my heavy rucksack, I vowed that we would be buying nothing more.
We were in Trivandrum in time for breakfast and by 9a.m. we were on a very crowded bus headed for Kanyakumari. It was dull, overcast and drizzling with rain.