India day #5
Yesterday was a short post, but we’re starting to catch up today.
<10:36 27/01/2001>
Sanju’s uncle (Mohan) had suggested we visit the state museum. Sad, sad, sad. It was dirty, poorly lit, smelled bad, and it was depressing to see some of those great cultural relics (columns, pottery, bronzes) rotting away neglected.After that, bowling! It seems that many fashionable young Indians have taken to bowling and techno music. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any good bowling and got a big head from out-rolling my hosts… The alley was on the third floor of a commercial building, with four lanes and fake snowpack on the walls (its name was “Snow Bowling”). The pinsetting machinery was always freaking out, so the game had occasional pauses well-suited for coffee runs (there was a little coffee bar inside). I almost won.
This is the closest I have ever come to winning a game of bowling.
Home to pack, write in here, and get online. I had 2 “Where are you?” messages… Also wrote my mother with a quick summation. Dinner before leaving.
I was sent by private autorickshaw to the train station – J.F.C., that was scary! I thought I was going to fall out… Made it intact, though. Boarded the train, which felt about like I was stepping into a National Geographic. I had seat 21, car A1, on Yercaud Express (#6669), which I would take to Erode, where I would be met by my hosts from Gobi. After the train pulled out, I put the provided sheets on the berth and fell asleep.
Woke up, thanks to the friendly Tamil tapping my foot, as we reached Salem at 04:30. grrr. still dark. However, since I couldn’t fall back asleep, I sat up and watched it become progressively lighter outside. Around 06:15, we pulled into a station, but all the signs were in Tamil and nobody around me spoke ANY English – eek! Fortunately, we arrived at Erode about half an hour later, where I was met by Thomas V* of the Gobi club. We climbed in his Ambassador where he handed me a snazzy “Welcome” and where he asked if I wanted coffee. (Yes.) Drove to a small inn nearby.
In rural India, most dishes are made of metal. Coffee was served in a small shotglass-sized cup sitting in a shallow dish of milk. To mix and cool, one pours the coffee back and forth between the two until the desired temperature is reached. It was S T R O N G but very good. The milk and sugar tempered the bitterness of the coffee to the point that it could be consumed.
From there, we drove to Gobi. Wow. I thought Chennai was different, but it’s a large city. Gobi is The Sticks.
Things that didn’t make it to the journal:
- When I arrived in Erode it was an auspicious day on the Hindu calendar; there was a ceremony taking place in the inn where we had coffee, and later on that day there were other events. It was also Republic Day, so there were a number of official observances all over India.
- There was also a LARGE earthquake that morning in the extreme northwest of the country. Apparently people felt it as far away as Chennai — as far from the epicenter as El Paso is from Seattle — but I didn’t feel it. Unfortunately, the US media did a very poor job of saying “OK, the devastation is confined to this one corner of India”, so most of my friends and co-workers assumed that the ENTIRE COUNTRY was reduced to rubble and that I was either dead or maimed. Of course, it didn’t help that I was in the sticks for several days afterwards, or that I was pretty well shut off from phone and e-mail contact.
Tomorrow: jeem gets the royal welcome. No, seriously.
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