Top 10 Indications You Are In India

10) The street you are looking for is the only one not marked with a sign
9) There will always be construction occurring just outside your room. Always.
8) Animal Planet and the Bollywood channel are the only cable channels available
7) Your waiter responds to every request with a pronounced head wiggle. This could mean anything.
6) The term "deluxe" appears to have suffered in translation
5) Your autorickshaw driver will never have change. Ever.
4) No matter what you order, the family who arrived a half hour after you always gets their food first.
3) Just as you are about to send the email you've spent 45 minutes crafting, the power goes out.
2) Ridership on a motorcycle is not limited to 5. Livestock optional.
1) People you don't know will always go out of their way to help you.

Sometimes it's hard to understand how anything gets done here. To the untrained eye, it just seems perpetually chaotic. And yet, after a few weeks of careful observation, patterns begin to emerge. It's as if you are watching a Polaroid picture develop in front of you. At first, there is nothing. Then vague shadows. Dark forms. Finally, a reasonably clear picture emerges, and you are left scratching your by now wiggling head as to why you didn't see it earlier.

Take traffic for instance. For those used to driving on Canadian roadways, India seems like the circulatory system of some huge beast running completely amok. It's like every corpuscle is simultaneously on a collision course with every other corpuscle, all at the same time, yet strangely, there are no collisions. In Canada, four-way stops are occasionally painful displays of hoser etiquette. "After you, eh.... No no, I insist, after you eh...". In India, there is absolutely no such thing. In fact, virtually every signal, sign, or other indication of lane marking is routinely ignored. The center line in the road, when you can find it, functions only as a quant suggestion. A mere reminder of the duality of existence. It is a very common thing for your driver to suddenly veer out across where the line used to be and into the stream of oncoming traffic. Your driver has somehow mastered time and space in such a way that he can accurately judge the width and length of his vehicle to within an inch of the perimeter. Sometimes less. At first, your knuckles are white and the blood routinely drains from your face, which is perpetually locked in a silent scream expression of "Noooooooooooooo....", but soon, you find that you can relax and completely surrender to the experience. You learn to trust in your karma.

At first every driver's move seems motivated by the wish for an early death, but soon you start to detect the little cues that the drivers use to signal that yes, indeed I am crossing five lanes of traffic, and you had better stop. It's mind-boggling to jump into this perpetual motion machine, knowing that somehow you will end up where you are supposed to be going. It's no surprise really that the nation with some of the most treacherous traffic in the world is the birthplace of many a transcendent religion. Getting from A to B brings new meaning to the term "God's will".

Then there is the power. Electrical power that is. What first looked like huge eagles nests on top of large poles were not nest at all, but in fact wiring. I'm no expert, but I'm willing to bet that there is a lot of clandestine access to power on some of those poles. Great clusters of tangled wire sit on top of virtually every pole like a confused Brillo pad, with thin strands of disparate gauge going madly off in all directions at once to their secret destinations. Being an electrical inspector is either the worst job in the country, or the easiest, depending on which side of the bribery fence you're on. In our neighbourhood, as in most, the power goes off a minimum of once a day for anywhere from a half hour to a couple of hours. Today, it cut out a total of three times. I'm not sure if this is a cost-saving measure, or just the routine breakage of flimsy infrastructure. If it was all cost-saving, you might figure that there would be a schedule so you could plan to work around it. But no. It's as if John Cage were appointed Electrical Commissioner, and the I Ching was used to create a continuously random schedule of power availability.

And yet strangely, even beautifully, things get done, and the peculiar order of things begins to reveal itself. You just have to train your eye.

Extreme Christmas

I think it would be safe to say that this is a pretty weird Christmas.

At a time when our friends and family at home are experiencing the most extreme winter since 1968, we're here sweating like Robert Downey at a bail hearing. On the one hand, its great to be removed completely from the festival of consumerism that this holiday has evolved into, but every once in a while, you just want to be reminded that it's Christmas. You want to smell a freshly cut tree . Woodsmoke from a cozy fire. Baking cookies. Mulled wine. Any kind of a reminder at all of any good memory from childhood Christmases past.

Instead, we see 60 ft grotesquely undernourished Santa Claus effigies in front of the "posh" stores. Flatbed trucks, the decks of which are populated by cobbled together vintage PA systems blasting tinny carols and men in thin fake white beards and dirty red hats, desperately trying to keep their palm-beer impaired balance as the truck careens through traffic. Gangs of vaguely menacing young men in Santa hats roving down the back lane and rattling our gate at 11:30 PM, singing incomprehensible Malayalam lyrics to the tune of Jingle Bells. A store that specializes in crudely contstructed model wooden mangers and little else. Obviously, Christmas matters to a lot of people here. It's just very different, and different in strange and interesting ways.

There is an open air church about a kilometre from our house, a temple to St. Anthony, whom I believe was the patron saint of quality footwear. It's interesting how in India the Christian iconography morphs into the Hindu tradition, or should I say, the Hindu tradition is inclusive enough to include Christian iconography. We've all seen the many armed statues of blue Shiva. In front of this church, there is a statue of Jesus, but the style of the carving is very Shiva-like. There's even a sacred fire that burns ghee in front. There's a ton of Christian history here in Kerala. The Christian movement here was founded by St. Thomas in 58 AD. That's about as Original Gangsta as Christianity gets, as Thomas was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. There's actually more unbroken history of Christianity here than there is in the west. So does that make the European tradition more like "Christianity Lite"? All the redemption and half the calories....

But I digress. Again. Right now, we're trying to plan a menu for Chritmas dinner that we can execute on a two burner propane stove. Laurel and I picked up a nice cookbook today that had some great traditional Syrian Christian (the prevalent strain in Kerala) dishes. We're leaning towards a black pepper fried fish with curry leaves, and maybe a long braised duck dish, providing we can find a pot large enough to do that in. Duck is a traditional Kerala Christmas thing. Add in some spicy potato, okra masala, dal, rice, and chappati and I think we might be on to something. Turkey is just not done here, and no one has an oven that I've seen yet.

The boys have been amazingly adaptable. They don't bat an eye when the power goes out, as it does at least once a day for about an hour or so. That means that the fans and AC stop working... The picture in this post of Miles at his laptop during a power out. They are totally used to eating without cutlery of any kind, and just using their right hands. Walking for two hours in the midday sun doesn't even seem to faze them much anymore, especially if there is an ice cream bar somewhere in the mix. So far, there's been no complaints about the lack of Christmas tree even. The decorating committee did manage to hang a few stars from the lighting fixtures last night, but that's about as Christmas-like as its getting around here.

We've been invited to our landlord's (Landlord Stanley?) house for a special Christmas lunch. Stanley invited us over yesterday for Sunday breakfast, and his lovely wife GeeGee (sp?) made a fantastic breakfast of appam (a kind of fermented dough pancake) and a coconut milk vegetable curry that was absolutely wonderful. We're going to ask if we can film her making it, because its a great dish, yet very simple. Gotta learn that one!

So here we are, 15,000 miles from home. Sweltering while our friends are snowbound, and trying to bridge the gap between two radically different cultures. An Extreme Christmas.

Dust, Diesel, And Dolphins

After much stress and manic activity over the last few weeks, the Bailey Family Entertainment Steering Committee unanimously decreed that it was indeed time for a day off. Now, some of you may scoff at the notion that we need to take a day off from what seems to be an extended vacation. Trust me. India is not exactly chill. It is a festival of extremes. A dichotomous pendulum that swings wide and fast. You love it. You hate it. It's filthy. It's beautiful. It's friendly. It's hostile. Pick any adjective you like and then pit it against it's polar opposite. Do that several times a minute until you senses becomes blurred and your brain turns to goo. And that's just the brochure.

We decided to head to the beach. We got up early and had a great breakfast of oatmeal (Nature's broom!) and fresh fruit. There was the requisite waiting around for the grains to do their trusty work, and then we were off. We walked up to the main drag, which is a little less than a kilometer from the house. We easily snagged an auto-rickshaw, and 40 rupees later, we were deposited by the boat jetty very close to the Bijus Tourist Hotel that we stayed at while looking for a house to rent. Cochin has a great system of ferries, and for a total of 10 rupees, all 5 of us climbed on board a little passenger ferry that seats maybe 80 people. Its about a 40 minute ride to the other island. These little boats are pretty old and battered, but they are surprisingly efficient and effective. They belch diesel fumes, the windows are non-exisitent, and a lot of the seats are broken, but you do get there, and on time too.

Once there, it's a short walk to the bus station, where we opted to kick it old-school and take a local bus for the 40 minute ride to Cherai Beach. There's nothing like an Indian bus. You don't spot many foreigners here. Its local all the way, and that's why we like it. For 33 rupees, the 5 of us made it clear across the island to a magnificent stretch of sandy beach that edges up to the azure expanse of the Arabian sea. It's definitely got a "resort town" feel to it, but its still sleepier than most. We did a recon walk down one direction of the main drag, and discovering there were some hunger pangs amongst the group, ducked into one of the local eateries. Actually, the whole strip was populated by ice cream shops. Food almost seemed to be an afterthought. Once again, the spider senses tingled. Hmmmmm.... just a bit too clean. No prices. No menu for that matter. We all ordered a masala dosa, and the boys each had a fruit lassi. When the dosa came, we could scarcely believe it. Mostly because it was so scarce. The teeniest, rubberiest, and most anemic looking dosa ever arrived, to our collective chagrin. We decided to say nothing and take one for the team. Twice the price of a regular dosa, and half as big. Once again, the law of Inverse Expectations...

We hunkered down later at a stretch of beach and actually got to relax. The water was incredibly warm and beautiful. I showed Miles how to body surf, and Isaac eventually got used to the idea that water was not a thing to be frightened of. The boys had a blast. For the ladies, it was not quite so much fun, as local custom dictates that a lady should have a proper bathing outfit on to go in the water, and that means essentially your street clothes. Men can trot out there in a Borat-style thong and not raise an eyebrow, but a woman must pretty much don a burlap bourka before getting damp if one does not want to raise the unwanted attentions of the local males. Bikinis are decidedly not cool, although one or two foreign ones were spotted on the beach. That's where groups of 17 year old boys in satin shirts and embroidered slacks hovered like a halo of flies.

While Laurel was in the water moistening her bourka, about 30 feet away from her a fin arched up in the water, followed by another. "A dolphin!" exclaimed Emma. I knew from my steady diet of English language National Geographic channel over the last 3 weeks that she was absolutely right. Two large dolphins lazily swam past, no doubt interested in the little fish that the boatloads of fishermen were actively trying to capture in their nets just offshore. We were also interested in fish, so we went off in search of lunch. Ambling back to a place I spotted earlier, we came across a lady who selling young coconuts, which the boy had been dying to try. She deftly hacked a small hole in the top to allow the juice to be drunk with a straw, and when that was gone, she cut the shell in half so that the "sporty" young jelly-like meat could be extracted. Appetites whetted, we walked on to the restaurant.

Lunch was nothing short of awesome. We had Black Pepper Fry Crab, Shrimp Roast, Okra Masala, and dal with rice and garlic chapatti. The crab was the real star of the show. Nice whole fresh local crab fried with butter, a load of garlic, caramelized shallots, curry leaves, and lots of fresh black pepper. Black pepper is a vastly underrated spice. We're used to the really old and stale pre-ground pepper we knew as kids, and that bears no resemblance to the stuff here, which is hot, fresh, and vibrant tasting. The whole dish we had is similar to Singapore Black Pepper Crab, but the addition of curry leaves, garlic, shallot, and tomato wedges give this version a uniquely Keralan twist. Everything else was quite excellent too, and we plan to return to try it again. I promise to post up my version of the recipe as soon as I can!

We retraced our steps back on the bus, ferry, and finally through the choking dust and exhaust that is Indian traffic in rush hour. If you don't believe in a god when you get in an auto-rickshaw, there is a high likelihood of religious conversion before the journey is through....

And Lo, There Was Much Rejoicing...

What a roller coaster ride. For three days now, despite assurances from the bank people to the contrary, our bank accounts have still been frozen. For three days, we've also been promised an internet connection in our new house. It's very much like dealing with the cable company, in that one must remain chained to your doorstep until the blessed technician appears to magically connect you with the rest of the world. And stay chained, you must. Hours and days pass with the constant fear that if you even go for a pee, the dude will come and see that nobody is home, and the request/promise/arrival cycle needs to begin all over again. This leaves you holding your schvantzer, which as magical as it may be, is still incapable of broadband connectivity last time I checked.

However, Ganesh must have removed some obstacle, because last night, after at least 5 promises to appear, the internet guy arrives with our new modem after the wiring crew had popped a cable through the wall the previous day. 10 minutes of setup later, he was gone, leaving me with only a badly worded service agreement wherein I am referred to as "Sri Robert William". Our email address is also hopelessly mangled in the agreement, thus ensuring the complete inability to contact us should anything go wrong. This, I have come to find, is normal. Before the obligatory head wiggle and fleeing into the night, he did say that in two hours I would be connected, and all would be well. And it very nearly was.

I was elated to find I was able to access webmail and do basic browsing, but our Vonage phone refused to work, and my laptop was the only one of the three that could get on the net. Our elation turned to dismay in a nanosecond. No amount of futzing with it could get anything else to work, so I went to bed, only to rise again at 5 AM so as to be able to email my banker about our frozen accounts. I was actually able to get a response from her, and eventually got everything straightened away. At least in theory. Then it hit me. The cable modem could only connect to one thing at a time. If a router was the first thing it saw, then all would be well. At least in theory.

Stanley, our new landlord, arrived around 9 AM to inquire about the internet, and "if you are happy". My crafty explanation of the subtleties of TCP/IP networking protocol appeared lost on this gentleman who commands a total of about 35 words of English, so I reduced it to "One more problem. Phone". He pulled out his mobile, and we called tech support (actually in India!), and within seconds, everything was reset on the provider's end, and I had Internet on all the machines, and the Vonage Phone working to boot! Huzzah!

One more call to the bank ensured that all was well with our online accounts and ATM access. It turns out that the first guy we called a few days ago using the Vonage phone in the internet kiosk did..... nothing. Laurel and I walked the kilometer or so to the nearest ATM, and did a veritable dance of joy when a bundle of rupees was regurgitated from the machine! Finally! We bought an Indian power bar, and went home to hook up our new little production office. All I have to do tonight is go and buy a mobile phone, and our setup is complete. India is mobile mad. I swear even the beggars have mobile phones. "Food, papa... foooooood. Whoops!, gotta take this call...".

It doesn't sound like much. Getting a net connection. Getting a phone. However, Laurel and I are amazed at how reliant we are on digital communication. Just being able to go away, and still carry on some modicum of business, is only now possible because of net. When we were last here in 2000, there was dial-up everywhere. Now, its all broadband, and cel phones are ubiquitous. Big change.

So yes, our world phone is on, and we can email without stepping in goat poo. I have to laugh at our perspective though. When I look around at where I am, our little problems with modems and bank cards that have been the source of so much angst for us over the last few days must seem impossibly abstract to just about everyone I see.

Vonage Saved My Life

There is nothing like the panic of being far away in a strange land and having your means of economic survival snatched out from under you.

Laurel and I both had our bank cards frozen today. MIne worse that hers. The layout of the alphabet on the numeric keypad is different in Asia. I always spell my PIN number, and never actually bothered to learn the number sequence, which is surprising for a such a dyed-in-the-wool geek as myself. Being a creature of habit, I entered my Groucho secret word to the ATM. The spelling was incorrect of course. On top of being a creature of habit, I'm apparently a stupid idiot, and stubborn to boot. I entered it again twice more. My card was toast. Permanently.

Now my sensible wife actually uses numbers for her PIN, and was able to withdraw three months house rental two nights ago with no incident. This pleased us greatly. Then Big Brother stepped up to the plate. When we went to withdraw some more today, we were thwarted at no less than 8 ATMs. The game was afoot. Apparently the system flagged these as "unusual withdrawal patterns", as we actually live on Bowen Island, and someone in India was using our account to withdraw hundreds of dollars, no doubt to finance some sort of terrorist action. We panicked.

So we jumped into an auto-rickshaw and headed down to the bank that was the site out last successful withdrawal. Again, no luck. We found an Internet cafe, and tried to log onto our bank site, which politely informed us that we were now persona non grata. This meant that if we ran up our credit cards, we could not even pay them off, as we would have to log onto our bank site to transfer funds. Suddenly, our ATM problem was increased by an order of magnitude. So we decide to call Customer Service in an effort to sort this evolving mess out. Now Customer Service for this bank is a 1-800 number. It is impossible to call a 1-800 number from within India, although goodness knows we tried. India is peppered with little stands that advertise "STD". This is not a quick and easy way to contact a sexually transmitted disease, as the name might imply. It's like a little booth where you can dial an overseas call. For a fee of course. Four half hearted attempts later, we failed miserably.

So we jumped back into an auto-rickshaw and headed back top our house, which contained not only Emma and our children, but our secret and as yet untried weapon: the Vonage internet phone. Now the Vonage phone consists of a little modem-like device that connects to an ethernet cable, and then connects to a standard telephone handset. In theory, this allows you to make calls for free within the US, Canada, and curiously, Puerto Rico. We set it up at home, and it worked pretty well, but not until we downloaded firmware upgrades and replaced the dodgy cable that it came with. Laurel and I figured that if we could collect the Vonage modem, power adapter, and handset that we packed with us, stuff the whole mess into a shopping bag, and find an internet cafe with a substantial connection, we could call the 1-800 Customer Service line, because in theory, it was a local Canadian call! We only had 45 minutes before the Customer Service center closed, so the race was on...

There is nothing quite like the feeling of walking down an Indian sidewalk, which actually more closely resembles a hybrid of a moonscape, slaughterhouse, and random archaeological rubble, with a bag of hi-tech stuff, and a do-or-die-must-find-a-net-connection kind of attitude. Did I mention the heat? We find one place that is actually up on the second floor of a dilapidated building. Of course, nearly every building is dilapidated, so that's hardly worth mentioning. There's actually a line-up. Our turn finally arrives, but the dude in charge insists on taking our passport information, address, and home phone number, which gets dully entered into a dusty old ledger. All in the name of security, you know. I feverishly start to yank out the ethernet cable from the back of the PC and start to set up the Vonage modem. The dude in charge sees this, and is not pleased. We exchange indignant head wiggles and I carry on like a man possessed. The modem boots up... and..... Error Code 1202. The connection is not fast enough to support Voice Over IP. Bugger.

With less than 25 minutes left, we quickly pack the stuff back into the shopping bag and flee. I think I said "Not fast enough!" as we blew through the ancient door, not even bothering to proffer a rupee. We walked for two more blocks before we found another place. Less than 20 minutes left now. I think I was very much the rabid foreigner bursting into this little establishment and demanding to be able to rewire their system to meet my fiendish needs. With the translation help of a sympathetic chap who happened to work in a call center, who was actually familiar with what I was trying to do, I began to wire up my rig while Laurel dealt with another passport and personal info session. The modem powered up. It found an IP address. Retrieved my profile. And... "READY TO MAKE CALLS!" I picked up the receiver, and lo and behold, there was a dial tone. I dialed the 1-800 number and..."Your call is important to us. Due to unusually heavy call volume, there will be an astronomical wait before we can connect you with a live human. Stay on the line until you are old and gray". Fortunately, shortly after that, the adapter fell out of the wall socket and the line went dead. Start again.

To make a long story a tad shorter, I redialed, and was actually able to connect with a human this time. The phone sounds great! Really clear, and with only a slightly noticeable lag time. A nice chap named Kevin (who ironically, was probably working out of an Indian call center, after has having his accent modified to sound Canadian by extensive idiomatic language training) sorted out our troubles. well, mostly. My card is still hooped, but Laurel's is not. All the stress and hi-tech jiggery-pokery was no doubt vastly entertaining to the small crowd in the shop. We went to go and pay for our half hour of net time, and the bill was the princely sum of 10 rupees. About 25 cents.

Best quarter I ever spent....

Stanley is our Saviour

We did it! We have finally found a house to live in. After several adventures to neighbourhoods both safe and seedy, viewing "furnished" houses without furniture, fridge or stove, we finally met Stanley. Stanley is a gentleman who made his fortune in "spare parts" in Saudi Arabia and returned home to purchase a few houses in a neighbourhood of Kochi called Kaloor. It's a "posh" neighbourhood Stanley tells us with pride, the occupants of the nearby houses are Engineers and Advocates (Indoglish for Lawyer). The house is about 700 metres off the main road on a quiet and clean lane of coconut palms and bougainvillea. The house itself has marble floors throughout, 3 bedrooms, a large diningroom, smaller living-cum-sitting room, kitchen with refrigerator and 2 burner gas cooker. It even has a laundry room with a washer! Each bedroom has its own bathroom (toilet and shower), overhead fans and built-in cupboards. One of the bedrooms has AC. Everything is brand new - mattresses that have not been slept on, and the decal remains on the TV!

Stanley and his wife Gee Gee live in the house behind ours. Their children are in College and at a boarding school away from Kochi.

Like many of the people we have met here, Stanley and Gee Gee are Christians - Rob and I have had an interesting time fielding questions about what religion we belong to! It is a question that is asked in what would be considered at home a blunt manner (since Westerners are often strangely private about religion). Luckily the Christians here have that all-pervasive Indian assimilation thing (resistance futile!) so that subscribing to some kind of "it's all One" belief makes them happy enough to accept you as one of their own. I had thought this a quirk of Hinduism - taking the best of everything and making it their own: yeah, Mohammed, he was one of ours. Jesus and Buddha too. Turns out it is more an Indian thing than a strictly Hindu thing. Regardless, it works for us.

Soooo, we move tomorrow! Stanley is calling the internet company for us to set up internet in the house. It could take a few days but we are hoping to be wired and settled a bit so we can actually get out the camera and start filming!

I think we've really turned a corner today. The boys are specifically asking for Masala Dosa, Emma is enjoying teaching Isaac to read (he read two whole sentences today! It's a really exciting time for him) and Rob and I are just so grateful. Grateful for the angels who created the brand new Naked store on Bowen, grateful to have our family with us on this wacky adventure and grateful for Stanley and all of India's other saints that seem to come out of the woodwork when you really need them...

Foreign Devils

We are being continually flummoxed in our quest for proper housing.

Our main lead for a nice house evaporated today in a poof of smoke. We had been waiting for three days to have a meeting with the woman who owns the house that was suggested by our friend Mr. Krishnagopal. Laurel and I gamely got on the ferry boat to Fort Cochin this morning, and caught an auto-rickshaw to the Santa Cruz Basilica. We walked to the house from there. When we were ushered inside, Mrs. Gomes greeted us with a couple of glasses of mango juice and we had a nice chat. After getting down to brass tacks, however, she wanted 40,000 Rs. per month for a two bedroom house with no AC! Naturally, this was out of the question, and we politely made our exit.

Some of the info we got from her did explain why we have been getting such an unexpected cold shoulder on the housing front. Apparently, in the these terrorist-rich times, owners who rent to foreigners are obligated to fill out a mountain of extra paperwork and report all the details of their tenants to the local police. This was news to us. I spent a good chunk of yesterday on the phone to realtors trying to arrange showings of properties we found on the net. The first question that they ask is "What company are you here working for?" I'm not sure if my response to the effect that we are an unemployed family of soap-making hippie dharma bums generated much enthusiasm. I discovered the hard way that "I will call you back in a half hour" is actually Indian for "You foreign devils can sleep in the street for all I care".

We still have some options to pursue. The hotel that we are at is, despite being incredibly noisy with the constant construction that pervades this country, staffed by some rather nice and helpful people. There is one especially nice chap who has offered to make some calls on our behalf tomorrow when the latest wave of listings comes out in the local paper. The paper is not in English, so without his help, we would be reduced to almost walking around to apartment buildings and knocking on doors. We still have hope that a 3 bedroom air-conditioned apartment is available for less than we are renting our own house out for. AC is essential, as it is already 37 C., and the hot season has yet to begin.

Laurel and I did go out to see a place yesterday that was being rented for 15,000 Rs per month, which is in our budget. After a harrowing auto-rickshaw ride that saw our driver get lost at least three times, we managed to locate this brand new place. It was owned by a Mr. Aggarwhal, who greeted us somewhat nervously at the gate. He had a real deer in the headlights thing going on, and he seemed unsure of what the foreigners would do next. Would we cover ourselves in whisky and fornicate in his driveway, while listening to Britney Spears on the boom box that all foreigners carry with them? Were we packing heat? Were we going to rob him? Anyway, he showed us this really huge and cavernous suite that would have been perfect if the construction were actually complete and if there was a single stick of furniture in the place. When asked how long it would take to finish the construction, we received the classic "No problem.. Few days..." It had a rooftop deck and everything, but no fridge, no cooker, no furniture, and obviously, no deal.

If we don't find something in the next few days, we may have to regroup and alter our plan of attack.

On the positive side, we have a restaurant across the street that serves up some pretty wicked fish thali. Isaac has developed a taste for Masala Dosa over the last couple of days. My consumption of beer has declined somewhat drastically, as buying alcohol in Kerala appears to be the social equivalent to booking regular visits to the Safe Injection Clinic. Yes, it's possible, but it ain't easy. I did manage to locate a beer to take back to the room last night, but not before walking 4 blocks, negotiating past a bar scene that resembled something out of Star Wars, and ending up at a steel cage worthy of a maximum security prison. The young man behind the steel cage only had one kind of beer, which he took great delight in charging exorbitantly for. I very nearly had to fill out paperwork.

I walked back to the hotel in the dark, creeping along a narrow lane through putrid smoke smelling of plastic and dead things. Past the humping wild dogs, impassive goats, and crumbling buildings. Clutching my beer by the neck like a potential weapon, I felt like.... a foreign devil.