GuerillaZ

On Mahatma Ghandi Road.   I have recovered from my illness, the symptoms of which were compounded by the untimely celebrations of Murugan the Peacock God. Murugan is important to South Indians in particular and both Malayalis and Dravidian cultures on the east side, Tamil Nadu celebrate him as if it's his least coming. Although handsome lemon yellow flags are festooned in every tree the main part of the celebration, only in my village I notice, comes via what appears to be a leftover sound system from a Motorhead concert. A tower of black monster speakers nestle under the Banyan tree with only a pitifully callow youth with the remote control. No council noise patrols here. so what you were left with was 18 hours of Indian music with the inevitable surfacing of Psy's Gangham Style every hour of so. So where was I? oh yes 18 hours a day beginning 5am ending 11pm with occasionally impromptu playing of something less than soothing a 2am. It is quite entertaining to watch som...

Samudra November 21st 2013 Fishermen The idyllic element of Kerala, Gods Own Country, as Malayalis call it is somewhat undermined by God's overlooking provision of gainful employment. As this log has noted before, the best education in India isn't matched by the employment opportunities. When I waited for this catch (see above) to come in, and it took about an hour while I was timing, no more than two buckets of fish were caught. Looking at the man hours used, there are a similar number of men pulling on the right side of the net too and further workers guiding the net in the water itself. State off licence and the queues. Consumption of alcoholic beverages has become fashionable in Kerala. But only for the young. This is only for the young. Underemployed men have been drinking for years and queues like this one an be seen wherever there is a 'beer shop'. Ganapurthy 'Coconut' Temple Perhaps as a way of deflecting guilt devotees and re...

Mumbai! Mumbai! Even though I am in humid Kerala, I am still dusting myself down from Mumbai. After months in the cold, damp streets of Bedford and London, cows conducting the traffic says everything about Mumbai megacity. The smells here; jasmine, cow dung, camphor, sweat blast the senses a bit. Tropical London. Bombay is disconcerting because it feels like London just with heat, dust, palm trees and monkeys in jeans. Everyone in India seems to want to be here and it is quite an overwhelming location. I have spent  over a month here in the last few years and the resources of human ingenuity are breathtaking (and too long to detail here). These buildings, all British in design and build lend a Victorian grandiosity to the place, if only it could lend a little more to Calcutta. The creakings of memory thrust the city into the filing as 'Dickensian with heatwave'. This section is only maybe a mile square, the rest of the swollen megalopolis is rundown to shanty ...