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We start to miss things…

SarahAlderson

February 27, 2010

‘Welllllllllll.’

She draws out the wells.

‘What I really miss is Number Jacks. Especially the pink three. Yeah,’ she sighs, ‘Number Jacks is what I really miss mummy and Mister Maker. You know? Mister Maker. I miss them.’ She sighs again.

I sigh too. Not for Mister Maker, though I do quite like Mister Maker (not as much as Andy), but because I’ve started missing something too. So I can empathise. Which is something I’ve been trying to do lately because it’s like Buddhist and that’s what I am trying to be (which is really difficult when you live in a land filled with mosquitoes).

The thing that I am missing is something that I calculate I haven’t seen, touched, tasted or smelt in five weeks, three days and six hours. I’m not sure of the minutes or seconds because I’m not quite that much of an alcoholic.

Yes. Lula might miss Mister Maker and Number Jacks but I doubt she’d give her life savings for an episode, whereas I might be tempted to do just that for a condensation lit glass of Chablis.

The craving hit me yesterday only, sitting in a windowless kitchen surrounded by chillies, in front of a gas burner, with a child like a hot water bottle wriggling on my lap on the hottest day Kerala has had in many, many years. Lukewarm beer just wouldn’t cut it. I needed wine and I needed it now.

Which was a bitch because we’re in Kerala. India. Kerala the state so dry it’s practically Saharan. India. The country not renowned for its wines. You want alcohol? Then you queue with the rest of the alcoholics outside the one liquor shop in town, wait your turn and hand over your 25 ruppees for some hooch.

Actually I did think about doing that. Then I heard about how in the mornings people tap the palm trees for this honey type liquid which they ferment during the day and then by evening time it’s ready for drinking. I scanned the back garden for palm trees. Wondered whether my Venus razor might be able to tap one.

I am that desperate. I freely admit it.

But tonight we got wine. An Indian wine. A sauvignon blanc from Karnataka. And that first sweet gulp was like …I’m not going to sully it by describing it as nectar or ambrosia. I’m just going to say that it was like dying and going to heaven. Except better.

Lakshmi gets medieval on my arse

SarahAlderson

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February 27, 2010

The hindu goddess of wealth gave me a wax today. Well she was called Lakshmi. But she should have been called Vishnu after the God of destruction. When I was lying there on the flowery tablecloth, the line Samuel L. says in Jackie Brown (?) sprang to mind – ‘I’m going to get medieval on your arse’. I was thinking Lakshmi could use that as the tag line on her leaflets. Cos that’s what she did.

I’ve had another thought. I’m going to rename this blog ‘around the world in 80 waxes’. If we are to choose a location to live based on the waxing /beauty facilities available then India is last on the scoreboard. See my earlier posts about pedicures and waxes if you’re looking for confirmation.

Anyway after that, I hobbled out of the dilapidated hut behind the restaurant, past all the nepali waiters kicking dogs, smoking beedies and heckling me, back to the beach (why’d I go to such salubrious places you ask? That was the posh beauty shack. You should have seen the others). And at the beach I had a big fight with a giant wave.

It was the sunglasses. Or the child. I lost my grip on both. We all ended up somersaulting underneath the sea and for a split second I was like ‘my glasses!’ Then ‘My child!’

I let the ocean take the glasses, a sacrifice worth paying. They were only £12 from boots. Maybe if they’d been Chloe or Versace I would have sacrificed the child. But I didn’t, I hauled Alula screaming out of the waves. She now refuses to go near the sea with me. Only with daddy. Whilst wearing her life jacket. Fair dos.

After that I went back to the room feeling like the day wasn’t going too well. Which is when the cockroach appeared. Inside John’s t-shirt. He reacted calmly. If it had been me. If it had been my t-shirt, I would have run screaming off the balcony. He just turned to me and said ‘What was that?’

It scuttled like an alien over his back and down his leg. I screamed and pushed John towards the door, towards the balcony. John had more sense. ‘Can you get it off me?’

Oh yes, hadn’t thought of that. I grabbed a pair of lula’s drying shorts and swotted it until it flew to the floor backpedalling it’s gazillion legs whilst trying to flip over onto its front. Hah Cockroach, you might be able to survive a nuclear apocalypse but you can’t roll over. I imagine a billion cockroaches lying on their backs kicking their legs in the air over a landscape of grey, burnt nothingness. Just Vigo Mortensen pushing a shopping trolley over it talking about the fire inside. Evolution has its flaws.

Then finally, we went to a Hindu Festival. There were seventeen elephants. Alula now wants to convert to Hinduism. Actually there wouldn’t need to be a conversion because she’s nothing now except maybe a hedonistic worshiper of the goddess Barbie, but you know what I mean. Anyway, it was so hot that the sweat was pouring in rivers from places I didn’t know sweat could pour from. You could have panned for salt off my body by the end of the night and put Malden out of business.

Then the elephant looked at me resentfully, unfurled its tree trunk of a willy and peed all over the road – about fifty gallons of wee that cascaded towards us in torrents.

So I’m thinking that the gods and the animals and the whole of the earth has it in for me today.

diet coke break…

SarahAlderson

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February 23, 2010

Past the paddy fields, through the palm grove, down onto the beach, through the fishing village, skirt the sleeping fisherman by the boat, up onto the path, down past the nets, across the beach, up the hill, underneath the eagles, dodge the rabid puppy, avoid the yogis with their rolled up mat sabres, quietly past the lotus sitting meditator, down the path, over the rubble, up some steps, headbutt the hanging curtain of walkers crisps. And after all that, they only have full fat coke.

John has brought me to the middle of nowhere. A place so remote diet coke hasn’t penetrated it. I am a character in Heart of Darkness. John wanted authenticity and to be close to nature. I ask him if termites in the bed is close enough for him. I like my nature at a distance. Usually a celluloid distance. I thought we were ok, that I could manage, because I could see the giant towers of a mega hotel just fifteen minutes walk down the beach. But then John told me it was actually a mosque. I had been dreaming of a mosaic bottomed turquoise infinity pool and a mojito waiter service. My fantasy is undone.

Our neighbours are a preying mantice and a meercat. The chef here ran away yesterday. The termites have hatched their eggs. The water has just gone off whilst I am half covered in sand and half in soap. There are two lizards, a mummy and a daddy as Lula points out, scurrying across the ceiling. Still John insists it’s just what he was imagining and hoping for. I don’t say anything.

And yes. That does take a large amount of willpower on my part.

Nobody puts Alula in the picture

SarahAlderson

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February 18, 2010

Baby, baby.

Everywhere we go it’s to a chorus of Baby, Baby. It makes me feel like an extra in dirty dancing. Like I need to be carrying a watermelon with me wherever I go and then maybe someone will tell John not to put me in the corner. I digress – that’s my thirteen year old self right there. The baby baby’s aren’t said to me. They’re said to Alula.

Alula’s response is to narrow her eyes, just out her chin and stomp off. If you know me, you’ll know exactly where she gets that from. But to be fair, I can’t blame her. Since she breezed through the arrivals doors on top of a mountain of bags she has been at the epicentre of an attention earthquake.

She has taken to wearing her shades everywhere, like a precocious version of Anna Wintour. Like Anna Wintour she has also dispensed with civilities to anyone unless they’re bringing her a juice or a sugar laced ciapatti (I guess Anna does the same except exchange the juice and ciapatti for a Chloe handbag and a glass of Bollinger).

I now appreciate why celebrities are sometimes rude to paparazzi. Because Alula has been papped at least 300 times since arriving in India. She’s had camera phones shoved in her face, she’s had zoom lenses trained on her from afar and she’s had several leery older men digging their knuckles into her cheeks which makes me want to karate chop them in the nuts.

Baby, baby they say.

Yeah. Hands off the baby, we say.

Now she buries her head in my leg every time she sees a camera.

‘Can we take her photo?’ they ask, having failed to get the shot through subterfuge.

‘Let’s ask her shall we?’ I say, ‘Alula sweetie, do you want your photo taken?’

‘No,’ she mumbles, her head still buried.

‘No,’ I say, ‘Sorry, she’s a bit tired of having her photo taken.’

John and I discuss it over a beer. We think we might have solved our financial issues. The rights to Alula’s image could be sold to finance our way around the world. If we charged 20ruppees a shot by now we could have paid for a week long stay at the Taj. We just need to convince the baby baby.

Alula meet Mumbai

SarahAlderson

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February 13, 2010

‘What did the lady want?’

‘She wanted money.

Why?

‘Because some people don’t have any money.’

‘Well why didn’t you give her some mummy?’

Alula has been in Mumbai less than 20 hours and it’s not the heat or the noise or the smells that have blown her away. It’s the dresses. She doesn’t see the poverty or the outstretched arms begging for alms. She just sees the blues and the pinks and the reds and the greens of the Saris and thinks she’s arrived at a Barbie fashion convention. You think I’m joking but right now she’s standing on the coffee table in a sunhat, a pink tutu and with freshly painted red toenails and is choreographing a dance off between her Barbie, herself and her my little pony.

So her question gives me pause because it’s a valid question. It’s valid in her world because she thinks money just comes out of machines (whenever I remember my pin number that is) so why on earth wouldn’t they have money? And I guess she’s a budding communist or something which will please her grandfather no end.

But it’s also a valid question for me because like everyone says, there is no place like India for realising the quintessential truth about the unfairness of life and how fortunate you are (yeah, yeah cliché-tastic) So really I should distribute some of the wealth as my little Stalin would like me to. So why aren’t I?Why aren’t I reaching into my purse and pulling out the rupees? Is it because I’m already immune to the begging and the deformed limbs and the burnt scaley skin of babes in arms? Is it because the aggression with which they prod at you makes me switch off? Is it that because you can’t help everybody so you decide it’s easier to not help anybody? Is it because as Pooja says, most of the money doesn’t go to them, it goes to the mafia bosses who run the whole begging industry? Or is it that I’m just a hard hearted bitch? What did the Buddha do? That’s what I want to know.

In the end I tell her, ‘Because mummy and daddy give money to organisations, not people.’ Which is true.

‘What are organisations?’

I look at John but he doesn’t throw any lifelines my way. So the conversation continues via ‘heducation what’s that?’ to ‘why don’t people have jobs?’ to ‘why is that man (the rickshaw driver) wearing that funny hat?’ – ‘because he’s a muslim’ – ‘what’s muslim?’ – ‘It’s a religion’ – ‘what’s a religion?’ – ‘it’s like a fairy tale’ (that was John that last one).

So that’s Alula’s first 12 hours in Mumbai.

Warm crabs, dead cats

SarahAlderson

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February 9, 2010

The Tupperware of crabs is warm in my hand. I am warm in the taxi. It is nearly midnight and the taxi (fecking surprise here) is lost. So lost that I think I might just try looking for the hatch and perhaps Sawyer to keep me company. I am sick of taxi drivers waggling their heads and telling me yes, they know where they are going and then getting lost. If I empted the warm crab curry over his head I wonder what would happen. But I just wonder about it because I’ve read Shantaram and I don’t want to go to prison in India.

I know, you’re wondering why I am holding a Tupperware container of warm crabs in the back of a taxi at midnight in Bombay whilst we cruise the now emptying streets asking strangers the way to Pali Naka. Well so the hell do I.

I went earlier in the evening to meet one of the unLTD India award winners. She then took us home and fed us an eight course meal with crabs as le piece de resistance. This is my doggy bag on my overstuffed lap. Anyway she runs a programme that provides support to the night schools in Mumbai. These night schools are basically for young people from the slums like Dharavi who work all day and who then come at night to study to get their High School Equivalency (like GCSEs). With this certificate they can increase their chances of getting more highly paid work. Or just work. So we went to one of the night schools in a building so worn out it looked like it needed putting out of its misery.

And all the kids were bent over their work, scribbling away (actually they were momentarily bent over their work and then they were one and all staring at the weird white girl come a visting) and I felt so depressed all of a sudden. There were fluorescent lights and crumbling walls and I knew that the kids had already worked a twelve hour day and were staring at me wondering what overprivileged planet I came from. And I was wondering the same thing to0 (white girl has eyes opened in India – it’s like a headline from the Onion).

Then we passed by hundreds of shacks on the way there. From two storey solid ones, to corrugated iron and plastic ones down to cardboard and tarpaulins stretched over the pavement to just people lying sleeping on sheets of newspaper. To finally people just lying stretched out on the pavement. And then we saw a kitten so newborn it was still covered in mucus. And it tumbled onto the pavement mewling and then fell under a car.

And now in a cab with my crabs. Lost. It all feels a bit much.

Guess that’s India for you.

I see dead people

SarahAlderson

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February 7, 2010

‘22222359’

‘Yeah I don’t need the phone number thanks. There’s the map on that page can you just take me there?’

‘Surrounded – by – pot – plants – and – set- in – a – beautifully – restored – yellow – portugese – townhouse.’

‘Yeah thanks I’ve read the description, do you think you could just drive me, like there, sometime today?’

I am in the taxi. The driver is trying to deposit me on the side of the road. I have given him the book with the map in. But he’s more interested in reading me in halting half-blind stalling English the description of the place I want to get to rather than like actually driving me there.

‘1500 – rupees. Hot – water.’

Eventually I have to get out, accost a local woman and ask directions. By the time we get there all the rooms are taken in the beautifully restored yellow portugese townhouse (the Lonely Planet like their adjectives don’t they?). I am tempted to smack the driver around the head with the book.

But this is why I’ve ended up here. In a place which makes me think of cells, of both the Holloway and monastery variety. Similar to a monastery, the Panjim Park Lane Lodge (don’t get misled by the words Park and Lane) also has a curfew – 10pm – which is ok because I wasn’t thinking of sampling the local disco. I’m having to take my ipod everywhere I go in this city because the music playing in restaurants is so bad. My ears have phantom headphone syndrome – you know like phantom limb syndrome – when they’re not there I can still feel them in my ears. Unfortunately can’t hear the music.

Also like a monastery there is a picture outside my door of a rotting corpse. It’s ok to put pictures of rotting corpses in your house if the corpse belongs to a Saint I’ve discovered. And also I have to be out by 8am. Obviously because they expect me to go to Matins or something.

The bathroom, free of beatific corpses, is outside, communal and has a corrugated roof. It does have hot water which when I stood under it scared the shit out of me (again handy because the shower was over the loo). I’d forgotten what hot water showers felt like. It really was a surprise.

You want to know why I’m staying here and not at the slightly superior Panjim Inn with wood panelled balconies, no curfew, hot water and no dead people? Because I forgot my pin number. Which I am actually laughing about because I think that that is proof of how good the last two weeks on the beach have been. My brain has atrophied to such an extent that I have forgotten a four digit number. And now my card is barred. And I’m down to my last £15 which has to get me to the airport and back to Rich and Pooja’s tomorrow where I can raise a loan until John arrives. I’ve been looking forward to his arrival. But now I’m really looking forward to it. I shall jump on him. Then demand his plastic.

Here are pictures of panjim.

A man gave me a pedicure

SarahAlderson

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February 5, 2010

The Tibetan boy (he’s not like a boy boy, more like 25). I get the Tibetan boy. Tara gets the woman.

I wonder whether boys know what pedicures are let alone how to actually GIVE one. But I sit. And smile politely. And think that at least it’s not a bikini wax. It’s just feet. Though my feet are so gross right now he might prefer to give me a full Brazilian. That comes from walking around barefoot in the sun for two weeks. They are as calloused and scaley as a lizard’s claws. I have a labourer’s feet. Like I’ve been working on a road gang barefoot in between digging in the fields for potatoes. I’m almost too embarrassed to put them on his lap. Almost I said.

Tara has a moment with the implements. ‘Are they sterilised?’ she asks. This from the girl who almost got a tattoo in Mumbai from a man who didn’t know that a circle has an equal radius and whose first words to her were ‘I like pink thongs.’

I look at the plastic container holding the nail scrubber, the file and the pumice. They look communal.

‘Just ask them not to cut your nails if you’re worried,’ I say.

The woman just waggles her head and says, ‘yes, file, massage, polish.’

‘No,’ says Tara, ‘I’m asking about sterilisation.’

That might confuse the woman I think. You might not get a pedicure and I don’t want to see what implements they’d bring out for that. Let’s just move on. Move on. It’s clear the pedicure tools are strangers to the dettol.

They don’t cut our nails. But I found out that oval is the shape de mode in India. For toenails. That’s just wrong right?

I walk out with red, oval toenails. Courtesy of Diana of London nail polishes. Not Nails Inc. And then we walk across the beach and by the time we get home we wonder why we bothered.

Today in money

SarahAlderson

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February 5, 2010

Today in money.

7p bottle of filtered water

£1.50 fruit salad and granola & honey, lemon and ginger tea

12p 3 x samosas

66p autorickshaw

£6 hour long spa pedicure (totally necessary ok)

£1.05 two sweet lime waters

66p autorickshaw

5p loo roll

£1.30 vodka & tonic

£1 chocolate mousse fudge tart

£3 salad and fish

£1 beer

There should be more water in there. The water to alcohol ratio is skewed. Must remedy. Also this is why I am the only person to go to India and not lose weight. Must remedy.

Some time.

Can we live here? I think so.

SarahAlderson

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February 3, 2010

It’s my first stop. And although I’m missing a fundamental part of my family (that would be my husband and daughter) I think I’ve found us a home (not like an actual house – that would be getting ahead of myself). I mean a place I think we could call home for say, three months of the year. I keep thinking, that was easy, shall we get a refund on the round the world tickets? But like I said, I think three months at a go would be enough. I doubt the view would be so good through monsoon clouds. But I reckon three months here, say three months in Bali, three months in the states and three months back home, maybe, that could work. I’m inspired by this pattern which an Indian/French couple do year in year out. They seem utterly blissed out by it.

I’m staying in a room with big high ceilings, pink walls (Lula will be sold) and a balcony the size of a football pitch overlooking palm trees and the beach. But forget the room, forget even the hammocks and the waiter service to the hammocks, here are the things that are making me want to live here for part of the year:

Every morning I get up and eat fruit salad and drink chai under a palm tree looking out over the beach and I think about Starbucks and London Bridge and snow before burying my toes in the sand and smiling.
Every morning I go for a mile swim in the sea where there have so far been no drownings or shark eatings and I think about Beckenham swimming pool, the people who swim fast in the slow lane and chlorine (and life guards. Which aren’t such a bad thing).

The best restaurant in town has plastic chairs and no menu but you can eat a thali for 90p which is about £3 cheaper than a 3 bean salad from M&S
There is a Steiner school up the beach which charges about £60 a month. Which is about what it costs to send your child to a nursery in London for ONE day.
There are a zillion children on the beach of every nationality running around naked. You don’t see that in Croydon Rec. Well actually you do sometimes but it makes you tut.
I’ve been here a week and a half and am already on tabs at half the shops. There’s trust here. Can you imagine walking into Sainsbury’s or the pub and saying, ‘Oh, I forgot my purse, can I pay you later?’ and being told, ‘yeah, sure no problem.’
Home makes the best cakes you will ever, ever eat in your life. EVER.
There are no cinemas BUT that’s ok because the dvd man comes by about six times a day with the latest releases for 50p a pop.
Beer costs 40p
Boats to Butterfly beach cost £10 for private hire. A travelcard to zone 6 would cost the same and not be half as pretty though maybe it’s as hot.
I’ve managed to write 40,000 words in 9 days. I probably managed that level of creative writing in 9 years at work.

Ok, here’s the bad side:

Most of Notting Hill seems to relocate here for the winter months. But they are quarantined at Harmonic the yoga place on the hill. And they don’t slum it in the backstreets of the village.
There are way too many yoga bods. I think I’ve mentioned this already but I mention it again because it’s seriously depressing.
There’s too much nasal cleansing going on for my liking. And too much talking about the nasal cleansing.
There are no life guards.
There are no percy pigs. (But who needs my little pink friends when there’s chocolate fudge caramel mousse tart?)

I think the good outweighs the bad. Don’t you?