The alarm clock went off at 07:00 hrs. and George and I were up, dressed and away while Martin was still rubbing sleep from his eyes. We took the bus into Trivandrum and had breakfast in the Indian Coffee House while we waited for the liquor shop to open.
Businessmen walked swiftly to work wearing formal shirts, sarongs and brief cases under their arms. They were mainly bare-footed and bore a cream-coloured smear across their foreheads, embellished with a red spot. This is a Tilak and shows that they are Hindu.
The Bindi is a dot worn on the forehead right above the nose. It is a type of Tilak. Married Hindu women traditionally wear the Bindi. It symbolizes the energy of women and is said to protect her and her spouse from evil. However, today, it has less of a religious meaning and has a more decorative connotation. Now, unmarried girls are wearing elaborate Bindis as form of jewellery. This is just an example of the changing times.
Tilak: This symbol is very similar to the Bindi. It is a mark on the forehead. The Tilak for a man is a straight line and a dot for a woman. The slight differences in lines or dots help distinguish between the different sects of Hinduism. The Tilak is made out of clay or ash, which give many of them a reddish color. The Tilak is applied everyday to very serious Hindus. All Hindus wear a Tilak whenever they visit a temple (even non-Hindus are given one when they visit a temple) and on special religions ceremonies (weddings). The mixture that the Tilak is made from cools the forehead and helps mediation for it makes one more focused.
All the red flags were out across the roads and around the hammer and sickle monuments and statues. Police in baggy shorts belled out by wire frames stood on podiums at road junctions and waved their arms about and were totally ignored by the reckless streams of hooting traffic. Cyclists strained to push their metal steeds uphill against the weight of huge sacks tied onto their bike racks.
We bought some Dettol, our multipurpose medication, some Lomotil pills, rum and half a bottle of whisky for the Serge’s son. Back at the bus stand we were greeted by the prospect of a 45-minute wait so we were swayed into starting a taxi pool. We sat in the back seat of the cab with a middle-aged Austrian woman and an Indian, while 2 German girls, another Indian and the driver crammed into the front seats.
We hurtled back to Kovalum with the driver blasting a clear passage through the other traffic with his horn. Back at the Sreevas we had a drink before joining Martin on the beach. The sun was out and the sky was blue and, as usual, a swim in the sea made us happy to be alive.
George and I walked around to the next bay which was considerably more dangerous as the seabed sloped down so rapidly that the terrific undertow could whisk you out of your depth in a trice. The beach was packed and most of the women were topless, a mistake in many cases as the sun mercilessly burnt the sensitive skin which seldom saw the light of day.
We were bored after an hour or so and returned to the Shangri-La for lunch and a break from the solar grilling. A photographic mission was next on the agenda, so we grabbed our cameras and set off passed the lighthouse to the fishing settlement by the mosque.
The mosque was still under construction (started in 1976) and was being built to serve the Muslim inhabitants of the village. There was also a Christian church on the opposite side of Vizhinjam Fishing Harbour Beach bay. Apparently, the rival religious devotees clashed violently from time to time, merrily burning each other’s huts and killing each other in the spirit of Jihad and the Crusades.
We walked through the obstacle course of drying nets, ropes, and huts made entirely from palm fronds. Women and children shouted greetings and “beggings” as we passed. In the thick of the village the air got quite menacing as villagers crowded around us, we were ironic symbols of wealth amongst their poverty.
I got the impression that a lone tourist at night could “disappear” in this place. Luckily, we were 3 strapping young lads and we kept on the move. Bloated ugly black pigs snuffled through the shit and garbage around an area where the crude wooden crosses indicated a graveyard. We grabbed a few photos and made our way back alongside a muddy stream where a colourful crowd were performing their ablutions, cause for sneaking a covert photograph.
Back at our room the Cindy’s were lying in wait for us and George was soon embroiled in a chat about their native Denmark with the animated “Pixie”. “No Neck” looked sullen and hung out her washing with safety pins instead of clothes pegs.
George and I went down to the sea again and had a marvellous swim as the sun went down. We had begun to “read” the sea so as to judge the waves just right for body surfing up onto the sandy beach. Every now and again misjudgement would result in us being smashed and battered along the abrasive seabed.
Good judgement would result in you roaring towards the beach in a Superman flying posture with a turbulent cushion of foam beneath your chest. Surprisingly my flip-flops were still where I left them on the beach when we returned, tired and sun-scorched, to our room.
We had a shower and, on the way back, the Sergeant had a question for us. “This is the night that Father Christmas is coming to your very house”? We dressed quickly and got into the Shangri-La just before the heavens opened in a mighty deluge of rain.
It was initially empty, but a few more morose faces appeared fairly shortly. Two new girls appeared and Rolf Harris lookalike that we nicknamed “Mr. Magoo” started on the “Where’ve you been? Where ya going to”? routine and an English bloke and another American soon joined in eagerly to expound their travel itinerary, in the game of one-upmanship.
Mr. Magoo is a fictional cartoon character created at the UPA animation studio in 1949. Voiced by Jim Backus, Mr. Magoo is a elderly, wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of comical situations as a result of his extreme near-sightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem. However, through uncanny streaks of luck, the situation always seems to work itself out for him, leaving him no worse than before.
A group of kraut hippies were getting high on our left and two blokes opposite were a picture of misery. An emaciated bearded Australian looked as if he had just got word about the extermination of his family back home and “Nero”, a German fellow who wore his sarong like a toga, looked like he had just received a “Dear John” letter.
A "Dear John letter" is a letter written to a husband or boyfriend to inform him their relationship is over, usually because the author has found another lover. Dear John Letters are often written out of an inability or unwillingness to inform the man in person.
You could generally tell how long a traveller had been roving the Indian sub-continent by how emaciated they were. They wore their skeletal appearance as a badge of honour and a sign that they had “gone native” on their travels. One jovial traveller we nicknamed “Harry Belsen, the jolly skeleton”!
George and I broke out the rum and Martin wandered back to our room complaining that the cheese spaghetti had “done him up” (made him feel ill). We gave “Nero” some rum in an effort to cheer him up. We joked with Ambi and Chapati, who was pissed (drunk) and being silly, and we agreed that this was a miserable way to spend Christmas, in a tropical storm a long way from home.
We explained that Martin was not married and had thus gone for a J. Arthur ("J. Arthur Rank" has been used as cockney rhyming slang, both for " bank " and "wank" (slang for masturbation), typically shortened to "J. Arthur" or just "Arthur". This revelation was much to Chapati’s amusement and he gambolled about the restaurant miming the act to everyone’s embarrassment. As the result of this the staff changed Martin’s nickname from “Limca” to “Handwork”!
The Cindys returned as everyone else vacated and we gave Pixie a tot of rum. She didn’t stop yacking after that. She had sussed that we were Australians because of my accent! It was not the clipped precise BBC English that she expected from British people.
The Shangri-La closed down for the night and George and I wandered down to the beach. We had four boiled eggs and toast each at a beach café where Indians in Western attire were rapidly switching through their range of Western music cassettes on a portable player. They were apparently having a beach barbeque.
In my opinion Christmas is an occasion to celebrate at home and you can keep your Christmas dinner on the beach. Give me good old snow any day. We turned in and slept well, disturbed only by Martin chundering (being sick) on the step outside our door.
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