Category: travel

Say ‘cheese’, say ‘squee-ee-ze’… India partakes in its daily attempt to set a new world record for number of sentient beings in a confined space (ala 1970s Blue Peter phone boxes and minis!)… this time as we wend our way around hair pin bends, tumbling down through the Tamil Nadu foothills of the Western Ghats (think Alp sized mountains, without the cable cars, neglected due to continental proximity to the humongous himalayas)… on every bend, there is a collective flabbergasted ‘oof’ of crushed torsos, overlaid with the higher trill of women’s voices… I one of the the lucky ones… with a seat, through dint of having been stuck on the bus, forever, since it and seemingly times beginning… India has a knack of making you feel like a speck amongst a billion, whisper it, soto voce, Kerala and most of the western states, do not have the sense of the high tempo madness… the numinous of the Nadu…. for all the senses the dial turned to 11… ego bamboozled midst a soup of sensation… pounding bollywood tunes, pong of armpits, a bird of paradise blur of colourful saris
a day of contrasts: dawn amongst the tea plantations of munnar, awash with myriad green… watching the malabar giant black squirrels somersault amongst the top of the highest trees… fighting off the equally black crows… truly giants, the size of a monkey, kali black with the fiercest of red trimmings!… a loooong bus journey, 6 hours when it should have been 3… to end guzlling masala dosa, lawks the flavours, just outside the majestic gopurams (gateways) of the Sri Meenakesh temple in Madurai…. proper cream crackered. g’night, snooze good x

‘The Shape and the Shaping of Wisdom’… Indian Geezer, in a full moon party T-Shirt, comes up to me in a restaurant, whilst I’m guzzling a somewhat delish vegan buffet with Alix and Tim, he says ‘sorry to interrupt, but are you by any chance 1028 milligrammes?’… I just about have enough savvy to appreciate it’s a lsd reference, so presume he’s either trying to sell me some, or wants to buy? anyway conversation trundles along, apparently I am a dead ringer doppelganger for a legendary trance dj… who’d a thunk it… blooming old school hippies!… confusion resolved, turns out in his younger days, our new found friend was a tamil rapper, from madurai… he proceeds to give us a stomping, passionate, nailed on lyrical rap! bravo! on querying the lyrics it’s a conscious spiel, as to how we have to honour the sunshine and the farmers for our food… groovy… nowadays he works with a more jazzy collective and plays us a song off his phone, cinematic buzz… Next talk turns to his youthful adoration of eminem, shows us how he has the same tattoo on his left hand… says that gandhi would have approved of eminen! kinda ‘authentically, living out, and telling, the story of his life’… in the background, his gentle shy wife is holding the baby…. bubba gets in on the act, gurgling and smiling chubby cheeked adorable… quite a presence, for such a small lumpen thing… baby is called ‘Sith Robin’, which means, the shape and the shaping of wisdom… dad then takes a selfie, so, in time honoured fashion, I get him to reciprocate and snap one for me… ‘chinni’, sugar, is the tamil version of ‘say cheese’… before he leaves, as a finale, the fellow sings us the sweetest, most soulful of tamil ballards… a beautiful timbre to his voice, a powerful resonant song
anyway, just thought to share, on the hoof, this travelling vignette, from 30 or so mins ago xx