Namaskaaram!

The local dialect here in Kerala is Malayalam and this is how you say hello, although I have yet to use it... I will try it out and see if anyway understands me.

Kerala is a very different state to all the others that we have been too. We have not experienced any brown outs here for a start (temporary power cuts), although the internet cafe a few days ago did have the huge Exide truck batteries stacked up in the back which we see in many internet places.

It seems that people are much more affluent here. For all that I have read about the sleepy backwaters of Kerala so far we have seen a rather modernised state. Even the reclaimed land has dwellings made of modern building materials and not the palm, bamboo or adobe combo that I thought would have been abundent. Perhaps we are too close to Cochin to see areas that have not yet been modernised. Today we saw field after field of rice paddy and the typical seen of people ankle deep in water with their backs bent as they reach into the ground. Here, these workers wear brightly coloured umbrellas on their heads as opposed to the conical hats that I saw in Vietnam and Thailand. Even though there are many similarities with South East Asia, there are also signs that modernisation is more prevalent here. Standing tall and proud in the rice paddies we saw huge electricity pylons that would not have been out of place standing in any field in the UK.

We caught the ferry today through the canals and across the huge lakes. I saw people washing in the water, washing pots and pans, their bodies and their teeth as well as clothes. Near each house on the water there is placed a set of stairs of only 3 or 4 steps which lead to a platform down into the water, on the final step will be placed the washing machine aka the laundry stone. On this flat stone the clothes are rubbed with a soap bar and then vigorously wacked against its surface with as much gusto as one can manage. At 8 o'clock in the morning everybody has something to clean. Unfortunatley though, if you look carefully at the surface of the water you will see that all familiar rainbow pattern of oil/ diesel floating on its surface, more often than not near to the bathers. I felt bad because the ferry that we were travelling in, with no doubt contributes to the pollution of the water as well as the noise it makes with its big diesel engine. For the convienience that the ferry brings and the improvements to peoples lifes as a result there is loss of that idyllic picturesque community here. I do not wish to criticise, it is not my place, I have no previous experience of Kerala to compare so I can only make these assumptions.

I have been intrigued by some of the posters and paintings that we have seen. Travelling on the NH17 and the NH47 the roads have taken us through many small villages, more or less without beginning or end between them. Some of the villages have had flags of a white hammer and sickle with the red background that goes hand in hand with communism. I have seen images of Che Guevara on posters with the letters DYFI. I have also seen the hammer and sickle painted on the road. There are huge posters and paintings on walls of a white moon and a star with a green background. I have also seen a hand painted in white with its fingers pointing up and the palm facing outwards. Whole towns can be covered in these various emblems. Today, I asked Johnson, the owner of our guest house what these were and he informed me that the are symbols of the various political parties, the main one the communist party is the government of the state of Kerala. Aparrently the DYFI are the initials for the youth league. The hand is the symbol of a party of the right and the moon and star are symbols of a smaller left political party. I also asked him about the rice paddies and whether the people owned them, if they were co-operatives. There used to be landowners that had much of the land, now the land is broken into smaller plots owned by many different people.

This afternoon I saw trucks that had a piece of A4 paper in the window that said that the rice that they were carrying was aid for the people of Kerala. A sign that not everybody is as affluent as I had been lead to believe given the evidence that I have seen thus far.

I caught someone trying to pickpocket me today when we were in Kottayam (the destination of the ferry). K and I were walking to catch the bus back and I kept feeling a vibration against my bag. I turned to look and there were two women walking close behind me, one smiled, she was wearing a beautiful cream and orange sari. I thought nothing of it and continued to walk, I felt the same thing again, this time thinking that she had bumped into me. As I turned to look, she was smiling and as I looked down I noticed that rather oddly the orange fabric of part of her sari was covering my bag. She moved, stopped smiling and the pair quickly walked around me and dived into a auto rickshaw. I looked at my bag thinking that they had tried to snatch my glasses case, only to discover that the front pocket of my bag had been unzipped (That would explain the feeling of vibration on from my pack) and that she had reached inside and pulled a few notes up. I do not have a rucksack as a daypack becuase I like to keep my belongings where I can see them, slinging my bumbag over my shoulder on this occasion had made me a victim. Lesson learned to be even more careful in the future, thanks also to my Sifu for teaching me to be aware of such things. Not every smile is sweet.

Thats all for now. Thanks for reading my ramblings.