Entertainment and Industry

It's quiet, too quiet! It's been awhile since I wrote, but then again, it's been awhile since we've had any news from home too. (I'm needy!) And I'm afraid everyone is going to be disappointed because we have not been moving around. Yes we have been at the same place now for more than a week - and will in fact have spent 13 days here before moving on. We don't move until next Thursday when we head off for Varkkala (or is that Varkala, around here spellings are changeable).

I told you we were staying in a palm grove so I thought you might like to have an idea of what that might look like. You won't see the hotel, but here are the coconut palms.





And since I mentioned the fishermen out hauling their nets (and boats too), here's a picture of that.




We've gotten a little touristy. Our hotel presents a Kathakali show once a week and we went to see the one that was on last week. The process of watching is interesting. First one gets to watch the artists put on their makeup which took an hour and a half. It' entertaining, but a little slow. Their's a lot of makeup to put on, since they paint their whole face with patterns and in the case of the "main actor" there are paper circles which are applied below the lip, which I think are intended to make the actor look ferocious. The characters are demons who are represented in the mythical lives of the Hindu pantheon of gods.

In this picture you get to see one of the demons preparing. The character is female and at one point in the performance turns himself into a beautiful maiden who tempts the other demon until he gets angry. Then the demon turns back into a woman and demon number two chops off her nose, ears and I think breasts. (The demon had a lovely pair of black breasts which were somewhat like small rockets.) Here's the black faced demon preparing his face and the green faced demon getting close to finishing.






The music accompanying this presentation is percussion - two drums beat there are small finger cymbals and some high pitched singing from one of the musicians. Everyone is male by the way, including the beautiful maiden who wears quite bright pink makeup and a cute little curlicue of painted hair by her ears. Here are all three performers in complete regalia, taking their bows at the end of the performance.



We went to another Kathakali performance last night on the beach. It was presented free on a makeshift stage and was another episode in the long play - did I mention that the whole performance takes 41 days? (I know I didn't, just wanted the shock value!) The performance last night took only 50 minutes, but with only one performer working in mime, it was a long time for us. There was a great funny part though where the character found the baby Krishna (or gave birth, not sure about that). She was breast feeding, in mime of course and couldn't get Krishna off her breast, even though she tried tugging beating, and pushing with both hands. It was the highlight of the performance, honest. Otherwise it's lots of facial expressions, hand movements and a little dancing. Geordie leaned over and said it was a lot like watching paint dry, and I responded that it was more like listening to paint dry, since there is no dialogue. We are such philistines!



And of course one needs to have a look at one of the musicians. Here is the main drummer whose drum appeared to be a big pot with a small mouth, covered in a drum skin and pounded with the flat of his hands.




After the performance we decided to eat at one of the many seafood restaurants on the promenade. After examining all the fish on display outside the restaurant I chose a huge grouper for both of us to share, simply grilled and served with butter rice which includes raisins and cashew nuts. As an aside this is the cashew nut capital of the world I think - certainly the cashew nuts they grow are exported around the world. They are available in all the little shops and we can even get a pound of them, unroasted, at our hotel. Haven't asked the price.

Now for all the vegetarians here, please avert your eyes, since the next picture is our lovely grouper resplendent on its plate surrounded by thin slices of cucumber. The flesh of the fish was very sweet, with a lovely taste and cost a whole 10 dollars for two. With the rice and two bottles of beer (660 ml at 90 rupees each) our meal cost a princely 630 rupees or a whole 15 dollars. (note the beer is in a large tankard with a horse head on it - this is a dry state and even though it's ok to see beer, apparently it's not ok to see it.The bottles are always delivered wrapped in newspaper and usually poured into glasses or mugs where the colour can't be seen.)



Here's a little industry for you. Near our place in the coconut grove we have watched this woman weaving palm fronds which serve as walls around some of the simple huts the people live in. They were also used to hide the performers on the beach last night. Interesting how people develop these different ways of using the natural environment. In Puerto Vallarta palms are used to make the palapas to shade the tourists, but here they use umbrellas for that purpose - it's surprising that the idea didn't develop independently here and that palm frond weaving is not a Mexican pastime.


There's lots of other industry around here. I had a nice tailor sew me up a silk shirt, long sleeved, with pocket, although he couldn't finish ironing it because of a power outage. There are no pictures. Geordie is about to have a shirt made for him. Quite different, in cotton, and designed especially for him so if everything works out, I will have to find someone to take a photo of both of us to show off.

I hope you have enjoyed this picture heavy blog. I haven't done much of it as I've gone along because it seemed to take forever, but I've found a way around it. I'm sure everyone else has figured out that if you copy the picture to the desktop it goes much faster than attempting to load it directly from the camera disk, and doesn't stress the camera so much either.

I look forward to hearing from a few of you now. We have our regulars sending mail, but there are lots of people we would love to hear from. If you don't want to use the comments page you can always send an email. We have only a month left now before we head home from India. Geordie is at another computer attempting to find a train out of Varkkala to take us north. We head for Varkkala next Thursday as I said. Booking it online was a bit of an adventure but it finally got done and we will spend another 10 days there. I must really get down to the beach more to work on my tan. The face is dark but the rest of my body only sees the sun for about an hour in the afternoon when I go swim for a bit in the lovely pool which is part of our hotel complex.

And so to lunch, and a nice trip to the pool. It's hot and we need the coolness since our room is unairconditioned to save money.