Paul in India

Manipal, I hardly knew ye

I leave Manipal today, Thursday. Although I can’t wait to travel around Kerala, and I’m looking forward to coming home, I will be sad to leave. I suppose you build up daily routines everywhere- breakfast of a cereal bar and warm water, followed by malaria pills. Lunch of Thali in the canteen, coffee at the coffee stand, smiling at the coffee girl. Dinner at the hotel, Balachandra the waiter. Sleeping in damp sheets caked with sweat and grease in a room that stinks of piss. It’s the little things.

I really wont miss the humidity. Because of the rain I am constantly wet, and when it’s not raining I sweat profusely in the dead heat. Inside, nothing dries, and mould grows on anything you leave down for three days. I wash my clothes in the laundrette when they become damp and smelly, and they come back damp and smelly. Getting into bed is like climbing back into the womb. I have three towels, which I try to rotate, but I can only get to the laundrette once a week.  After three days each towel smells clearly of vomit.

I have made friends here. I really didn’t expect this actually, I thought I would be by myself for most of the work experience. My flat mates have turned out to be great guys and I will definitely miss them. I had the flat to myself this weekend as everyone else had gone to Bangalore. I stayed behind to finish my project, and because I had been there before. Ole and Peter got back first on Sunday night. Peter becomes more and more likeable every time I meet him. He’s actually the sweetest guy ever. He is only 19, but has the wisdom and grace of a sleeping Buddhist. He is Norwegian, with Chinese Heritage and talks with an American accent. I think one day this is what all robots will be like. Peter is so nice they will one day name an award, or a flower after him.

Ole’s luck hasn’t improved any. His laptop broke because of the humidity. He couldn’t get it fixed at the nearest outlet in Mangalore because his was a ‘funny model’. So he took a ten hour overnight bus journey to Bangalore. Except it took him 20 hours because of the two accidents in the mountains. In Bangalore, he only had time to go to Mc Donalds, and catch the bus home again after leaving off his computer. When he arrived home, he got a call from the local Mangalore outlet to say they couldn’t fix his computer. The Bangalore branch saw his address and sent it there via a courier. It arrived back in Mangalore almost before he did. You couldn’t make it up. He’s like a mix between Basil Fawlty and a tall and awkward school girl. He told me all this looking like a traumatised dog, dripping wet, as he’d gotten soaked on the way here. I’m sure this isn’t as funny to read as it is looking into his wet and pained eyes, with his mournful nose and wretched mouth.  When he had finished telling me this, there was a brief pause before he pointed to Peter and whimpered softly: And this c&@t lost my Umbrella.

Perhaps it was because I haven’t heard anyone use the ‘C’ word since I’ve been in India, or perhaps it was because this remark was aimed at Peter, a man who is kinder than primary school. The look of shock on Peter’s face belonged in a nunnery. Perhaps it was the ridiculous Holocaust survivor’s expression on Ole’s face, but I think this is the funniest thing I have ever heard. I couldn’t stop laughing for about fifteen minutes. Even now I am crying with joy.

Soon after this conversation I heard Ole make Peter phone Dominoes to order a Pizza with no cheese. Ole has really struggled with food here. On Wednesday night, we ate out in a place we hadn’t been in before, and he had to physically leave the restaurant because his food was so spicy. The last thing I heard him say as he left was ‘It’s making my whole body hurt’.

Taygun the Terrible Turk has turned out to be ok. He is still extremely dangerous, but he’s ok. There is only one socket in our room, so we have an extension with five outlets that lies under my bed. Taygun has three plugs to keep his virtual empire running, but, having never been out of Turkey, didn’t realize he needed adaptors. The three plugs are wedged into the extension and spark and fizz ominously under me as I try to sleep. I survived this insane fire hazard for five weeks. Yesterday morning I slept late because I was finished work, and I had gotten up at 5:30 to try to watch the solar eclipse. I woke up at 11:00 to find a cup of sugar puffs beside my bed with a note saying ‘Breakfast 4 U mate lolz’. I suppose he is just a ruthless Turkish Militant with a soft centre.

The other two guys in the flat, Grant and Ehssan, were also really cool. Its difficult when you meet people in these situations to imagine if you will keep in touch or not. Ehssan is a really interesting guy, and has promised to take me to Iran. He was able to tell me so much about that mysterious place, and he speaks Persian, Greek, and Arabic. As cool as he is, I just can’t see us meeting up for a pub crawl in Tehran. Possibly I am older than them and cynical. At least there’s facebook.

I have discovered that one of the reasons I didn’t like Indian food at the beginning was that the food here is terrible. When I spent a few days with Tags and Catherine, the food was amazing everywhere we went. I am really disappointed in myself, because for the past two weeks I have been eating mostly Western food at night at the hotel near here. It is difficult though, because it’s the closest restaurant to my flat, and in order to go to eat Indian food, I have to walk to town in the monsoon past this building that does a steak for £1.50. Still, I thought that after six weeks I would know what everything on the menu meant and would be wearing beautiful flowing traditional robes. I had a fantasy of leaving a restaurant and people saying ‘Who is this man who dresses like us, and eats like us, and yet… He is different from us?’. I can even see the look on her, I mean their faces. Instead I am ordering chips and asking the waiter what on the menu is not spicy. I may as well get a tattoo on my calf and change my name to ‘Big Tel’.

I wanted to buy some Indian clothes here too, but chickened out. Westerners all look the same here-baggy shorts, bright t-shirts, umbrellas. Indian men all wear shirts and trousers even in the heat and the heavy rain, and there is a quiet dignity about them. Even the weirdos. The women mostly wear Saris, and they look amazing. Electric colours, beautiful contours. They wear them in the rain, at the beach, and in the gym. At home I always thought that Indian traditional dress was oppressive and conservative, but I find it really attractive here. This may say a lot about the length of time I have been on the sub continent,  geographically and sexually. Any Western men I have seen wearing the traditional Khurtas, rather than looking like they are trying too hard, just look cool. This is what Jeff Bridges was wearing in Hampi. The fact that it probably wasn’t Jeff Bridges isn’t important. The point is, he was wearing what Jeff Bridges probably would have worn. If it’s good enough for Jeff Bridges, it’s good enough for me.

On Monday night we went for a few drinks at ‘open bar’, a bar that consists basically of an off licence and a car park. There is no bar; you just stand outside and drink. It’s like being sixteen again. Ole had had a fight with his girlfriend over the phone, and had to go home early, leaving me standing by myself for a moment. Within seconds, a strange young Indian man slid into this void and started asking me what was wrong with Ole. He seemed genuinely concerned. I told him he was having woman trouble, and at this his eyes lit up. ‘I knew, it, I knew it. I do magic you see’. Here he waved a hand with black fingernails in front of my eyes. I wasn’t sure where this was going, so I said nothing. ‘Are you enjoying India?’ He asked. ‘Yes, extremely. Its been incredible’. ‘I knew it. You are very sensitive you see.’ ‘Really?’ I said. With my Derry hat on I was tempted to ask politely what he meant by that. ‘How can you tell?’ I asked. ‘Oh, you looked down and to your left. It’s a big give away. That’s how I knew that Ole had woman trouble. He was looking to his left. You know Derren Brown?’ At this stage I was wondering how I could move my eyes to tell him to fuck off. He was interesting though. I asked him his name, and he said ‘My name, or my stage name?’ Just your name for now sure. ‘Subi’. And your stage name?  ‘Little Subi’. I stopped listening to him when he started asking people if they wanted to know they day they were going to die.

I had Tuesday afternoon off work, so I went to a coffee shop for a coffee to read the papers. I wanted a relaxing afternoon before meeting Pete, and possibly boozing every night ( and possibly singing ‘Red and White army’ in small Indian villages [ and possibly spending time in a small Indian prison]). I was sitting alone, when a member of staff came over and sat beside me. I recognized him from times I had been there before, and he was a nice guy. I noticed today he wasn’t working, and it didn’t take long to find out why he had come over. He leant over the table excitedly with a strange look in his eyes and asked ‘What is the word that describes all the colours?!’ ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, hoping I had heard him wrong. I had a strange desire to not let him down. ‘Please. The word in English that describes all the colours. Spell it to me’, now taking out a pen and paper. ‘All the colours? You mean like a spectrum? Rainbow?’ I was struggling here, and starting to think he was mental. ‘No no, wiolet, purple, orange, red… all the colours. Can you spell for me?’. A word that describes all the colours? I looked for the exit, unsure of what kind of magic or trickery was afoot. It finally transpired he was trying to give himself a new email address and wanted a word meaning colourful that he could add to his name, Chelu. He was a student, but also an aspiring actor, and he took out his portfolio, which consisted of smutty poses of him in sunglasses. It was an uncomfortable five minutes of Ooohs, and Aaahs as I complimented his versatility.

On the Bbc website the other day there was an article about a landslide in Germany that had killed three people. Whilst this is terrible, I couldn’t help but think of the articles I had been reading in the local papers here. People die every day here because of the rain. In this state alone, 71 people have been killed since the start of June because of lightning or floods. Lightning. It doesn’t make the front pages of the local papers. The big story this week, apart from Hilary Clintons visit, was a female minister who was arrested for insulting another female minister. None of the papers would print the insult, frustratingly. Turn to page three, and there is a small article entitled ‘Heavy rain leaves one dead and 24 houses damaged in Udupi district.’ Bizzarely, on page five there is another article, ‘Six washed away as rains continue.’ It doesn’t really qualify what ‘washed away’ means, but I doubt there was a happy ending. I wonder if it is because of the size of the population, or the inevitability of the monsoon that relegates these stories to the inner pages. I suppose if it happens everyday, it technically isn’t ‘news’. But then I wonder again is it because most of these people are peasants. Who live in shacks that are destined to collapse under heavy rains, or use roads that seasonally become torrents that sweep into the rivers.

I spent all day yesterday just trying to get out of Manipal. I had to get paid, leave back my Library card, pick up laundry, and go to the bank. I have realized a golden truth in India: Everything takes an hour. No matter what it is, the rule of thumb is, ‘give it an hour’. To get my laundry, I had to come back three times, and when it was ready, he had lost a towel and two pairs of socks. To get paid, I had to show my passport and sign a plethora of forms, and to go to the bank I had to negotiate my way past a guard with a shotgun. There was a 500 rupee deposit on my library card, and to get this back was the trickiest of the lot. I queued at three desks for over an hour, had to show my worn passport over and over again, and then had to submit a written request: Kindly refund my six quid. I am now untethered from the sticky red tape of Manipal, and greased up with filthy wonga for my trip down south.

Kerala is described in more than one guidebook as paradise on Earth. I have booked me and Pete into a guest house where Vasco de Gama reportedly died.  He certainly lived there, and spent a lot of time in Fort Cochin the town we will visit first. It is said to be a mix of medieval Chinese, 15th century Portuguese and colonial English culture as it was once a trade post for spices and materials. We plan to take a houseboat to see the Kerala backwaters, which are supposedly a beautiful network of canals and lakes that take you to the heart of Kerala, where you can sail past the small fishing villages whose practices have been undisturbed for centuries. St Thomas, of ‘doubting’ fame, was said to have landed in Kerlala. But you have to take everything that clown said with a pinch of salt.

Manipal has been fantastic, and I will miss it.