Kodaikanal: Getting Close to Nature

Kodaikanal is the most superb hill station in the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu: a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle (actually let’s be honest, the ‘crap’) of Chennai. In the hills you can walk freely around the town without being harassed by auto-rickshaws and shop assistants we have been feasting on nuts and fruits and are positively happy. We have never been this close to nature before...

1) When monkeys’ Attack
(alternative titles: ‘Lonely Planet of the Apes’; ‘So long, Donkey Kong’; ‘Bubble’s Revenge (Who’s Bad?)’; ‘Monkey See, Monkey Spew’; ‘India has drop bears too’)

A: Awww, aren’t those monkeys sitting on the wall cute?
G: Yeah, look at the little baby one, it’s eating a mango.
A: Oh well, we’ll just walk up passed them up to breakfast
EM [evil monkey]: GRRR! Hisss! Grrrr! [translation: bugger off; none shall pass; but you do look very tasty.]
[monkey throws itself at Aussies, fangs out; Aussies run off and lock themselves in their room. Repeat x 2]
A [on telephone]: umm, reception? This may sound a little strange, but we can’t leave the room as monkeys keep attacking us. Can you please send help?
R [reception]: Yes madam [said nonchalantly as if this thing happens all the time]
G: let’s just have one last try
[A and G walk outside towards the steps and are relieved to see no monkeys, only to have one rather aggressive monkey jump two metres off a tree and land on a powerline one metre over our heads.]
EM: Grrrrrr! Hissss! Spitt [translation: I’ve told you before, bugger off tasty morsels; hope you’ve had your rabies shot]
[A and G run back into room. Man with stick for monkey removal arrives. We are saved. Yay! Much amusement amongst staff]

Hear no evil, so no evil, my arse! Those monkeys are the devil incarnate.

2)Kingfisher(s)

Beautiful little blue kingfisher birds fly around Kodaikanal Lake, and we have been lucky enough to have seen two of them so far. But we have also been having encounters of another kind of kingfisher as well: Kingfisher Beer. That delicious amber liquid that comes in king-brown bottles and costs $3 each, and in the Calton Hotel (the only pub for 1000 kilometres) you get snacks too for that price. But the reason why we wanted to comment on the Kingfisher Beer is the label. It reads: “Kingfisher Premium: Since 1857…. Liquor ruins Country, Family and Life.” And when we looked at the door to the pub, the door too had “Alcohol ruins Country, Family and Life” printed on the saloon-like doors. So we thought, wouldn’t Kingfisher Beer be the ultimate weapon in times of war? All you need to do is to lob a few over the border, and sit back and watch.

3) The Cattle Grid
So if cows are sacred, then why are there so many cattle-grids preventing the bovis sacra from wandering around freely? We have two theories on the matter. A) cows are like cats and b) cow are anarchists; and humans have clicked on.

a) Cow are like cats
Cows take advantage of human generosity (no offence Burby the cat of Como, who will no doubt be currently sunning himself on the couch surrounded by delicacies of a feline nature which he will subsequently remove when a human gets home and pretend to be hungry.) Cows, like cats, see human weakness and take advantage of it. The other day we saw a cow family having a picnic on the lawn by the lake, and taking up most of the park, but no-one had the heart to move them on. People are very obliging with the cows, leaving them food and water around the place. To quote John Berryman, but making it a bit more bovine, “Cows have no bankers, and do not drink, and cannot be arrested, and pay no taxes, and in general, cows have it made.” (taken from the Dreamsongs; Bats have been substituted). But humans have clicked on somewhat, and around Kodaikanal you see many cattle grids preventing our bovine friends from walking into shops, home driveways and churches. You see there is nothing worse that not being able to hear the sermon because the cow next to you is chewing cud loudly.

b) Cows are anarchists
Having just argued that cows are cats, let’s continue with this theme and explore the notion that cows are anarchists. Cows walk purposefully in the middle of the road to stop traffic. Radio announcement: “Its bumper to bumper cows on Kodaikanal road. Pure grid-lock.” They stand there and mooo at the top of their lungs, and people think that they are stupid, loud animals (but with religious significance) but in fact they are plotting world domination. They have a control centre which they are in fact communicating with, and if we translate the cow [lingua bovium] then it in fact says, “Daisy, central control says that we are to move slightly to the right to prevent the bus getting though.” To which the reply is “thanks Clarabella, I have already strategically placed a few patties and will move presently.”

The only problem with this theory is that we are not sure what anarchists aim at doing in India. The normal definition seems to already be in place, with a decided lack of infrastructure, police, road rules, medical facilities and any other form of government control. So perhaps the cows succeeded in their anarchist endeavours long ago and are merely maintaining it.

4) the quest for Cows with views
Fiona dared us to photograph cows, and we just thought that it was too easy. So we upped the bet: we have to find cows with views. Cows grazing on cliffs was a particularly easy one, and we are hoping that no one practices cow-tipping here.

These will be seen on Flickr soon, once we increase our collection….

Its a Cow Thing...

Our cow is much bigger and better than the cow that Fiona put up on her blogg The Maharajas and the Astronomer.

It's from the Chennai Archaeological Museum, that as far as we can work out from the poor signage, it's from the 13th century.

Perth the Fathomable

There once was a city named Perth,
Whose height was a big as its girth,
The streets there weren’t dirty,
And people weren’t shirty,
It was simply the best place on Earth!

Chennai Media

Chennai Media has proved to be a wealth of entertainment. Full of spelling mistakes and faux pas including the title for an article on a sex scandal reading “Minister sits on probe.” Here are some more:

Add from the Chennai newspaper the Deccan Chronicle, Friday June 30, 2006.

“Matrimonial
Groom wanted
Tamil

Saiva Pillai Girl 35/160/ 25, 000 seeks alliance from educated boys age between 36-37, preference will be given to service minded individuals, physically challenged will not be a constraint. Enquires from boys running orphanages or associated with orphanages is welcome. Interested please mail bio-data/ photo/ horoscope to Box No DC-326 C/o Deccan Chronicle….”

This is entirely serious, and one of many thousands like this in the paper; this one tickled our fancy due to the physically challenged section. And the Horoscope, and the organage bit and the.... Perhaps the parents had given up on this one?

Promotional add for the movie Krissh reads:

“Superman… Spiderman… Zorro… All rolled in one Indian Superman.” Most of the adds here on billboards show a masked crusader wearing a black leather skirt. Did they think about the logistics of the skirt?



We tried to find the exact promo as it is in the paper, but this one will have to do. Tama, you might find this of interest, as they seem to be re-creating a metropolis like the post 9/11 New York of Spiderman.

The add also says that Krissh is in its “second tremendous week”, which we found amusing until we read the promotion of another movie entitled “Chandra Mukhi” which is in its “448th day.” Yikes! Roll over Phantom of the Opera!

The New Indian Express, 4th July.

Picture of a member of parliament feeding a small monkey and the caption read:

“Minister Rahamatullah feeding a stub-tailed monkey at the zoo on stub-tailed monkey day”

Well durr! And what the?

The Australian Room on the Roof Top

The other day, when we said that the Australian Room was on the roof top of the University of Madras, we really did mean it. It is seen here on the left, and you can just see the Indian Ocean in the distance.

meditations on Chaos

1) A meditation on Chaos (June 29, 2006)

I think that we only nearly died three-times today, which is much better than yesterday, and probably well below the national average. Yesterday we got lost in the middle of what we think were slums, but what may have been the heartland of the middle-class of Chennai. We got lost because every time we saw a beggar we had to cross the road, which meant that we walked a couple of K instead of 500 meters. We got lost because we couldn’t get out our map, because every time you did there would be 500 auto-rickshaw drivers slowing down and asking to take us to ‘interesting places.’ Yesterday one followed us for 200 meters.

The feeling of being here is indescribable; we tried to work out the rules for beeping your car/autorickshaw’s horn and decided that it is quite indecipherable. You beep going around a corner; to say that you are in the next lane (are there lanes?), so please don’t hit me; to turn left or right and to say hello to the person on the street. It is a language all of its own.

2) Personal space, Chennai, and its decentring effect (June 30, 2006)

All we want is personal space and I think that now we have found it. When we first arrived we were taken to the University Guest house, where there were not proper sheets, pillows or toilet paper. There was nowhere to buy water. We felt completely lost and helpless, stuck in the middle of Chennai and not knowing anyone or anything. We wanted to go home, to the comfort of our own clean bed, with family and good food and drink. Here we have to watch everything. We bought the pharmacy out of clean wipes and dettol products. We feel de-centred. But now we have re-formed and feel a lot better. We are going to stay in Chennai for a week, and then head out to a hill station for some respite, reading and writing.

3) Gin and Whisky.

Here it is for health reasons that we drink, you see it kills all the evil bacteria in your gut, which is just what you need. We haven’t been sick at all, so we must be doing something right.

3) Having a dollar sign tattooed on your head

We managed to find the best shopping centre in Chennai. Imagine the Colonnade, Subiaco meets Fremantle markets, but dirtier, and over-populated and you have it. Problem is that we are the only white people in Chennai, and so when you pass a shop there is a person (usually male) out the front, encouraging you to enter the store and “just take a look Madame.” Because it is usually directed at me, “Pashminas Madame? Would you like to see our range of bags?” my reaction is “no, but perhaps my husband would like one? He is a metrosexual.”

4) Temples

We visited our first Hindu temple in India today (a temple to Shiva), on the suggestion of our autorickshaw driver. A riot of colour, though we were told by our guide that it still wasn’t bright enough, and was being repainted. Kept thinking that this is probably more like what a classical Greek temple was rather than the stereotyped image of white marble. Visited the various shrines in the temple and were told about them by our guide. The chaos outside was a quieter chaos.

We also visited the church of San Thome (Saint Thomas) which claims to have some of the bones of the Apostle Thomas and the head of the spear which killed him. Seeing an inscription in Tamil and Latin was interesting (hic iacet…).

5) Madras Book club (July 1, 2006)

At 6.15pm we found a seat at the back of the Madras Bookclub at an upmarket hotel called Taj Connemara. The Book club is frequented by the local educated elite, most particularly Anglo-Indians. Tonight was a reading by a German writer and a Tamil Poet. Germany is trying to set up better links between themselves and India, and have started a program similar to AsiaLink; a literary exchange where the Indian writer travels to the Frankfurt book fair. The German writer looked even more shell shocked than we did, which was very re-assuring. Afterwards we spoke to her, and discovered that she had not been game enough to leave the house. We understand completely!

6) A little piece of Australia on the Roof of the University of Madras (July 3, 2006)

Struth! There is a little room on the rooftop of the Uni which is devoted entirely to Australian Literature and film (including The Castle: I wonder how they would read that?). Aboriginal literature is very well represented, which is fantastic. So we decided to set up base in there. I am facing a wall with Aboriginal art posters on it, and Graeme faces a picture of Flinders Street Station by night. To my left is a poster of Australian Animals, including the good olde Kangaroo. The room has an excellent view of the other side of the Indian Ocean. I must say that it is not as pretty as Cottesloe, or even just the wharf at Freo (!). The Boxing Day Tsunami came right through here, and although not as devastating, still managed to wipe out several stalls on the beach. We don’t think that anyone was killed however, which is something.