Home truths

I must apologise for the lack of communication of late. I left my adapter on a houseboat at Alleppey, and have hardly been able to charge my phone since then. Tonight I have finally managed to borrow one. I am delighted, but have a lot of catching up to do,

Today we left Thekkady, also known as Kumily, which is in Kerala, and crossed back into Tamil Nadu. We left the mountains and descended to the plains. After a short restroom stop, we reached a weaving village whiere the people are poor .

From my notes:

‘We went to a weavers’ village where the weavers have a co-op. They weave at home on looms. They did not mind us looking or taking photos because we gave them hotel toiletries in packages. Some of them ripped open the packaging and started cleaning their teeth straight away. I bought a cotton sari for £10, but usually they sell their products online’.

This is such a contrast to the basic living conditions we saw. I felt a bit grockle-ish, and when I handed over my package of toiletries, an old woman held out her hand for money. The guide says it’s better to give toiletries. I wonder how I’d feel if the positions were reversed?

Later, we visited a brickworks. The bricks are made of red clay (I wasn’t listening) and pressed into a mould.
From my notes :

‘The bricks will stay four days in the sun and after that they will go to the oven. Every day they will make here two thousand bricks. When a man makes one thousand bricks, he will get one thousand rupees (about ten pounds sterling). For each brick he will get one rupee, but they will be selling for eight rupees’.

The guide tipped the factory man five hundred rupees which is half a days wages, or five pounds. Later we had a chance to pre order lunch from our hotel menu, which was pricey. I ordered potato gnocchi at seven hundred and fifty rupees, and thought of a man having to make seven hundred and fifty bricks to pay for that dish.

There were also some home truths about mercy killing of ‘people who are too old to work’ in rural Tamil
Nadu, and illegal abortions and female infanticide. I cannot get it out of my head. There are some government educational programmes about contraception, and it is available, and men are paid to have vasectomies, which provoked some discussion amongst our party.

Also from my notes :

‘We have just passed a function hall where there is a celebration going on for ‘the end of the girl’s first menstruation. “It is her first wedding. that car belongs to a political party, The politician is invited as well” ‘

In my WhatsApp group we discussed the fact that girls could be having their ‘first wedding’ at the age of nine, or as late as fifteen, and that the MPs presence could be seen as superfluous (in Europe) and that we were uneasy about the commodification of girls, if they happened to be our daughters or nieces. But we are not Indian, and I need to know more about initiation rites in India. Menstruation is no longer taboo in the UK as it once was, but it’s not a village affair….

Eventually we arrived at our hotel on the outskirts of Madurai and have been living in colonial-era splendour ever since. It has been another day of curious contrasts.