The New and Improved Ancy's Bookstore

I will miss my dear friend Joy, who I have known since my first visit to India in 1991, very much when I leave Kovalam. I have worked hard on his bookstore this trip putting all of the books (except for the Japanese) in order by author (even though I realize that they may not be in proper order for some of the other languages as accented and "special" letters do not belong in the same order as in English). I have catalogued all his 2,760 books and put a code number in each.

Over the next month Joy will work on some of the physical aspects of the store including putting up a new sign, changing the outside paint job and perhaps rearranging the shelves inside the shop.

My last project was to build him a simple website for Ancy's bookstore - I will continue to add to it over time. I hope that his presence on the Internet will help his business increase and perhaps get him - although this may be a pipedream - a mention in Lonely Planet. Here are a couple of views of the bookstore.



Ancy's is at the top of the stairs in a location just a few meters back from the beach.



We've tried not to have the stock jammed together too tightly as this makes it less easy for people to search through easily.

Farewell to Kovalam

In two and a half days I will be boarding an Emirates flight at Trivandrum and starting my (rather long) voyage back to Victoria. I will be spending Sunday night with my friend Delia in London and should be back at my sweet suite (as I refer to my lovely little apartment on Chamberlain in Victoria) by 5:30 pm on Monday, June 15, 2009.

It is hard to say what the status of the beach is - it looks as if it is done but there are still people working building a wall about 6 feet in front of the paved walkway. They've left it a bit late with the sea increasingly rough and work being interrupted by monsoon rains. Here are a couple of views looking each way.




Construction has been going on here at the Marina guesthouse as well. I knew it was going to happen but didn't really appreciate (perhaps not the right word) how disruptive it would be. My "favourite" day was when the headload workers who delivered the bricks (which are on the roof now) and sand turned up at about 6:20 am while I was having a lovely sleep. Oh well. Here's a shot of the courtyard of the guesthouse.




I will miss Vaisanthi's cooking - for most of my visit she has been preparing the food that Joy and I eat every evening and the leftovers of which I usually have for lunch the next day. She is a good cook and an example of what she serves us is below - in our 5 compartment tiffin box we usually get rice (kerala rice - not my favourite, I find it rather tasteless, it is very short grain and mushy textured), 5 chapatis (2.5 each), two vegetable dishes and finally, sambar/dal or some other "liquidy" concoction. In the photo below from left to right (in the containers above the plate) are dal, rice, okra and tomatoes (I think) and carrot thoran.



Some things I won't miss are the insects (mosquitoes have been brutal and there is a plague of tiny black flies, smaller than fruit flies, that get everywhere - up your nose, in your eyes and in your mouth), the garbage, the heat and other things that seem too petty to talk about but are so irritating when you have to live them every day.

The ZooZoo phenomenon

Last Sunday (May 24, 2009) saw the end of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket championship which had to be moved to South Africa due to security concerns (as it coincided with the Indian elections). The stars of the show were definitely the players but coming a close second were ZooZoos - odd-looking characters created by a Malayali (from Kerala) filmmaker Prakash Varma for Vodafone. Here's an example of one of the ads:



You can find all of the ads on the Vodafone site as well as ringtones, wallpaper etc.

Beach works

Since shortly after I arrived (February 7) work has been happening on the beach. The idea seems to be to extend the width of the paved path that goes the whole length of the beach - but this is only the cosmetic side of the renovations. What is really happening (or so the media says) is that rocks and cement are being buried beneath the sand so that the beach is not eroded so drastically when the monsoon starts. Except for a JCB to dig the trench in front of the existing path and trucks to deliver rocks to the site all work is done by hand (or rather by head).

Workmen (there have been no women on this worksite that I have seen) carry HUGE rocks on their heads, cement is mixed by hand and the working attire is lungi (the simple piece of cloth that Kerala men wear on their lower half - ladies can wear it too), usually a bare chest or workworn shirt and flip flops. Safety be damned!

Work has pretty much stopped now (May 31st) which is a relief as I was very worried that someone would be killed by a pile of dirt collapsing on top of them as they laboured thigh deep in dirty water. The monsoon-ruffled sea is now rushing right up to the sea side of the 8-foot high hillocks of soil and must be destabilizing them. A few more days and I expect all the workers will be gone and the beach will look something like its old self again.







Here is an overall view of Lighthouse Beach (the most southernly beach). The scale is deceiving because there is actually about an 8 foot gap between those hillocks of dirt and the existing path - in this gap is where the workers are placing 3-foot square cages of chicken wire filled with soccer-ball sized chunks of rock. Then cement and smaller stones and finally the originally removed sand are placed on top.









Here's a closer view - the building with the orange and yellow fence in front is the German Bakery - definitely the "trendiest" eating establishment on the beach.








Looking towards the lighthouse end of the beach.









This part is nearly finished. If you were to go through the doorway in the upper right hand corner of the picture and up the hill you'd be at the lighthouse.









Looking away from the lighthouse - the JCB is in front of the German Bakery.








This has been a mammoth task from a stone mason's point of view.








The man at the top of the picture is preparing cement by hand - I did not see a cement mixer being used at all on this project.

Dr. Tharoor versus Gordon Campbell

I am overjoyed to report that Dr. Shashi Tharoor has won in the Trivandrum constituency. He has won by a wide margin (80,000 votes or so). His first symbolic act, before counting even started, was to tear down his own election posters throughout the city (this was widely reported in both the English-language and Malayalam newspapers). Truly it seems like a new day dawning for Trivandrum, the state of Kerala and India. Also very happy with the outcome is Ajay who runs the fascinating Trivandrum Rising blog and is one of the members of the Trivandrum Development Front that will hopefully be working with Dr. Sharoor in charting a course for Trivandrum's future.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth here in Kerala about the poor turnout for this election with a state-wide average of 73.33% being bemoaned as quite low. But compared to the other place on earth that likes to think of itself as God's own country (am I the only British Columbian that remembers us referring to our province this way?) this is stunningly good. I was horrified to read that voter turnout in BC was only 48% for the May 12th election. Shame (although of course I can hardly talk since I didn't vote either).

And what about our premier - hard to see how Gordon Campbell in any way measures up to Shashi Tharoor - previously with the UN, prolific writer, founder of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, fluent in English, French, Hindi and Malayalam etc. etc. Of course there are no mug shots of Dr. Tharoor to be found in #1 spot when you do a Google image search for him :) so I guess perhaps GC has greater notoriety.

The Great Indian Mobile (non)Toilet

There are always lots of curious sights in India but here at Kovalam Beach one of the weirdest (in my humble opinion) is the abandoned "mobile" toilet (see pictures below - the first two are overall views then a couple of "close ups"). This particular mega-portapotty is located at Samudra Beach (about 2 km north of Hawa Beach) outside the fenced compound of the Kerala Tourism's Hotel Samudra. There are two more of these behemoths at the base of the hill that leads from the bus stop outside the Leela Hotel compound down to the northern end of Hawa Beach.






































The one that I've shown you photos of at least makes some kind of sense since, in the picture below, it appears that there was some kind of a plan to connect the toilet van to a water supply and waste treatment scheme. I can't think what else this complex of tanks and pipes is if not sewage/waste water treatment although it does seem rather an odd thing to have so conspicuously on the grounds of a hotel. The two that are abandoned at Hawa Beach (one of two beaches at Kovalam Beach itself - I don't really consider Samudra as part of Kovalam Beach) must have been EXCEEDINGLY difficult to bring here (considering that the only two approaches to this location are hills and the only one wide enough to bring one of these down is referred to as cardiac hill by tourists since it is very steep). Also there is no water supply nearby if they were going to be "plumbed in".















So whose brilliant idea was it to bring these three vans here and why go to all the work of bringing something so large and difficult to move to a location only to not use it and have it decay and rust so pathetically. My (completely cynical) guess is that it was a responsible tourism kind of initiative (to keep people from answering the call of nature among the coconut palms or on the beach) that lacked funding and commitment for follow through and once the units made it to their locations nobody really cared whether they were actually set up and used. I'd say that people just washed their hands of it but that wouldn't have been possible in this case as there was no water available :).

The final picture below is where I think, based on the smell (this particular feature is not yet available on Blogger - perhaps in 2050 a scratch and sniff version will be available), people may currently be attending to their toilet needs.

Frenetic Festivals

It seems like there is a different festival - Hindu, Muslim or Christian - taking place somewhere in Kerala every single day. No matter the religious background they all seem - to a tourist at least - to have several common characteristics. Lots of noise, lots of light and the attraction of hordes of vendors selling all kinds of geegaws.

In a discussion with a few non-Indians who have houses here (one American and two Brits) they equate some of the festivals to psychological torture with highly amplified music (Indian music is an acquired taste for most non-Indians and that is at a normal volume) that goes on day and night for up to ten days continuously. And lest this be thought of as foreign hyperbole I can confirm that there are articles where local people complain of noise pollution from temples in the paper at least once a week.

Besides pongala I've only been to a single festival during my time here - this at a small temple near the tea shop where I get my breakfast. Frankly I found it rather dull after a while as it consisted of a single priest stepping (I wouldn't really call it dancing) around and around the elaborate construction shown in the photo below. Apparently at the end of his circambulation he turned in to Kali and that was probably worth seeing but it was hot and I ran out of interest.















Below this paragraph are photos of strings of lights, speakers, fluorescent tubes and amplifiers stacked up at the main Kovalam Beach bus stop waiting to be taken - probably on somebody's head - to whichever temple festival they've been hired for.

Election Fever

In 9 days the world's most populous democracy will go to the polls in an election process that consists of staggered polling dates with the last phase starting on May 13, 2009. Counting begins on May 16, 2009, and apparently the results will be announced on May 23, 2009.

What has made this election really interesting here in Kovalam is the Congress party candidate for the Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) constituency (for details on this constituency go to the excellent Elections India site and type Trivandrum, Kerala in the box in the upper right corner of the page) - Shashi Tharoor.

Some of you may recognize Tharoor (seen below in a poster with Sonia Gandhi, President of the Congress Party) from his writing (both fiction and non-fiction) or from his time with the United Nations (he was a close second behind Ban ki Moon in the 2006 competition for Secretary-General).




I know nothing about Indian politics but I can't see how Tharoor can have anything but an uphill battle. The media is already having a field day with him pulling out old news like his supposed insult of the national anthem, his poor Malayalam skills (the language of Kerala) and a supposed pro-Israel stand. It is hard to see how an average Malayali man or woman would think that Tharoor could honestly empathize with their problems. But again, that is my point of view and I could be completely wrong.

Below are some other election posters, besides Tharoor's. Note the large symbols that figure prominently on each poster - the hand in Tharoor's, the elephant in the BSP's and the sickle or scythe and sheaf of grain in the CPI's. This is because in many parts of India a substantial proportion of the voters are illiterate and the ballot will require them to identify their choice by the logo rather than a candidate's name.

One of my Trivandrum Hang outs

Firstly I want to mention that I have set up a website for Joy's bookstore and you should go there if you are looking for information about the best darn bookstore at Kovalam Beach - Ancy's Bookstore. I used the Microsoft Office Live Small Business site to build this website and although I did end up paying for a domain (through my own foolishness - I put in information that indicated I was in India and so when I had to submit credit card info for the free domain - for some reason this is required - I couldn't get rid of the India bit) it really couldn't have been easier or more straightforward. I'm going to add more pages over time.




But on to the subject of this post - my refuge when I want a good and relatively inexpensive cup of coffee is India's answer to Starbucks - Cafe Coffee Day. There are three Cafe Coffee Days in Trivandrum - the one I frequent is in Kowdiar, an upmarket part of town, the other two are at the Technopark (a high tech, high security "campus" with several major American and other foreign companies) in the Ginger Hotel there and a newly opened branch in a hotel near the Medical College (not quite sure what the impetus was to put one there as it isn't a particularly posh part of town).


You can get an equally good cup of coffee at the fancy Chesterfield Lounge at the Muthoot Plaza Hotel (and not so far from the city centre) but it'll cost you at least twice as much. And at the Muthoot you'll be served by a rather sombre staff of aproned young men instead of the delightful Sujithra, pictured below, who now knows my order without even asking and also has learned that there is no need to bring me sugar to add to my coffee!





















So who else goes to Cafe Coffee Day besides us expats craving espresso? The young and affluent and Indians from elsewhere in India. You can see the type of young people I mean in the photo below - I've cut off their faces just in case they aren't a couple and showing them would incur some parental wrath :). They are fashionably dressed although the girl is still wearing "traditional clothes" and he boldly has his arm around her (I've often wondered why it is that women almost always continue to wear traditional clothing long after most of the men have transitioned to wearing shirts and trousers or even jeans - surely uncomfortable in Kerala's climate). He is wearing a wedding ring but I don't think he is married - it's probably just a fashion statement. You can see the expensive cell phone on the table in front of them. And these young people rarely drink black coffee/cappucinos like their older foreign and local counterparts. Much like kids at home they drink the horrendously expensive cold smoothie drinks (most of which don't feature any coffee at all).













So what are the prices? A black coffee (which is what I have) - which is basically an Americano, there is no filter coffee made here, it is all espresso based, is 37 rupees or about 5 times the price of a Nescafe from a cheap teashop or 3 times the price of a filter coffee (which still isn't a patch on the filter coffee I had in Chennai, Tamil Nadu) in one of Trivandrum's upper middle class family vegetarian restaurants. The stuff the kids drink - the smoothies - are about 77 rupees. As much as some rural people in India might make in a day - if they were lucky. Frightening.

I usually go once a week for coffee but that may stop soon as I am going to receive a Melitta cone and filters from someone arriving from England on Monday and may start having coffee every day in the comfort of my room. But I'll probably go and visit Sujithra anyway just for fun.

Amazing Pongala

Yesterday (March 10, 2009) over 2 million (yes, 2 MILLION!) women congregated on Trivandrum to celebrate Attukal Pongala. They set up hearths using bricks along the streets and lanes of the city (and on the grounds of schools, office buildings and private homes). On these hearths they perched earthenware pots and cooked traditional sweets (most rice-based) that would later be blessed by priests from the temple and then taken home and offered to friends and family.

You can learn more about Pongala at the Attukal temple site (where you can also watch video of the day - this material should be online until April 10, 2009). Some foreign tourists actually participated in Pongala and I might perhaps do that sometime in the future - it was an amazing experience and I am very glad I went and was there when the fires were all lit at 10:30 am and a pall of smoke rose over the city. Fantastic day! Here are my photos:








A couple of weeks ago pots began appearing by the side of the road in Trivandrum proper (Trivandrum is the capital city of Kerala state, also known by its traditional Malayalam name of Thiruvananthapuram - it's about 15 km from Kovalam Beach).













Since access to the city was highly restricted most women who had not set up hearths by the morning of March 10, 2009, travelled in to town on the bus. Here are a couple with their bundles of fire material.












Pongala involves the making of a variety of sweets - some wrapped in leaves and steamed, others (for example, payasam which is a Kerala style rice pudding) made in the pot.










Most of the sweets made use jaggery - a crude brown sugar that looks like some kind of soap when you see it in the marketplace. This photo shows a woman cutting the jaggery in to pieces for inclusion in to a sweet.








Here a woman presses the sweet mixture into a leaf wrapper.













Here are some sweets ready to go on top of the payasam (which is quite wet at the beginning of its cooking) and be steamed.














The hearth in the temple is lit at 10:30 am and then the fire is passed (figuratively more than literally) throughout the city. A vast cloud of smoke quickly forms but yesterday was a bit windy and thus it was not too blinding. But there is no denying it makes breathing difficult, the heat is immense and many eyes are red and stinging.


















Various ingredients are added to the payasam including jaggery, grated coconut (scraped using a variety of ingenious tools), bananas and cardamom.



































While the women are making the pongala they are also praying for the health and happiness of their families as this next photo shows.















The next photo is taken looking down the usually frenetically busy MG (Mahatma Gandhi - every city in India has an MG road) Road.















Everyone gets in to the act - here is a specially decorated rickshaw.
















At about 3:00 pm 200 priests emerge from the temple and bless the sweets the women have made. Of course it is impossible to sprinkle the holy water over everyone's hearth and sweets so the blessing is announced on the myriad loudspeakers throughout the city. There is then a massive exodus of women from the city centre. A plane also flies over scattering flower petals. I did not stay for this part but instead headed back to Kovalam - after walking for a couple of kilometers a rickshaw stopped for me and I paid the exorbitant sum of 100 Rs (about $2.50) to get back to my seaside paradise.