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.