Muttrah

There's a souq in Muttrah, which Sophie and I visited a few days ago and which I went back to yesterday to visit some shops again. First I went to the Al Qaem Islamic Records store, to see what exotic records they had for me. Of course, everything was written in Arabic and the girl working there really didn't seem pleased to see me, which made things a bit tricky. They're still really big on cassettes here, though they sell CDs too. All the cars that I've been in have had cassette, not CD players. But anyway, I came away with a couple of CDs of a sheik leading the prayers at Christmas and another time. Novel but not amazing.
Then I went back to the antique/jewellery shop laden with goods hanging at the right height to smack me in the head. Anyway, they also happened to have a nice brown pashmina (cashmere) scarf, of a quality and brown that I hadn't seen in the bazillion scarf shops in the souq. The other day, one guy had suggested 8 rials, yesterday a different guy said 10 rials, hah! (Nothing has a price tag on it.) In the end I got it for 7 rials, which is about $24. Not bad, but not a steal.
I then went to Bait al Muzna gallery to show the photos I took in Oman last year, on the off chance that they might be interested in them for either selling or exhibiting. Violetta, the woman working there, said that the owner of the gallery would of course have to see them, but her feedback was encouraging. There had been some demand for black & white photos that wasn't being well met. I left with their business card and the suggestion to speak to Sarah White at the museum across the road. Sarah was a wealth of information about opportunities and directions (I just waltzed in there and asked to speak with her), particularly regarding making and selling postcards of my work. Of course, I left this information blitz till the last minute, as I am leaving tomorrow evening. After my discussion with her, I had a browse of the museum, mostly just to look at their photos. Old black and white photos of forts, etc and more recent colour ones of Omanis with weapons and doing cultural stuff. (Yeah, stuff.) Was a good day, and the only one that I went out doing something without Sophie! We aren't completely sick of each other, though. We have been playing chess continually. Although she is a weaker player than me, it has helped me regain my nerve.

The Wedding

The wedding was held in a hall, with the stage in the middle of one wall and the seating arranged arround it... like an amphitheatre without the tiers. The stage itself is square and has posts at each corner that support a roof, the whole thing made out of wood and decoratively carved. On the stage are cushions at one end for the bride and groom to kneel, with flowers and coconut fronds in vases and other paraphernalia taking up almost every other space. I'm sure there was a hindu idol or two there somewhere. In a corner of the room near the entrance there was a small band playing what I presume were traditional brass and percussive instruments. The melodies and rhythms certainly weren't familiar to my ears, and they were kind of cool.
Oh, but before we sat down, we went upstairs for lunch: the all important taking of food that seems to be the cornerstone of their events. This lunch was particularly traditional, since we did not even use cutlery. (Surely I have mentioned that we eat curry with our hands for breakfast, lunch and dinner?) The tables were laid out with leaves from the banana tree, big enough to serve as a plate. A team of people then come by, each with a different dish to scoop onto your plate, err, leaf. You end up with rice, six or seven different dishes including an amazing sweet called, I think, halva... which would be the third unique sweet that I have encountered with that name. So no, it's nothing like Middle Eastern halva, it's more like a pudding.

(more here later)

The Wedding Eve

The night before the wedding, is it customary (in Lakshmi's culture) for the bride and groom to entertain guests at their respective houses. People that can't make the wedding and your neighbours are amongst those who typically attend. We arrived with Prakash (Lakshmi's father), and so we stayed for a while. In doing so, I was able to observe the ritual. Guests would arrive, there would be what appeared to be slightly uncomfortable greetings, the guests would sit at the table and eat, then leave. After three or four iterations of this pattern, I asked Lakshmi why. It turns out that the guests had been neighbours that the family had not seen in five years, probably since someone else's wedding, but it was obligatory to invite them. Then some family arrived, and they stuck around. There was a beautiful moment when four ladies of the family from roughly the same generation were sitting in a row on a low couch, each in a different coloured sari, mostly of the brightly decorated Tamil variety. (Prema wore a lovely but more sedate sari with a dark background, compared to the intense reds and oranges of others.) Somehow the image of the four women was at once familiar, by the natural aggregation of a closely related group of the same gender in a social situation, and strange, by their race, dress and language. I got a half decent photo of them with Sophie's camera.

Animals in Kerala

They have roads but no streetlights, cars but no seatbelts, shirts but no coathangers, flush toilets but no toilet paper. Everything here is missing some element of organisation or logic to make it a complete system.

Our hosts have a large, long-haired German shepherd that appears to live most of its life in a cage in the front yard, for the sole purpose of scaring away burglars and keeping us awake at night with its pitiful barking and whining. Even more pathetic noises can be heard from other dogs in the neighbourhood. As you may know, there is a very different attitude towards animals in Asia than the West. Our driver ran over a dog yesterday rather than bring the car to an abrupt halt and cause injury to us. Well, injury to everyone in the car except me, since I was the only one wearing a seatbelt. The seatbelt had probably never been used, since after getting out of the car, I discovered that it had left grotty stains all across my shirt. Strange priorities.

We passed an elephant that was being put to use as a forklift truck. This time in what seemed to be a very respectful way. I think elephants, goats and cows get a good run here. Anyway, the elephant would pick up massive logs with its trunk and carry them nearby, and really didn't seem to require much instruction or coercion.

Mongooses and chipmunks! Such an amusing style of perambulation! [more here later]

Thrivananthapuram

Everything you have heard is true, it's crazy here! Well, that's how it seems at first. I confirmed this with our friend, Lakshmi, that Indians don't see queueing as the way to do things: you just get in as quickly as you can, moving in front of people if there is a space. This applies most appropriately to the traffic, where it seems to be the rule. Even staying on your side of the road in the face of oncoming traffic is not essential. You just use your horn continually to signal forward that they're going too slow and/or you're going to pass them, watch out. Much like Cairo, except no traffic lights. We drove non-stop for a good twenty minutes or so through the city. Since everyone follows the same principles, it just works, but it looks like mayhem. It's funny when these same principles are enacted in getting on board a plane, where seats are ticketed and there is absolutely no need to rush. Even at the check-in counter, a gap of half a metre between myself and the person before me in the queue was politely pointed out by the Indian behind me. It was as though if I didn't close it up, someone else would simply jump in, which seems ridiculous to me, but quite possibly would happen! Even when we're waiting at the gates, the mere presence of the officials and an announcement caused dozens to jump up and crowd the doors before they were opened. They still had to stand there and wait for a good ten minutes, but the seemed content to do so for ten hours - they weren't going to lose their spot at the front, for their ticketed seat on the aeroplane. It's funny stuff to watch.

Kerala means "God's own country", and it is very lush here, verdant and tropical. It's a gentle introduction to India, too, since malaria was eradicated twenty years ago and the tap-water is safe to drink (though heavily chlorinated), one really only has to worry about toilets: the infrequency thereof and complete absence of toilet-paper.

We have curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner, which we eat with our hands. I have mastered the technique of using my right hand only. I had to covertly watch Arjay in order to learn how to tear shreds off my roti with only one hand: it's not hard at all, you just pinch and wiggle your fingers. The food is delicious, though, make no mistake! We haven't had the same curry twice yet. Vegetable curries, egg curry, chicken curry, fish curry: mildly spicy. Served either with roti (bread, but not necessarily like roti in Melbourne), rice or this morning it was a mixture of ground rice and coconut. The roti you break off and scoop up with curry with, the rice you just mix in and scoop up with your hand. There's a technique to the hand scooping: as Westeners, we automatically try to place the food in our mouth like a piece of cake, which doesn't work when you're dealing with a mixture of rice and curry. You just need to fully rotate your hand when you bring it up to your mouth so that it's like a scoop.

We are staying with Prakash (Lakshmi's father), his sister Prema, her husband Arjay and their children Jay and Shree Pranjani. They all speak a mixture of good to very good English, and are fantastic hosts. We watched the Germany vs Argentina game with them last night - I only caught the second half onwards, but it was pretty good. A couple of people now have told me how much they admire our cricketers - I just smile and nod.

Have already taken quite a few photos of just life going by on the street. Mostly taken from the car actually, so I hope they are not too blurry. There is a pre-wedding celebration tonight, with the actual wedding (between Lakshmi and Vinod) tomorrow morning.

Early days: Bangkok & Muscat

The trip from Melbourne was fairly uneventful.

Bangkok is slowly growing on me: I enjoy wandering the backstreets. On the radio from the airport, I had the pleasure of listening to "Music decaf, on Laté 106 FM"... oh yeah... the call-sign was immediately followed by I Just Called (to Say I Love You), it was a perfect moment between the non-English-speaking taxi driver and I.

Something about staying here in Muscat (with Sophie) makes me feel like a prince, and it's not just being looked after. It's the heat, the white interior of the apartment, and the persistence of exotic fragrances like frankincense, lime and coconut (the latter two of which perfume the shower douche (what a funny word) Sophie provided). And the aimlessness... many Omanis seem to just hang around, shooting the breeze, playing with their mobile phone.

So far we have just done the usual in Muscat: dinner at Al Arab, Sophie's regular Indian restaurant; out for an end-of-the-week lunch with Geoff, one of her new co-workers, and lay around on the couch reading literature and introductions to reading Arabic. It's relaxing, but my mind is still unwinding from exam-mode.