We just got back from Cochin and Allepay in Kerala and Chennai in Tamil Nadu. And I just finished watching a DVD of Hindi Pop, Shah Rhuk Khan and Karina Kapoor (oh i hate her). I think that may be closer to your part of India, dunno.

Took a 12 hour train from Cochi to Chennai. My coachmates helped me get meals and offered to sell me a houseboat. They kicked the 2 squatters out of my bed compartment and I read Shashi Tharoor’s “India” until I fell asleep. Woke up to voices calling ‘Coffee, Coffee.’

I love Kerala, we rode a houseboat through the backwaters. Visited the local Hindu Temple and paid our respects to Durga. Walked back through the paddy-fields. The kids kept asking us ‘pen, pen?’ but I all I had was a stylus.

The baby is my cousin Anouka. I love him a lot. I want to come home before he grows up. He thought my Amma’s desk chair was a car and he rolled it out to the driveway. He likes wheels.

I went to one of the cyber-cafes the Ministry of Economic Reforms set up in urban Colombo. The kids seem smart but the people running it don’t have many new ideas. The computers are slow. Working here will be frustrating at first, but I think Sri Lanka has a future. India is coming up too, but the Sri Lankan bureaucracy is less bloated. Leaving the airport at Chennai they checked my boarding pass 6 times, at one point 10 yards apart. I can’t imagine running a business there.

anyways, I’d like to see your Mauritius photos. My friend Claire used to live there, the same who lived in Hong Kong. Is Mauritius on the ex-pat circuit. I have photos of India but my sisters left the camera in Chennai. It’s being sent down.

- indi

Posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2004 in Friends, Sri Lanka.