VW & VB

Painters' block.

Only write or make Art about what you know...

Nearly five months in India and I still find strangeness everywhere. Probably seen more palm trees and platanes than you could shake a monkey at, but just spent the morning making a pig's ear out of a banana tree. To be binned.

Currently holed up in a coastal shack somewhere between Thangassery and Thirumullavaram, winding up the journey, and planning the final stage a few days from now

The time at the party when people who didn't pull settle down to late night charades in the lounge.

My turn.

Book title

Three words

First and second words very short

Third word two syllables

OK. Some picture clues...

DriedFish

"Don't know where the week's gone!" A familiar enough feeling when I was working; but gone it has. It's been pleasant enough to take long rides on public ferry boats across the backwaters. A seven hour return trip for about 38 pence is a bargain, especially when you are sharing the same scenery, the same waterways, the same fresh air and the same photo opportunities with those afloat in the luxury palaces for eighty or ninety quid plus. Can get crowded on the ferries, mind. But so too can the palace routes, with boats jockeying for position like the auto rickshaws on land. The ferries of course don't provide cushions, loungers, or servants to fetch fresh lemon drinks or another Kingfisher... But on the other hand, you get to meet interesting, likeminded budgeteers.

For all that, there is nothing to keep me in Alleppey.

Have been debating which way to go next. Options being to head back inland to the mountains and zigzag my way south to Trivandrum airport, or to stick with the coast. It was a difficult choice until two days ago, when I did a recce to Kollam (aka Quilon) and found a typically scruffy, not at all beautiful, dirty, dusty, fumey, littered town, unattractive and unengaging...
...and then, only a couple of miles from the centre, chanced on a fishing community, sprawled part on the shore, part on firmer ground. Another world. Dingy shacks and bright coloured stucco houses. People crouching in the shade stared, smiled, waved  as I passed by. Small boats hauled up, the latest catch of tiny fish spread out to dry like silvery white biscuits in the sun. Inspiring. I need time here...

So I have found a four-pounds-a-night lodging house, (no wifi at that price,) and I'm planning "a bit of a stay" and a proper painting holiday. At long last the sketch book and water colours may well come into their own. And there's a chance that a significant bit of the exorcism that's been taking place during this long journey will be completed before I have to get the plane home.

Well, it's possible... I'll let you know.

Loaded

"...expect the unexpected," understates one of the guidebooks. I do, but am still constantly caught out. Today it was by a fausse chaise longue loosely roped onto a truck and bouncing along in front of the rattlebus.

(This post will be of far greater interest to some than to others.)

Moving on...

Well the mood of tristesse brought on by the air ticket was short lived. It was just that for the first time in four months I'd committed to more than two or three days ahead, and what felt like the end of freewheeling didn't sit easily.

But wait a minute! I still have four whole weeks before me! One fifth of the journey still lies ahead! I am constantly meeting travellers who are here for that long in total, and who intend to see and do far more than I could contemplate; distance no object. An age thing, I conclude.

By way of farewell to Kochi revisited the best bits of The Biennale, treated myself to a second Kathakali performance, and yesterday I prised myself away by ferry, rickshaw and  rattlebus for a short hop south to Alleppey, "The Venice of India"... I've booked in for a week.

¡Seguir bailando!

=>Yep, Just keep on dancin...

Homeward bound...

Have just booked a flight from Trivandrum to Delhi on 14th March.
How do I feel about that? Rather sad. But it gives me a couple of days hopefully to get it right this time, before my flight home on the 17th.

The days are now numbered, which is, I think, the reason for my sadness.

"Nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and cloves...

...that's what gave me my jolly red nose!"

I'd never really given them much thought until my travels brought me to Karnataka and Kerala... I vaguely knew that tea grew on bushes, and coffee beans on trees, and imagined that pepper and vanilla did too. Bushes and trees respectively.

Wrong.

The excursion into the backwaters sorted that out for me. And then there was henna! And tapioca! Surely not!

Suddenly uneasiness poked me in the stomach with ARROWROOT. Memories of Plaistow, and standing outside The Brit on a warm summer's evening, a glass of lemonade in one hand, and a big unpleasant biscuit in the other, sold for a penny from a jar on the bar. For the dog. Waiting for the grown-ups to drink up their pale ale, light and bitter, a shandy and a milk stout so that we could go home.

Back in October a guide in Rajasthan replied to one of my "and could you tell me what that is?" questions, "In India we don't always know the names of our trees and plants, but we know what they are for."

Quite the opposite to western gardening, I thought.

I am looking forward to the new season in The Gloucester Oasis.

Time Passes.

It struck me that I've been here since 1st Feb, ten days of idling through art shows interspersed with shopping (yes, I fell under the spell of a magic carpet,)  trips in silent boats on the backwaters - full of reflection - Sunday in the Park (with Georges?) and  afternoons at the beach; a few old churches, a Kathakali performance, and just watching the nets rise from the water, the little fish panic, a crow snatch some easy pickings. There have been some challenging meals...for here Fried Fish does not come disguised as a fillet.
It is tropically hot and humid. Just 9 degrees north of The Equator. And I have neglected everything. The blog has gone unwritten, emails scantily answered, congenial folk from Canada and Pondicherry have entered and exited. Time has passed. And Yet I have a sense that Time, the Old Trickster, is accelerating.

Time, soon, to take stock. But not quite yet...

Ars longa, vita brevis

Arrived in Kochi on the 1st, and here I am, five days on, still wondering what to make of it, and what to make of myself for still wondering... But I shalln't be moving on just yet.
The city is midway through its international biennale. Six major venues and countless other small spaces, (think Edinburgh in August) and free film festival thrown in. Some big names here too - Yoko Ono, Anish Kapoor, Martin Creed. So I am being held here by Art; something that for me transcends most things. And for the time being it has brought my passage through India to a halt, to discover that the philosophical, social, political and environmental preoccupations of Indians, Chinese, Americans, Australians and Europeans are much the same, however culturally expressed...