Sunday, November 14, 2004
Tiny sunday blog...
This morning as I woke up I listed mentaly the heavy program for the day :
1) Go to the fisherman's village in Kovalam
2) Experience "ayurvedic" massage.
The first will be commented later.
The second was really enjoyable : one hour lying like a lazy veal on a table and beeing pressed and extented in all directions by somebody's palms (& even later elbow...) using sesame's oil as lubrificant. Half an hour after the massage finished, go directly to the sea for a bath. That's it. Next time I will try with coconut oil...
I saw that a rival (but "lost...") blog published recently a complicated pumpkin recepie. I give you a simple one to be tried by next opportunity : the "pumpkin beer soup". It was improvised during this year's Halloween and approved by experts from New Foundland and other canadian states. All you need is :
-sliced punpkin wastes (eyes, nose, top & mouth carved out of your magic pumpkin)
-1/4 bottle of indian Kingfisher beer (or equivalent)
-salt
-pepper
Put everything together on a gas cooker, let the pumpkin melt...diner is ready!
Western movies seen from Indian drivers : most famous actors : "Arnold" and "Sylvester" - as they call them here. One of the most famous heroe is called "not-not-seven" : did you recognized him?
1) Go to the fisherman's village in Kovalam
2) Experience "ayurvedic" massage.
The first will be commented later.
The second was really enjoyable : one hour lying like a lazy veal on a table and beeing pressed and extented in all directions by somebody's palms (& even later elbow...) using sesame's oil as lubrificant. Half an hour after the massage finished, go directly to the sea for a bath. That's it. Next time I will try with coconut oil...
I saw that a rival (but "lost...") blog published recently a complicated pumpkin recepie. I give you a simple one to be tried by next opportunity : the "pumpkin beer soup". It was improvised during this year's Halloween and approved by experts from New Foundland and other canadian states. All you need is :
-sliced punpkin wastes (eyes, nose, top & mouth carved out of your magic pumpkin)
-1/4 bottle of indian Kingfisher beer (or equivalent)
-salt
-pepper
Put everything together on a gas cooker, let the pumpkin melt...diner is ready!
Western movies seen from Indian drivers : most famous actors : "Arnold" and "Sylvester" - as they call them here. One of the most famous heroe is called "not-not-seven" : did you recognized him?
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Postcard from Kovalam beach (near Trivandrum)
Lots of things I wanted to tell you about. With the ongoing move to Chennai after 6 months of simple life in Pune, I couldn't find time to "blog". Fortunatly there is a big holiday-festival now called Diwali (in fact the biggest), and I ran away from the traditional crackers concert to enjoy the seaside in Kerala ("God's own country", they say). What did I find here? Crackers - no escape - but also good fish (every day one or two new ones) : baracuda, butterfish and today "red snapper" : hard to convince the cook to prepare it with no spice, only salt & pepper. The beach is very noisy (huge and powerful waves bursting with a clockwork regularity, very good to fall asleep in the evening), a lot of sticky ambulant merchants, but sea is good, sun is there (tough one) and morning bath is great. I never saw before coconut-tree forests, the panorama was great from the plane.
Diwali for Hindus is like X-mas for X-tians. I don't know the religous/historical background (as well as the 20 people I asked so far...) but all the families are gathering, it is an auspicious time to buy a car (to spend money in general), to buy new beautiful clothes, golden jewels (did you know hat India was the biggest consumer market for gold? a lot of families have more than one pound of pure gold at home...). Hindu new year might start just after, let me check...
I knew about the previous one, Dasera, which is the celebration of Rama's victory on Rawan, the 10-headed demon from Sri Lanka (at least in Maharashtra, in Kolkata, they celebrate a goddess called Durga...). 30 feet-statues of Rawan are burned everywhere in Dehli and Bombay. As you can see, here also it is not clear. Every state is celebrating something sligthly different. They just agree on a common day to celebrate "it". What everybody does is a pooja (ritual ceremony with coconut-break, incense sticks, color powder, etc) on the machine or tool that makes one earn his life. Autorickshaw for drivers, machine for the worker, PC for the office employee. I did one on my laptop, pictures to come...
What is also good are the 9 days before Dasera : during a festival called Navratri, all Gujarati & friends are dancing every night with sticks (9 evenings in a row!) : this is called Dandya (you can see it in "Bride & prejudice"). First steps are easy to learn. I participated to a huge open-air Dandya on a 50*50m lawn square surrounded by palmtrees with "pure" Gujaratis mixed with other people wearing their own traditional costume, this was a magic moment!
The title of this blog could have been : "Indian love their hair". And that's true : most of them carry permanently a comb and takes the first opportunity to use it. As a result, even when the rest of the appearance is poor, the hair are permanently shiny (thanks to coconut oil), perfectly cut like 5 min after a visit to the hairdresser. In the city like on country side. India is definitly great!
Indiscretion / Rumor : Mr. Rob will probably win the price of the first official visit in India. He is likley to cross the border in february 2005. For sure I will "treat" him!
Diwali for Hindus is like X-mas for X-tians. I don't know the religous/historical background (as well as the 20 people I asked so far...) but all the families are gathering, it is an auspicious time to buy a car (to spend money in general), to buy new beautiful clothes, golden jewels (did you know hat India was the biggest consumer market for gold? a lot of families have more than one pound of pure gold at home...). Hindu new year might start just after, let me check...
I knew about the previous one, Dasera, which is the celebration of Rama's victory on Rawan, the 10-headed demon from Sri Lanka (at least in Maharashtra, in Kolkata, they celebrate a goddess called Durga...). 30 feet-statues of Rawan are burned everywhere in Dehli and Bombay. As you can see, here also it is not clear. Every state is celebrating something sligthly different. They just agree on a common day to celebrate "it". What everybody does is a pooja (ritual ceremony with coconut-break, incense sticks, color powder, etc) on the machine or tool that makes one earn his life. Autorickshaw for drivers, machine for the worker, PC for the office employee. I did one on my laptop, pictures to come...
What is also good are the 9 days before Dasera : during a festival called Navratri, all Gujarati & friends are dancing every night with sticks (9 evenings in a row!) : this is called Dandya (you can see it in "Bride & prejudice"). First steps are easy to learn. I participated to a huge open-air Dandya on a 50*50m lawn square surrounded by palmtrees with "pure" Gujaratis mixed with other people wearing their own traditional costume, this was a magic moment!
The title of this blog could have been : "Indian love their hair". And that's true : most of them carry permanently a comb and takes the first opportunity to use it. As a result, even when the rest of the appearance is poor, the hair are permanently shiny (thanks to coconut oil), perfectly cut like 5 min after a visit to the hairdresser. In the city like on country side. India is definitly great!
Indiscretion / Rumor : Mr. Rob will probably win the price of the first official visit in India. He is likley to cross the border in february 2005. For sure I will "treat" him!
