From Galicia to Tamil Nadu...

When you love sailing and you land in India there are 2 possibilities : eather you learn by heart every single word of each single article found in a good monthly yachting magazine or you try and try harder to sail at any cost and in any conditon. I chose the later. That's how every sunday afternoon I enter the harbour "premises" with the due pass, cross coke's clouds made by permanent truck's movements and reach a small house surrounded by old boats and covered inside by tables of regata's winners since the club was founded in 1912. Mostly "lords" until 1947, then indian names...
So called "lascars" take care of boat preparation and when you board everything is ready (aristocratic concept of yachting, but considered the difficult access to the water and the poor & dirty appearance of the material, I am not complaining). Wind is good, boats are "waterwags" - wooden, copied from an irish design - heavy but stable, and "enterprises" - plastic hull, from the 80's, quite quick and reactive.
Playground is the harbour (between container carriers and super-tankers) and and a small area out of it. Once on the water, it becomes a game between you and the wind : at "beat" (french : "au pres"), sails tight, hull starting to tilt, water singing along the hull,.. what more can you ask for?
Once the training finished, you are black and just good for a shower after a last ride along Marina beach.

January 26th, Republic Day. Off. The indian "14 juillet". On TV : tanks, rockets, jets, soldiers, and... cultural associations from each indian State showing traditional dances in colorful clothes : Rajahstan, Penjab, Maharashtra, West Bengal,... Equivalent is really missing on the Champs-Elysees!

Yesterday I visited my 2 first hindu temples during an business trip in the south of Tamil Nadu. Trip was in Titicorin, in a training center to follow-up the courses given to the future plant's operators, beside a huge fertilizer's plant (amoniac smells...), surrounded by sea-salt production ponds ("marais salants" - looked like Guerande!) and hosting a huge variety of bird (including peacocks, the indian national bird).
A talentuous member of the human ressources team accompagned me to Tirunelveli (with local accent say "trnlveli" as fast as possible), giving me lots a explainations. That's how I discovered why the temples have this vertical pyramid shape at the entry (kind of "visible part of the iceberg"): a temple is built like a lying human body, the pyramid is supposed to be the feet with one store for each sense that you are supposed to drop at the entry. Walking further you reach the belly button, a kind of metallic vertical column going through the stone ceiling, then the chest made of heavy side-pillars decorated with gods, godesses, demons, dancers statues (oiled blackstone in the first of the 2 temples). The roof is made of stones with a few openings to provide light through light-wells that bring mysterious mood in the room and on the carved stones. Only then you reach the head, where the God is staying. Enter through a tiny door,"see the God", smell encence, give to the priest the gift you chose, he goes close to the God, sings prayers, comes back and distibutes color powder (yellow in the Vishnu temple, red or white in the Shiva's), for direct use on your forehead and in a small envelop for later use, leaves to eat, holy water, some oil for hands and arms, holy fire for purification and sometimes puts a bowl (with a footprint on it) on your head to remember you that you are just one among billions. Walking barefoot in the temple you make amazing encounters like hundereds of poors gathered for their daily free lunch, one elephant that blesses you with it's nose ("trompe"???) - Have you ever noticed the beauty of an elephant's eyes? - musicians, small shrines in every corner, and lots a individuals or small groups siting, lying, walking in all corners of the temple, about which you will never have the tiniest idea of the purpose of their staying here. Spiritual mood...Out of time...