JULY 17 ― “Have you found what you needed?”
Willie does not dance around issues, he tends to stomp them with the vigour associated with his old moniker, The Finisher. On a Monday, looking out of our hotel in Karaikudi, I was unable to verbalise the answer I felt in my bones since we arrived two days prior.
It was right to be back in Tamil Nadu, the place of my mom’s birth. In the town she would have as a child asked her dad to take her to from their village Alangudi. In the other direction, my dad’s village — he was born in Cheras — of Konapet. The town of my people, and now we were at its new hotel, Subhalakshmi. We, meaning myself and my three eclectic companions — Ah Kit, Eddie and my lead inquisitor, Willie.
Earlier in the day we had made our way back from our — psychedelic — pilgrimage to Rameshwaram, which is why Willie was asking if our trip to the temple at the bottom tip of India,which always remained etched in my late mom’s memories, had given me closure.
New Zealand can’t compete
We left Rameshwaram in the early afternoon to the north to Karaikudi. Willie’s agitation levels were rising as paid driver Pandian kept honking as we made our way past fields, villages, towns, sparse stretches and ponds. In short, he honked.
In his defence every other Indian driver was also beeping away, but Willie had established that Pandian had exceeded his honk quota.
These exchanges were disrupted by citizens and livestock crossing onto the road or napping there. The cows and goats by, in or around fields, villages, towns, sparse stretches and ponds.
Ah Kit was on Pandian’s side saying it was just defensive driving since people and livestock equally did not respect traffic etiquettes.
The only fact both Ah Kit and Willie agreed on was that India had livestock, and that they’d have to rework their sheep-shagging New Zealander gags.
Halfway to Karaikudi from Rameshwaram is Devakottai. Noteworthy because there were students demonstrating outside a school and police assisting them, as the group representatives were speaking out with loudhailers.
Then we were back to the cows and the goats till tea was to be had at Hotel Naveen, a standalone hotel by the road just outside Karaikudi.
Hotel Naveen's claim to fame was not that it had yet another bar designed to look like a dirty secret — dark, Spartan and filled with quiet conversations — but that there was another Hotel Naveen next to it. Hotel also can mean restaurant. So next to the cubed hotel with restaurant and bar is its namesake, a very modest tea shop. Everyone can have the Hotel Naveen experience, but not necessarily the same experience.
When in Karaikudi
It was getting dark and running low on rupees we went walkabout in the town looking for a money changer. It’s important to point out that Willie changed money at Chennai Airport, and lost something like 12 per cent thanks to a service charge. He was paranoid now, telling me to factor the extra fee. This was not helpful since I was attempting the “I’m from around here” impression.
Willie flipped finding out there was no service charge. Not only that, the changer used the real time rates of the international website xe.com.
The rates were very impressive.
This was our last dinner in Alangudi, and my cousins Devi and Selvi cooked up a storm. Ah Kit is still tempting Devi to move to KL to start a food business.
For a change, we gathered in the courtyard after dinner. There was an unspoken seating arrangement. The men and us on the chairs set out and the women at the fringes of the semi-circle we formed. The children were free to roam back from the women and then to the curiosities — the Orientals and the gadgets they were sharing with them.
Ah Kit was staring hard at one of the family cows, a fairly aged one, and commented on it being a bull. The household said it was a female, but Ah Kit was having none of that. He insisted that since he was unable to sight tits in the dark it was indeed a bull.
My relatives were too polite to disagree but I had to quip that if it was a bull then then milk we have drinking from it since arriving would be another kind of milk, the kind you don’t speak about let alone serve visitors.
I asked Muthu, my cousin, if it was possible to get Internet connection since there were already two telco towers mounted just behind the house on their property. It’ll be great if my mom’s family can Skype with my sister and her young family on the French side of the Swiss Alps.
Grandma asked who prepares my meals in Malaysia. The proposition of me eating out daily was not scrumptious to her. She flipped just like Willie to know the price of meals in our federation.
For our last night in Karaikudi we had in mind the quintessential Tamil experience, to catch a movie at the cinema.
And playing tonight — to those who only lived through the Cineplex era, a cinema has only one screen — was Rajnikanth’s latest movie, Kochadaiiyaan.
Rajni is not just a superstar with a body of works which have in turn shaped the dialogue and values of Tamils worldwide, Rajni is much more. Chuck Norris is likely to actually train if he was to fight Rajni. Even Chuck knows Rajni is otherworldly.
So much so I warned Ah Kit before we boarded the plane to Trichy, not to bring up Rajni in conversation, even if he was trying to illustrate a positive point. I was not ready to be a Piñata for a village mob.
Early for the film we went to a “hotel” for coffee. The open air eatery served only food not tea, which was not a bad outcome because there was a drink shop next to it. The owner guessed correct we were Malaysians because he shouted to us “Hello, kawan (friend)” when we walked in. Unfortunately he was shutting down, because like anywhere in Tamil Nadu liquor places have to close at 10pm.
The movie did not save the night. Because I did not, maybe the only Tamil from Hulu Langat not to have known that it was a 3D animation flick.
Let me add, a 3D animation for adults flick.
Only listening to Rajni’s voiceover between overtly sexualised dance sequences was a bit disturbing. We exited when Ah Kit lost the plot after an hour. To be fair, I was not sure there was a plot to begin with.
We got back to the hotel to decide what really mattered, which of us was the true grandmaster of Choi Tai Ti (Chinese poker).
What was not in the script — including but not limited to the crap cards being handed to me — was for Willie to stand up at 2am and say he fancied a walk.
The town was asleep. The hotel guard told us that only the bus station tea shop would be open this late. It is not superfluous to restate that the cows slept where they liked. Along the stretch to the bus station there were people and dogs lying in a pre-designed pattern.
Then it happened. A woman awoke from her slumber and asked us without mistaking my companions for ghosts, what is the time? I shouted back, 2.15am. She seemed pleased enough as she went back to sleep on the streets of Karaikudi.
The tea shop does not flatter anyone, but it was the only sign of life as other Indians were slumbering where they could at the station. 10 Rupees for a paper cup of steaming tea or coffee. We tracked back to our beds thereafter. The appreciation for any bed grows after witnessing what seemed a whole town sleeping out under the Tamil Nadu moon.
To Trichy we must
Breakfast was delicately completed at Alangudi before our last stop in Konapet before Trichy. We planned to have an agenda-free day in the biggest city in central Tamil Nadu.
I promised my uncle, or periappa, that we’d visit my dad’s family temple and have lunch there. It was the last day of the village carnival and after we leave, the chariot would circle the villages.
The temple trip was not uneventful. We got to pick up the finer points of an Indian argument, between the priests and a group upset about being rejected for a ceremony. Another man wanted me to locate his son in Malaysia who has not returned after seven years. We are related through my step-grandfather, yes, the third husband to my dad’s mom.
Back at the house, after being garlanded at the temple, the eating was interspersed with Ah Kit giving bowls of wisdom to everyone. It worked to his benefit that he did not need an audience to actually know what he’s saying. Willie was unsure if he was to spit or swallow the betelnut with leaves offered to him.
I’ve known these people for days only in total, but the warmth overwhelms you. I felt guilty we were missing the final swing of the carnival and heading to Trichy for some alone time.
Uncle, or chittapa, Mutthiah still managed to make us do one last stop at his daughter’s home in Pudukottai which was along the way.
By four pm we were in Trichy, and the time for Willie to enjoy Pandian’s driving skills had come to an end.
Trichy ends it
By five, Muthu and Pandian drove off. Muthu has the patience of a saint, even if I am his cousin. Pandian, well, is Pandian. Willie gave him a life-lecture before letting him go.
The evening was only about getting to a decent shopping spot to get enough of India to be packed for those back in Malaysia and the Philippines. The hired taxi cum guide was Suppiah, who used to work in Singapore. He summarised Trichy for us, it has temples.
Sometimes there are tender mercies. The Grand Gardenia Hotel we were slated in had the best bar in town and it closed at 11pm.
The last 15 hours were about Tai Ti and trips to the bar. Suresh the bar manager had worked in Shah Alam before. Married, he never drank in his life because he promised his mother he would not. You heard it here first, a bar manager who never had a drink before but was expert cocktail mixer and alcohol adviser. He explained, you can read about it. I suppose most astrophysicists have never space-walked.
Expectedly the plane was late and it was closer to one am when we touched down at KLIA2.
By the time Eddie and I walked through the door of the house my mother kept together for 24 years it was truly late.
This Cheras
In school, treasure hunts were the in thing. Five days in India, and it is pertinent to ask if any treasures were unearthed over the five days.
It seems to me that orphans have their answer where it all started. Where a man raised without a family finds one after a sea passage, evading the police over gang associations. He seeks a bride and finds her in a nearby village. She who used to play in ponds and through the woods till she was whisked away from her childhood, to be a mother in a foreign city.
Both have left me.
Rameshwaram, Alangudi, Konapet and Karaikudi.
I don’t know if I know more, but I sure do feel more. I hope that works, Willie.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
