ADVENTURES IN INDIA

     Hey folks! Believe it or not, we are still alive and have circled the globe! We spent six months near the southern tip of India, and then five months living on an island in southern Thailand, before returning home in time to send this to you as our year-end Season's Greetings.

     It has been about a year since the last blog post. You’ve heard about how things are slower in Asia. “Slower” is not the right word. 

     The right word is “timeless.” We fell into that zone. We seldom knew the day of the week or hour of the day, and only rarely did we need to know.

     The feeling of never knowing the time started in Europe, though. You know that thing about how the outer is a metaphor for the inner? We brought clocks, we bought clocks, we had clocks given to us, our van had a clock, we stayed at places with clocks – and here is the amazing truth: not one of those clocks ever worked! 

     Go figure! Or skip figuring entirely! Our first house in India had two non-functioning clocks. We knew we had come to the right place.

     What follows was written in India and Thailand, and it is in the present tense, as originally written – enjoy the story!

                                    

This Goddess Greets Visitors at the Trivandrum Airport,  our point of entry to Kerala, India Check out how big she is -- see the man sitting at the left?

     Our first couple days in India, we mainly sleep, recovering from an all-night jet trip from Israel via Athens.  Our cheap hotel is surprisingly quiet, perfect for sleeping, but has no room service, and going out for meals is a major project.  

     We move to the more upscale Hotel Venus for $40 a night, well over our budget, and begin eating well.  The key thing is, we can get online and start searching and making calls to find a house to rent outside the city. 

Downtown Trrivandrum, Kerala, Southern India

     We quickly find a lovely house surrounded by gardens in the jungle about a mile from the beach.  It costs $400 a month.  A village stretchs out along K. S. Road, well-removed from the tourist area.

Our first home in Kerala

         Our little back road climbs steeply up from the beach at Kovalam, where we swim often -- here's a few photos of the beach: 

     .

Sunset at Kovalam Beach, near the southern tip of India

Fishing boats and Protestant church, Kovalam

Fishing boats and Hindu temple, Kovalam

Sunset and surf at Kovalam Beach

The Lighthouse at Lighthouse Beach, Kovalam

Kites at Kovalam Beach

     The locals call our back road “K. S. Road,” after Kallara Sukumaran, one of the pioneers of the Dalit (“Untouchable”) social and political movement. 

Altar to Kallara Sukumarann

     He helped awaken the people to gain more freedom and respect, through speeches, writings, and relentless activity. We always know where to turn off by his oft-flower-bedecked statue near the beginning of the road, along which live many Dalits.

     Walking along it, an open spot in the jungle allows a view of the Arabian Sea's vast expanse of misty light blue. Here the horizon fades seamlessly into the sky, and on hazier days, there is no way you would be able to tell there is an ocean out there.

Arabian Sea

     Motorcycles, with young men carrying their glitzy, sari-clad girlfriends and wives riding sidesaddle, weave by. Most people walk. 

     We exchange smiling greetings with everybody; these sweet, apparently happy people, carrying jugs of water or parcels, instantly return our salutations.

     Our little road is typical Kerala. Kerala is a multi-party, democratic, and usually Communist, state. It has been so since Indian independence. On the walls along our road, we see the hammer and sickle painted everywhere, usually in red, sometimes in bright blue.

     There’s a big billboard with Che leading smiling workers. Many good Protestant Christians go to a variety of churches. Some of our neighbors vote communist, yet build brightly lit manger scenes in front of their houses for Christmas.

Che on a book bag

Flags at political meeting

     

This combination of protest politics and protest religion has lifted these folks a bit further out of caste and poverty into a more empowered sense of dignity and greater sense of social mobility. 

     This is Michael’s fourth trip to India, and this is the only place he’s been where begging is not a constant part of the scene. Only very old people see a white person and instantly go into begging mode. No young people or children beg.

     Here's a couple photos taken along the road:

Monkey eating banana, taken from window of house

"Kerala" means "Land of Coconuts"

     Keralans are also about the sweetest, smartest folks on the planet. The alphabet of a language called Malayalam – that word comes out the same, spelled forward or backward! -- has 56 letters and several sounds for each. 

     Listening to this amazing wealth of consonants and vowels, many of which we cannot begin to pronounce, we feel a little poetically retarded with our alphabet of a mere 26 letters.

     What’s more, so many of them speak our language with relative ease. We only know the phrase book of theirs, and we pronounce it just well enough to be understood some of the time. Even with this paltry offering, they are so pleased that we try. 

     In contrast, we start to take their English for granted, grateful as we feel about it when we stop to think. They were taught English very young. They can sing Mother Goose rhymes and Christmas Carols along with us!

     Today is cooler and more peaceful here in the jungle shade. The bright flowers and the strange sounds of the birds make it feel like a good dream! Our house is in a village that straggles out along a winding road. From our sitting room, we look out to a village well.

     Here, people gather to talk; they take turns pulling water up a hundred feet with a rope in a gallon-size metal bucket. Five buckets fill a large colorful urn, which is then hoisted, usually on to a sari-clad woman’s hip or head, and carried away. It seems that most families need about three urns for the day. Each one is heavy. Getting water is hard work.

     Once you have it home, you must boil it to drink it. This is often done by turning it into “masala chai” --black tea and milk in roughly equal proportions, spiced with cardamom powder, cinnamon powder, ground cloves, ginger powder, and pepper powder. These folks cannot afford the bottled water we drink, but drinking chai, which we love too, they’re not missing much. It’s delicious.

Chai stall along road

     We would have no chance lifting those big jugs. Fortunately, we have a pipe to a deep pond on the property. We turn on an electric pump, which fills a tank on the roof. For bathing, we turn on the spigot.

     The house is on a slight hill, surrounded by an acre of land. There is a low stone wall with a gate. We are a bit back from the center of the village. That’s a relief for us in teeming India; the house is a retreat for us. We love to go out, yet we seem to need, and are glad we can return to, the relative privacy it offers.

     It may be private, but it’s not quiet. The birds make amazing sounds, and they are loud! One bird sounds like somebody just told it a very funny joke. It just cannot stop laughing. No kidding! Amira knows she’s come to the right place!

     At any time, day or night, what sounds like twenty dogs may go off, sounding like a pack of wild hyenas. Only once have they come close to harmony in their sound. Sometimes it sounds like fighting.

     Large trucks go by from time to time on the road, sounding loud air horns even at 3:00 A.M! All vehicles honk -- it is a necessary safety precaution for driving on roads frequented by pedestrians, animals, cars, three-wheeler “tuk-tuks,” trucks, bicycles, and sharp curves, one of which is in front of our house. Even the bicycle riders ring their bells at this curve.

     Some days there is a cow mooing outside the window, tied to a tree. Oh – Thee are five or ten jet planes a day are on a landing pathway to the airport eight miles away. They fly low, loud as freight trains in the sky, any time of the day or night.

     There’s more. At 5:00 AM, nearby temples and mosques wake not only the faithful, but also everyone else, with amplified music and prayers. Early morning is cacophonous; every living creature seems to be wake up and make noise at once -- roosters, birds, animals, people, traffic. It’s the cool time of day; it’s the right time for moving, because once the sun climbs the sky, it gets too hot to move.

     Fortunately, we are night people, and it gets a lot quieter through the middle of the night. What’s amazing is that we can sleep through all this! It just seems to be a matter of not listening and feeling sleepy. Those who know India hold no hope for any real quiet here. Even so, the reality amazes.

    Yet, it is not always this noisy. Sometimes an incomprehensible silence settles over all, far quieter than any city. At night, it can last for hours. It seems all are listening or sleeping. Nature seems to take a deep breath.

If you want tender green coconuts before
they fall, you have to climb!

     There are lots of windows in every room of this two-story traditional Keralan house in the shady jungle; not expansive panes of glass, but little diamond-shaped windows formed from diagonal cross-hatching, it is in fact English Tudor style. These windows frame subtle, complex patterns of light and dark on green fronds and brown trunks that recede in every direction.

     Inside the house, the sky is hardly visible, save an occasional glimpse of the setting or rising sun, or a thin slice of night with a bright star or planet. It’s an enclosed private hideaway amidst the palm trees; it is hard to realize this jungle hides many other houses and people close by.

     Downstairs the green window views are punctuated with the bright purples and reds of orchids and antheriums. 

     Upstairs, just under the coconut-laden treetops, the gentle, hazy light filtering through the parallel patterns of green fronds, layered at all angles, is broken by splotches of bright sun that turn occasional patches of fronds bright yellow-green. These rare shafts of bright light make a wonderful counterpoint to the shade.

     Even at noon, with all these big windows, it is just bright enough to read without artificial light downstairs; the upper bedroom is a bit brighter, closer to the invisible sun and sky. On the roof, you can see miles and miles across the tops of green coconut palms from our hill. The sense of space feels good!

     All day, the bird’s conversation -- calls, shrieks, laughter, chatter, songs, and, who knows, prayers and benedictions, seldom lets up. The birds are a big part of life here! Aside from big, black ravens, there is only the occasional rare glimpse of a flitting bird. In this jungle, we have no idea what this great choir of winged ones looks like.

     Toward the winter solstice, the oppressive humidity of November and early December lets up. Now it is just very warm with cooler evenings. Still, even well after sunset, an extended stroll leaves you sticky and wanting a shower.

     When we first arrived, we would go swimming in the ocean after oily Ayurvedic massages. All across Europe, we craved a truly warm ocean and never quite found it. Here it is! -- an ocean you can just walk into without any shock of cold. It’s just cool relief. There is a just-right water temperature, and this is it!

     The trade off is the heat! The humidity is oppressive in the hot hours of the day, and the beach is the only way to stay cool. It is also the only exercise that makes sense!

     As the weather grows cooler through the solstice, the novelty of the beach wears off. We learn how and where to shop, and prepare our own food to satisfaction. 

Fresh fish are a favorite by the Arabian Sea

     We fall into a routine of reading, emailing, and phoning friends and family. Through the inner time of winter, we enjoy the least movement we have known since the trip started – mostly just being home, resting.  It feels good.

     In mid-February, it starts to get hot again. The monsoon comes in June, but until then, this is summer in Kerala. A big noisy construction crew goes to work on the plot next to us. We decide to pull up stakes and move to a more modern, spacious house just down K.S road a few turns.

     Our second house is new, elegant, clean, bright, and spacious. It has exquisite marble floors. In fact, it’s ridiculously large for us, 5,000 square feet, with three bedrooms and five baths. It not so closed in by the jungle. There are even more flowers outside the windows, and nearly 180 degrees of ocean view from the second floor and the roof.  And the price is the same, $400/mo. plus utilities --AC adds another $75/mo.

Sunset over the Arabian Sea

Michael's favorite spot

     The new house has two rooms, a bedroom upstairs, and a downstairs dining room, with air conditioning. Just in time! It is so hot now, we really do not know how we could have stayed in the first house, pretty as it was.  Having to move turns out to be a blessing!

     Here the road is quieter, the temples are further away with gentler music, and we’ve escaped the glide path of landing airplanes. It seems like the barking dog population is smaller too. We have escaped a major construction scene. With the air conditioning, it’s definitely an upgrade. We are very grateful.

     There are still plenty of coconut palms in the yard. In this season, every day, five or six coconuts fall, shattering relative quiet with loud crashes and thuds. We gather them and eat them!

     The slow, inner easy winter raga has shifted to a faster beat. The days grow a bit longer and hotter. There is so much more to tell you about Kerala, especially of all the people we’ve met, the local scene, and what we did.

This elephant broke free and killed one person -- online news report

Picture of three-headed cobra from an online news report

Strikes were frequent and often caused us to change our plans -- picture from online news report

     This part of our story can only begin with one very special person, Sony. He is the nephew of our first landlord. He lives next door to our first house. Sony, twenty-six years old, has a car. It is Indian made, and it is tiny – he once called it “the Indian Volkswagen.”

Sony

     The most important things about Sony’s car are (1) that Sony happens to be in between school and job and has plenty of time to drive us around in it, and (2) it is air-conditioned. 

     The most important things to know about Sony are (1) he speaks great English, and loves to try to teach us Malayam (2) he is the sweetest and most helpful person in India – that is saying a LOT! -- and (3) he likes to laugh and have a good time with us. We became a little family. In Keralan style, we are honored to become “Auntie” and “Uncle” to him.

     Sony is with us just about everywhere we go, from village market runs for bananas, milk, eggs, take-out food, Ayurvedic medicines, dropping us off on our trips to the beach and massage, we take taxis back. He is our trusty driver through heavy traffic on our longer, major shopping adventures into the big city.

     Trivandrum is the capital city of Kerala, called Thiruravanathapuram in Malayam -- apparently the English gave up trying to say that and shortened the name.  Nearly a million people live in and near Thiruravanathapuram.  

     It is a small city by Indian standards, but would be a nightmare without Sony’s skilled negotiation of major congestion and one-way streets, his translations and price negotiations, his determination to actually find places, and just helping us get across the street without being run down by a bus.

Sony waits to tell us when it is safe to cross

     Sony is an angel. We know this. With Sony along, the potential nightmare becomes a fun trip, despite the traffic-clogged streets with and crazily-driven wheeler tuk-tuk taxis. 

     The sidewalks – when existent – are made of large hunks of cement at odd angles, often over sewers, and are more dangerous than some scary mountain trails we’ve traversed. Proceed only with great care, picking your way between the holes and bumps.

     Southern India is always hot, but the cities are hotter. In addition, they are crowded, dirty, smelly, chaotic, and usually a miasma of diesel fumes and dust. That we actually manage to have a good time under these conditions -- that tells you just a little of how much Sony’s skills, determination, and smiles mean to us.

     The way we travel inexpensively is to avoid eating out too much and cater for ourselves. In India, though, it is not so much a matter of saving money (eating out with the locals is amazingly inexpensive), but a matter of not eating spicy Keralan food every day. It’s good for a while, but not when you’re staying for six months.

     You start to crave a good hamburger, bacon and eggs, etc., after a while, and this requires specialty shopping. By the way, no McDonalds’s or Starbucks in this state – the government makes sure workers are paid more fairly than other states, and have more rights.  

     Foreign corporations do not do business in socialist Kerala. They simply are not welcome -- there are laws about it. This lack of capitalist pizzazz at times reminds one of the pre-liberation Eastern European bloc, yet it is also an increasingly rare and welcome relief from globalization.

     A new giant department store, Pothy’s, opens in Trivandrum just a month before we arrive. It is funded by Indians with Indian capital.  It has an air-conditioned acre of food choices, a good bakery, parking, great prices, imported items that we sometimes crave (not great prices!), and finally, it is truly over-staffed – there is always somebody literally watching you to run over to help the moment you even hesitate or stop in front of a shelf. 

Cloth shopping, Pothys

     Amira obtains the phone numbers of at least three managers, and can ask Sony to call and make sure things are put aside for us in the grocery store when we come late. They know us!

     We develop kind of a routine on our trips to the city. First Sharif, our Muslim money-changer, a sweet man with an office in a little alley, carefully counts out piles of rupees in exchange for our dollars. He always has a smile and does all the counting with great finesse, style, and accuracy. 

      He makes a point of switching on the fan as soon as he sees Amira, who is always hot, wearing long dresses in a culture that where a woman who exposes her legs is definitely not kosher.

     Amira starts out trying to follow the rules, covering her legs and arms with beautiful new Indian clothing. Not! Most of those clothes wind up hanging in a closet, tags attached, never worn. She loves the shopping and the clothes, but when she puts them on, she’s too hot to handle. Not a happy girl!

     After fruitless trips to several dress-makers in search of cooler clothes, Amira gives up, and dresses comfortably. From all the looks she gets, now she is too hot to handle in another whole sense. Finally, a compromise: three-quarter length sleeveless dresses. Much happier girl!

     Though they are too hot to wear Amira loves looking at saris: “I have never seen the same sari twice. They are all bright, beautiful, elegant, garments, often glitzy. Driving along I find myself enjoying a constant color-fest for the eyes!”

     Around Christmas, Sony takes us to Cloth St., where Amira find pillows and pillow shams, and banana chips in coconut oil. 

Cloth Street

Seasonal Shoppers in Cloth Street

Christmas Ornaments

Elegant young shopper, Cloth Street

     In Cloth Street, we meet a beautiful young sales girl, who just glows inside and out. As soon as she sees us, she starts excitedly saying "Hi!" -- one of her few English words.  

     Her smile could move worlds, and probably does. Sony tells us she is very poor and has come all the way from the next state, Tamil Nadu, to work for low wages. 

     

     Nothing keeps this amazing young woman from radiating love. With Sony’s cell phone and linguistic assistance, she and Amira become friends, give one another gifts, and keep in touch. We hope to stay in touch in with her, her radiant smile, and her giggles, forever.

     Cloth Street is next to the grounds of a famous temple, even more famous now at twenty-five billion dollars of treasure has been discovered beneath it -- that's an amazing story about the Padmanabhaswamy Temple, "the richest temple,in the world," which you can read more about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhaswamy_Temple#Temple_assets

     Here's a few photos taken around the temple:

Padmanabhaswamy Temple

The Elephant God Ganesh and friends

Krishna

Ganesh

     On our first trip to the giant department store and food market, Pothy’s, we are leaving when two Indian women call to us and point at a small restaurant down the block called Food City. We have no idea how they know we are looking for dinner, but we take the hint. Food City becomes a regular stop after Pothy’s – we love it! 

     We are forever grateful to those psychic women, because it would be easy to walk right past that place, nothing pretentious here. As European-appearing people, we are always a bit of an oddity even in this big city, and that’s always the case at Food City.

     Without AC and always crowded, Food City has the best shwarma and tandoori chicken we find in Kerala. We order piles of take-out “parcels.” They have great shakes of all kinds, fresh juices, and delicious nan bread, a tandoori oven specialty. The prices are absurdly low and the food delicious. Why not keep going back? That’s exactly what we do!

     When we want quiet for talking and air conditioning, we go to the restaurant at the Regency Hotel, popular with the Indian middle class in town. Their international menu offers consistently good food, and the price is right. 

     We are both addicted to Kerala’s fresh-brewed masala chai, and go through pots of it while we linger over meals here. By the time we leave Kerala, the friendly waiters know us as regulars.

     Back home, at Kovalam’s aptly-named Lighthouse Beach, we go to a little second-floor surf view place called the Swiss Café. It is unpretentious and lacks AC, has excellent “European” food at good prices. For a night person like Michael, American breakfast all day is a treat – his Indian Denny’s!

     Here we get to know Das, who usually waits our table. He has a ring in his ear and a soulful, ironic, outlook on life. When business is slow, he has time to talk with us.

     He knows where to could go to find just about anything, and is one of many Indians who thinks they would prefer to live in America. We tell him our homeland has its own problems, and about the sweetness we feel in India. Our talks are interesting. He himself so deeply shows that sweetness; we know we will always remember him.

     Also down by the beach, competent, friendly Ramesh and giggly Sunija give us Ayurvedic massages at Dr. George’s clinic. We would enjoy them more on softer tables with face cradles and AC, but they definitely start to loosen us up and relax our bodies after many months of hard traveling with no body work at all. 

     An hour session is less than ten dollars including tips. There are plenty of fancy, expensive spas in Kerala where, in exchange for a Swedish-type massage at Western prices, you can empty your wallet. We feel real health benefits from this powerful, deep, traditional Ayurvedic work.

     Our first experience with Ayurvedic massage, however, is at a clinic in Thiruravanathapuram. A treatment called Panchakarma involves the application of herbal oils to specific parts of the body, along with overall oil massage while you lie on a hard wooden table. For us, being slathered in oil in a hot climate on an uncomfortable table just doesn’t do it for us, traditional or not.

     We really cannot evaluate the healing properties of this particular treatment, because we quit after the first session. After this, we learn to ask for massage without excessive oil, and make sure to see if the tables have at least a small amount of padding. 

     From our experience, Bali and Thailand, by contrast, are wonderful places for good, equally healing, inexpensive massage, given at home with the AX on, on your comfortable bed. Traditional Thai massage, in our opinion, may be the most powerful massage style on the planet.

     Once we were settle in for the winter at our first house, Amira begins doing mosaic tiling a few hours each day. She is thrilled to find all sorts of bright, colorful tiles she can buy individually, rather than whole boxes. The variety of bright colors is much greater than in America. She’s in tile heaven!

     There is a great tile store ten minutes from our house. She is allowed to search through the whole store, and even the basement storage, to pick out exactly the type and number of tiles she wants. Not to mention, the tiles are a tenth of the cost in America! She also is given broken mirrors that glitz up her creations even more. Yippee! She loves glitz!

     Amira puts tile on flower-pots, big round bowls, water jars, egg-shaped cooking pots – these are all hand-made rich, deep terra-cotta color, the background color. The color of the pottery is so rich that the tiles stand out beautifully without all the hard work of putting grouting between each piece of tile.

     Over four months, Amira turns out thirty-two unique creations. In most of them, she plants many-colored local flowers. They’re gorgeous! Bright-tiled mosaic terra cotta garden art is something new to Keralans. Amira delights in bestowing them on all our friends and neighbors.

     Recipients include Kumar, our dentist, Faisal, the bakery manager at Pothy’s, Sanil who sells the best village bananas, and Usha who helps us with housecleaning. 

     There are also Selveraj, our ever-ready electrician, and our immediate neighbors: Kumari and Thulsidas, Tungaraj and Bindu and their daughter. Our friend Benjamin, who has a little store across from our first house, gets one for the store and one for a housewarming.

     Sony’s “Mah-mah,” Pralima, gets one of the first ones, and another later. She sends Sony over with payasum, a rice vermicelli pudding, Amira’s favorite Keralan dessert, and samba, a local vegetable dish, and invites us over for dinner. 

     When we leave for Thailand, Sony fills his front and back porches and yard with sixteen mosaic flower pots, whose bright colors and many-colored flowers had adorned the porch and yard of our second house.

     While Amira tiles, Michael luxuriates in having whole days to read. He has time to interact with others online about healing, politics, ecology, physics, and philosophy. A full account of this most interesting period would be a bit much. He begins writing some of his own philosophy, along with a more personal memoire. It is a very creative and productive time for him.

     Amira keeps up her reading too, especially John O’Donohue, also one of Michael’s favorite writers, a mystical Irish/Celtic prose poet who sees beauty as the key to real change in the world. Anam Cara, “Soul Friend” in Celtic, is his central work, and Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace is another book not to be missed. We enjoy too having time to share and talk about our discoveries.

     Like so many around the world, if the human species is still around much longer, we will remember these times as years of powerful efforts toward profoundly necessary change, and equally powerful, often violent, resistance to change. 

     There is much more we could write about all this through this amazing year, but we’ll save that for another time.

      In the meantime, we became preoccupied with a life-and-death story closer to home. We meet a lovely older couple, Anna and Rajesh, who are both diabetics.  She is on insulin and oral medication. He, according to his doctor, is “borderline”-- though he is already experiencing serious glaucoma and serious peripheral neuropathy that causes him pain when walking. 

     Apparently, his complaints are being ignored by the doctor.  People’s blood sugar levels in Kerala are so commonly high that, around a glucose reading of 200 (normal is 100  and down), he is not on medication. Anna’s readings are near 400. She had recently been hospitalized several times, most recently in a coma, with levels over 500, after eating too many sweets at Christmas.

     She is injecting insulin and taking medication by mouth, but it is not working right. She is still having episodes of low blood sugar causing dizziness, hours of shaking, and fainting. Chronic high levels lead to tiredness and low spirits. When this kind of thing goes on very long, kidney failure is next.

     We bring them a glucose monitor and suggest that they temporarily, for at least two weeks, eliminate rice, sugar, and carbohydrates in general. (Her doctor had suggested she eat four slices of bread a day instead of five!) 

      Amira decides to take no chances, and to avoid any linguistic misunderstandings. She goes shopping, and beings them eggs, full-fat yoghurt, cheese, chicken, almonds, heavy cream, butter, coconut oil, coconut milk, two fresh coconuts, and sugar-free soda.  We know they will be able to afford this food once they stop paying for diabetes medications.

     That same day Anna begins eating these foods exclusively, and agrees to eat no grains, rice, sugar, fruit, or pastries for the two-week trial. Her blood sugar readings go down immediately and she is able to stop her insulin injections and use only the oral medication for a few more days, and then to stop that. She had agreed to monitor her blood sugar after meals and report in daily.

     Rajesh gets on board the program when he sees how much better Anna is doing. Her blood sugar levels drop day-by-day – 285, 185, 155, 135, and 110. Anna’s distressing symptoms stop immediately. 

     Michael does acupuncture for Rajesh's peripheral neuropathy, and he begins to walk without pain. Now, it has been over six months since they changed their diets. We check in now and then.  A month or so ago, they are still doing great.

     Massive rice, sweets, and soft drink consumption, along with low protein and fat intake -- due to poverty, cultural bias, and not a little due to modern Western medical propaganda, scaring people away from nutritious fats and adding more grains -- is quite likely a major cause of the Keralan, and Indian, diabetes epidemic.

     Before the modern diet, recently amped up with anti-fat propaganda, arrived, the people of Kerala consumed high-fat coconut meat, coconut milk, coconut cream and cooked in coconut oil. Coconut is one of the world’s wonder foods. It provides almost the same instant energy of carbohydrates, it is so easy to digest. 

     Anecdotally, it is perhaps a bit over-hyped as a medicine bordering on a cure-all. We used it for many things, to settle the stomach, as a skin and hair lotion, and to stop intensely itching mosquito bites in a minute!   

     How ironic that the Indian people, in just thirty years, in Kerala, which means “land of coconuts,” stopped eating this wonderful food. Polynesians, at one time some of the healthiest people in the world, called coconut palms “the tree of life.” To learn more about coconuts, go to coconutresearchcenter.org.

     Keralans ate lots of fish, chicken, eggs, milk, and yogurt as dietary staples, along with rice. They drank lassi, a yogurt drink, eight different types of buttermilk, tender coconut juice, and a wide variety of other things. With coconut as a daily staple, Keralans ate lots of fat, moderate protein, and a little rice. Diabetes was rare. 

     Now they eat a lot of rice, a lot of sweets, bread with it's known troubles, and processed foods. Like the rest of the world, they have been taught to fear fat, which they have replaced in their diet with carbohydrates and sugar for energy, and there is an epidemic of diabetes and obesity. 

     Increasing fat intake for diabetes is ancient Chinese dietary therapy – fat is assimilated into the energy system not so much by the pancreas as the ketone system. Getting energy from fat gives an overworked, failing pancreas a genuine rest, allowing it to recover and rejuvenate.

     The fats we emphasized were dairy fat, like butter and yogurt, and coconut oil, for cooking and moderate consumption in various ways, along with chicken fat. 

     Pork and beef are hard to find in good quality in much of S. India. To Hindus, cows are especially holy, and the great majority of Hindus are lacto-vegetarian. The beef at the rare Muslim butchers has good flavor, but is lean and tough. Anna and Rajesh were third generation Christians, and not vegetarians, which made it easier for them to increase fat and protein.

     Michael had the good luck to run across this approach to diet early on. His paternal grandmother died young of diabetes, and he did his best to adopt this supposedly high-cholesterol, high-fat diet, at a time when the cholesterol theory was even more of a dogmatic truth than now. It is now scientifically discredited, though not yet popularly rejected, either by your doctors or your friends.

     Until the cholesterol theory is rejected, epidemics of diabetes, obesity, and a host of other diseases, particularly (how sadly ironic!) cardiovascular diseases, such as arteriosclerosis (caused by crystalline sugar molcules literally scratching and inflaming artery walls), will continue to be epidemic. 

     In most cases, only after sugar has roughened and inflamed artery walls does cholesterol attach to the walls.  Low-fat diets are also a likely factor in the rapid increase in neurodegenerative diseases, like ALS, MS, Altzheimers, etc.  Nerves and the brain need fat to stay healthy!  Women, especially, need fat to produce hormones.

     The food industry’s trillion-dollar profits selling cheap carbohydrates at high prices. after health-destroying “processing,” along with the glut of expensive “low-fat” (read "sugar-added") products, will insure that it takes a while for the word to get out. It’s another of the many disasters driven by greed at this point.

     The heroic, little-but-growing band of honest researchers and cholesterol theory skeptics is another David and Goliath story. If it were only about good science and clear thinking, the battle would have been over at the start. 

      However, it is about greed, and fear of owning up to a terrible mistake: the rejection of fat as a major and essential human food, and the inevitable increase in consumption of grains and refined sugar, the latter a substance unknown to hunter-gatherers, or even to Europeans until the 16^th Century. 

     Refined sugar, or high-fructose corn syrup, unfortunately, are essentially toxins to most human beings.  The larger mistake began with the agricultural revolution and the extreme increase in eating wheat and rice, both of which, especially in excess, are borderline toxic foods for many, and overtly toxic to a few.  Basing diet on these grains happened just yesterday in terms of evolutionary adaptation, 5-10,000 years ago, depending on locale.  Yet it is now so accepted, suggesting another approach is like trying to turn around one of the biggest off-course ships in history.

     Wheat causes many digestive problems: About 3% of the population simply cannot eat it without getting sick.  They are the canaries in the coal mine, the tip of the iceberg -- wheat is challenging for most people. Even cows, with their four stomachs, have a very hard time with wheat.  Rice is also hard to digest for many, and is so rapidly turned into glucose in the bloodstream, it is almost like eating processed sugar.  It can help a lot to eat it with coconut oil or butter, to slow down its absorption.

     The widespread adoption of grains to replace the hunter-gatherer diet led to the storing them (often in moldy, rat-infested silos and bins), and to the hoarding of grain, land as private property, social hierarchy, unfair distribution of natural wealth, slavery, castes, cities, and warrior societies to defend it all. 

     You can find that story elsewhere too. In the meantime, just one very practical note: if you are on pharmaceutical statins, do your research, and get off them quick!  

     A good place to start learning about this is the book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, by Sally Fallon.  We can suggest many other books and information sources, this research has become an ongoing thing for us.

         *                      *                     *                      *

     The evening of February 20th, we are well-entertained by the Maha Shivaratri celebration that happened on the road right in front of our house, one of so many all over India. 

      Here's a description of it: 

"Shivaratri is celebrated on Feb. 20, 2012 by Hindus all 

over the world.  This festival glorifies the Hindu god 

Shiva, lord of cosmic destruction and dance. It

is celebrated on the 14th night of the new moon

during the Hindu lunar month of Phalguna.

The celebration of Maha Shivaratri begins with a night 

vigil leading up to the day of the festival, during which

many Shiva devotees fast and offer special prayers.

Shiva is worshipped in the form of a lingam, a phallic 

symbol with a yoni that represents female creative

energy. Together it represents the union of organs, 

and the totality of creation. Flowers, incense and other

offerings are made, while prayers and bhajans are 

chanted."

     Here's a few things we saw on K. S. Road, in front of our house:

Altar to Shiva and Shakti with offerings

That's Shiva on the right.  Cannot tell you more.

Shiva is associated with the yogis of the Himilayas

Some of our neighbors on K. S. Road

This man explained to me how I can see the entire creation in this flower.  It was very convincing.

No major celebration is complete without an elephant

In our neighborhood, communism has been added to religion added rather than replaced it.

Shiva with trident and Shakti, his consort

     We have little interest in traveling around India at this time. We truly enjoy being “home” after being on the move for eight months. We do a short day trip to Poonmudi, a “hill station” in Kerala’s “Western Ghats.” Later, we travel to the biggest city in far south India, Chennai (formerly Madras) for five days to get our Thai visas.

     On the way to Poonmudi, to get us to the top of the mountain, Sony drives steep, winding back roads, including a section with 22 hairpin turns one right after another! We see a rubber plantation, a beautiful river, mountain streams, and a lot of lush, green countryside along the way.

     Michael loves tea and is excited to see his first tea plantation, with colorfully-clad women filling burlap bags with tea leaves, which they deftly pick one-by-one, handling each leaf with tender care. It is important that the leaves remain unbroken, to preserve their anti-oxidants and flavor.

     Here's a few photos from the trip:

At the top viewpoint, fog.  These guys loved having their picture taken.

A beautiful creek on the way up.

 More sights along the way:

Add caption

Rubber tree

Picking tea leaves

Modern sculpture near the top

     At the end of the road we come to vista points. We’re told that one can look back to the Arabian Sea on a clear day. We did not mind it being cloudy up there -- Sony tells us it would be much too hot on a sunny day. It feels good to be far from any population center, out in raw nature, where it is quiet and cool.

     We are happy to find one restaurant open. We come late, are handed a fancy, long menu, and after careful deliberations, are ready with our order. As it turns out, we’re told, one-by-one, that what we want is unavailable. We keep searching the menu and trying new ideas, but nothing we come up with is available. 

     Finally, Amira hits on a brilliant idea. She asks, “What is available? The answer: “Briyani rice – would you like it with our without chicken?” This dish turns out to be excellent!

     After eating, we walk around and take pictures of this place that once had a Rajah’s palace, now a partially restored ruin, and later, an upscale hotel for the British when they wanted to escape the heat. Enjoy the photos!

     By way of contrast, the first thing we find in Chennai, after a quick trip over on India’s low cost airline, Indigo Air, is a vast variety of delicious food served up at the Spring Hotel by Chef John Satish. He is unfamiliar with the concept of “unavailable” – if you can say it, Chef John will get it and make it for you!

     Chennai is the only truly big city we visit in India, and we luck out on an excellent boutique hotel, $65 a night, for us by far the most upscale lodging of our whole trip.  It is small, intimate, glitzy, artsy, and we have a lot of fun with some of the most friendly, smiley, helpful folks we meet in India. That’s saying a lot!

     The flight to Chennai, which is in the next state, Tamil Nadu, and back, from Kerala, goes off without a hitch on Indigo Air. The hotel van is waiting for us when we came out of the airport. 

     We are whisked along a freeway to the center of town, delivered to the front door, and showed in to Reception. We enjoy traveling in a style to which we are definitely not accustomed!

     Here's a few photos around the hotel:

Chef John Satish

     When we return, Thai visas in hand, we have about a week before we fly to Thailand, where we have requested and gratefully received permission to stay for six months. We make the rounds, say our good-byes, and promise to return as soon as we can. 

     Our Landlord says the house will be waiting for us when we come back. He’s had so much difficulty with other renters, he’ll leave it empty until we then. He even lets us store things there!

Our landlord with his wife and son -- lawyer, doctor, and social worker

     After India, we spend five months in Thailand.  The next post will catch you up on that most interesting time.  For now, this is a good place to say “Bye,” Pinakamanku, in Keralan Malayalam, dear friends.