SOUTH INDIA - My second trip to India was to the southern part of the country encompassing Mumbai, Kerala, Tamil Nadu,  Orissa, finishing by Kolkota.

Mumbai is a huge city and it is hard for me to say I saw it all. But I saw the old part of it, the famous Taj Mahal Hotel, the Gateway of  India, a basalt arch of colonial triumph named as such by the British. And I went to Victoria Terminus, the  heart of the city’s  train network.  Trains in India are an experience and train stations are another but Victoria Terminus tops it all even though  I was not even there during rush hours. When a train  arrived , the platform was suddenly overflowing with people,  a crowd like I had never seen before was ondulating at great speed to the exit door. I felt I was going to be swept away by it and the only way out I found was to climb on the relatively high base of a lamp post and hug the pole firmly. That was something to see.  It is only between two trains that I made my way out of the station.

In Mumbai there is a system which is a small miracle of logistics and which has to be mentioned : the Dhaba-Wallas. Each day, 5000  men (wallas) pick up lunch boxes (dhabas) from restaurants, homes, loving wives or doting mothers and deliver hot lunches to hungry office workers. Those lunch boxes are carried by bicycle, train or simply on heads. They are first taken to a centralized sorting station where a sophisticated system of colors and numbers are used (since most wallas are illiterate) to determine where each box has to be delivered. More than 250.000 meals are delivered in Mumbai in this way every day, always on time, come rain (monsoon) or shine. This system has been used for centuries and research shows only one mistake is made every six million deliveries. An incredible system to be proud of.

We then proceeded to Kerala and found a paradise of waterways, dotted by villages on the shores, all quiet, peaceful and unbelievably green. What struck my attention was the cleanliness of our surroundings. The villages were pristine, the children were in newly washed clothes, the women were in shining saris and the houses and shops were organized and freshly painted. Where did ‘’dirty ‘’ India go ? I was astounded to learn that the reason for this  was communism. Yes, communism. It seems that in 1957 Kerala was the first place in the world to elect a communist government and the communists won all the elections in Kerala since then, making it the most socially advanced state in India.  The literacy rate in Kerala at 91% is the highest of any developing country in the world. The infant mortality rate is one-fifth of the national average and life expectancy, at 73 years, is 10 years higher than the rest of the country.  Who can say communism is always bad ? Its good sides are for all to see in Kerala. Is it possible elected communists living in a democracy are different ?

Going peacefully by boat on the backwaters of Kerala we reached a hotel I cannot forget. It was made of small buildings with two rooms in each, dispersed on a grassy land with waterways and bridges to cross . Beautiful. When I entered my room, I had difficulty finding the bathroom when a saw a second exit door. Well it was an exit door but it was exiting to the bathroom. I entered my first bathroom in open air. Surrounded by walls, yes, but in open air. There was even a banana tree in the middle, with bananas on it. No need for a fruit tray  courtesy of the general manager. Just sit in your bathroom and eat bananas.

I already mentioned  the temples of South India are totally different from those of the North. A typical South İndian temple consists of a central shrine where the deity resides, surrounded by one or more entrance halls (mandapam) that lead to the shrine. They also have one or more towering  gate or gopuram.

 When we reached Madurai in Tamil Nadu, we visited the famous Sri Menakshi Temple and I had a first glimpse of what a southern temple, or more precisely a Dravidian (Tamil people are Dravidian) temple looks like.The  ‘’gopurams’’ are decorated with figurines representing the deities of the Hindu pantheon in all kinds of shape and color . These figurines are literally covering the whole tower façade and even jumping out of it. The whole thing looks more like Disneyland than a temple and is very kitsch. But it is also joyful. As the temple is usually surrounded by two, three or even four circular walls, these form  alleys where  all kinds of shops are located and consequently there is quite a lot of people of which a great part seem to be here only to shop, and definitely not to worship. It is only in the interior that things get more serious.

    The best time to visit this temple is at sunrise or in the night to watch a very interesting ceremony. We chose to be there at night. Every night at 9:00 p.m. bells ring near the central shrine . Shiva (or rather a statue of it) is taken by priests out of the inner sanctum, put on a palanquin and taken to the apartments of his wife Parvati, or Menakshi as she is called here. But before reaching Menakshi’s apartments, a stop is made and the feet of Shiva are washed by the priests. One has to be clean before going into his wife’s bed, doesn’t he? Finally the procession, led by musicians, arrives in front of the apartments of Menakshi. But you do not go in like that. First it is asked if Menakshi accepts Shiva’s visit and it seems every night she says yes, since the statue is abandoned there. Then, the next morning, at sun rise, the same procession takes place to take Shiva from the bed of Menakshi into his own apartments. And this is repeated day in, day out, every day . Unbelievable. It is taken very seriously by the priests and the Hindus. You can see how carried away they are, how strongly they feel they are doing the right thing, the ‘’good’’ thing in fact. I totally agree with the person who said ‘’religion is the opium of the people’’.

Our trip continued through Tamil Nadu, passing by Pondichery and Chenai (Madras) , two cities that I did not like much. In Orissa, we mainly visited its main city, Bubaneshvar . In Orissa there are more temples than in the whole of India ; and there are more than one thousand temples in Bubaneshvar only. I had the fright of my life here. What if we are to visit  them all ?  Luckily enough our guide himself gave up after 4 temples.

We finished by Kolkata but this is a place I have to go back to. Time was too short and I did not see much. I wanted to go the places describes in The City Of Joy, but had no time. So that’s stays as a future plan.

My most incredible plane journey took place at the return leg of this trip. In those years, Turkish Airlines was not yet flying to India so we were using Emirates via Dubai. Emirates leaves Mumbai at around 5:00 a.m. You have to be at the airport at around 2:30 a.m., leaving the hotel around 1:30 a.m. so we decided it was not worth going to bed but better  sleep on the plane. That was not meant to be. On schedule we boarded the plane, the doors closed and just as we were to go, a commotion happened at the back. The plane stopped dead on its wheels. We then discovered that the passengers sitting at the back as well as the crew had seen a mouse. Not a rat. A small mouse. What is more normal than a mouse in India? But unfortunately not on a plane. This mouse has to be caught. The Indian way to do it is first to send four airport staff with long sticks to try to find the mouse and hit it on the head. No way. Then those people go out and come back, this time with big mouse traps (too big for the little mouse). The mouse turned out to be  more clever than the airport staff and was not to be found. So we were asked to get out of the plane.  We were first offered breakfast at the airport and later put on a bus to go to a hotel near the airport. It seems our mouse was still eluding its hunters.  At the hotel, we were given lunch and rooms as well as three minutes of free phone call to inform those back home that we would not be making it on time. As I had not slept through the night, I crushed and slept like a baby until I was woken up at around 5:00 p.m. Here we are back to the airport, and back on our plane. Or is it? I asked a steward if the mouse had been found and the answer I got was quite surprising: ‘’Lady, I do not know of any mouse. The only thing I know is that it was my day off today and I was home in Dubai resting when I have been called to fly to Mumbai on an emergency. Here I am.’’ I then learned that Emirates had made the first controls on the original plane and had it flown back to Dubai with only the crew. They could not take the risk of taking passengers in case the mouse had eaten some cables. Then a new plane with a new crew was sent to Mumbai to take us. I have to admit I was impressed.  Would all airlines do the same thing? After an uneventful flight, we came to Dubai at 7:00 p.m. No connection to Istanbul at that time of course, and no connection the next morning either since Emirates flew to Istanbul every other day then. I do not know if it changed today. Anyway, we were taken to the Sheraton Hotel but had a Dubai-by-night tour going there , an open buffet was served on the roof, rooms were opened and we again had our three minutes of phone call home courtesy of Emirates. The next morning we were put on a Singapore Airlines flight to Istanbul and reached home with 24 hours delay. When I think of it, a tiny little mouse caused a huge airline company a lot of expenses. So why not build a temple to a mouse? (You will understand what I mean when I write about Rajasthan).