AGONDA

Agonda beach started with just a few huts on the beach, then within a few years mushroomed into a mega hutoppoliss, groups of huts competing to see who could create the most luxurious environment for guests who pay top dollar to come and spend Christmas and the new year here. Each group of huts has its restaurant area, overlooking the sea, so that guests can sip their drinks as they watch the sun sink into the ocean every evening.

The other side of the road, where a few villagers live, has similarly grown, with each villager building rooms, houses, whatever they can fit into their piece of land. Narrow dirt paths lead between the houses, which are so near together that you can lean out of your window and almost touch the house next door. But this is where you can find the cheap rooms, if you get here early enough. I have a traditional old room, built with a gap between the wall and the ceiling. The wind blows all sort of things through the gap - leaves, grit, small feathers, so I have to keep sweeping the floor. But it's cheap and I have table and chair to work at my computer, and luxury of luxuries - a fridge!

Yesterday there was a funeral in Agonda. The coffin arrived in the back of an old red lorry, together with four priests, clad in long robes with white lace stoles, covered by short red satin stoles. They clambered down from the back of the lorry, their lace stoles fluttering about them. Men heaved the coffin down and carried it, accompanied by the priests, to the church. At the entrance they took the lid off the coffin and propped it up against the church wall. The coffin was full of flowers. Presumably there was a body under the flowers, but I was too far away to see.

A bus full of mourners drove right into the church precinct, followed by several people on motor bikes. Everyone converged on the church

The Film Festival has ended

After the last film, some of the young festival goers took me to "their bar" a marvelous labyrinth of rooms painted bright red up to waist height and brilliant yellow form there upwards. It's obviously a sleezy dive for middle aged men to drink alcohol (without their women folk and away from prying eyes) that had been adopted by young festival goers for the duration of the festival. Ranks of Kingfisher beer bottles lined up on the table around which a bevy of young men and one brave young woman were lounging. They had been carousing between films all day.

Jitidj, my half Namibian,  half Indian friend, dropped out of University because, he said, he was learning nothing. He told us at length three days ago, as we stood in the queue for one of the films, how he'd been walking the length and breadth of India, bare footed, sleeping in temples when he could, in his tent when he could, in the railway station when they would let him and how here, in Kerala, they wouldn't let him do any of those things, so he was trying to couch surf.

"It's not easy couch surfing in India if you are an Indian man," he said. "The hosts all want foreigners, preferably women, preferably young women, preferably blond young women. I have to beg and plead with them before they'll let me stay."

"I have exactly the opposite problem," I tell him. "Too many men want to host me, and too many for all the wrong reasons. I tend to delete their offers."

Our waiter, a skinny old man, is drunk, much to the amusement of my companions. He's still managing to take orders and carry the drinks, but cannot any longer control the expression on his face or the slurring of his speech. Jitidg told me he was going to the Jaipur Literature Festival.
"You can't get there in time if you keep on walking," I said sceptically.
"No. I'll catch a train." So much for walking the length and breadth of India!

After a while my companions headed to the courtyard at the back of the bar to smoke cigarettes. Drawn by the sound of singing, I went with them. We found a group of young men singing their hearts out, standing in the courtyard. An old man joined in. They were singing traditional songs, keeping in tune for verse after verse. It occurred to me that this musicality and memory, so common among Indian people, might go some way to explaining why they learn languages with such apparent ease.

We left around six, and I headed to the station to wait for my train at half past midnight: a long wait. I tried sitting in the first class lounge, but got so cold, for the air conditioning was set way too high, that I started snuffling and sneezing. So I went to sit in the booked tickets waiting room, where a fan was grinding and clattering like a steam roller and an old Sadhu was lying on the floor inconspicuously behind some seats, fast asleep, scratching his private parts vigorously without waking up. Young men dressed in black came in and sat down.

I went to the station food outlet and ordered a little vegetable pasty. It wasn't very nice but I ate it anyway. More of the young black clad men came in, so I got up to leave. No one brought me a bill, so I went to the cashier to pay.
"One veg pasty," I said
"Chappatti?" he asked me.
So I gave up and walked out onto the platform.
The station was full of black clad pilgrims. It seemed that any kind of black clothing would do: traditional floor length dhotis, black jeans, black lycra shorts, just so long as the clothes were black.
"Where are you going?" I asked a group of young pilgrims.
"Utta Pradesh," they answered, meaning that that was where they had come from.
"Four days walking. Padmanabharhti Swami temple near Charlor Harack" I think he said "One time eating a day." Just then there was a train announcement and the group took off, racing up the stairs to catch their train back to Utta Pradesh.

Behind a low wall on the platform pilgrims lay sleeping neatly in rows, lined up like sardines, tightly packed together. Jitidge had mentioned that he could have joined them if he'd found some black clothes to wear. These were very different from the pilgrims I saw in Amarkantak in February. Those were all wearing traditional Indian clothing, old and loose, draped about their bodies, carrying a little cloth bag, a thin blanket and a stick, while these black clad pilgrims were wearing shiny new clothes and carrying large rucksacks. They'd come for a big festival that'd been going on while we were all trotting from one cinema to another.

I sat on a seat on the platform beside a couple of young women carrying a sports rifle in a big plastic box.
"It weighs twenty kg," one of them told me.
"They let you take that on the train?"
"I have licence. You know Olympic games? I at Olympic games"
"Did you win anything?"
"Seven lakh. Oil company gifted me this gun. German made."
"So very expensive"
"Yes very expensive"
"Better take the lift up to the bridge."
"No. We strong."
And they galloped up the stairs carrying their luggage and the gun.

I boarded my train at midnight, unrolled my sleeping bag on the top bunk and slept like a baby until the morning.

Trivandrum Day 5

The communist party, who organise the international film festival in Trivandrum have red flags adorned with hammer and sickle lining the streets and posters like this. Marxism is alive and well in Trivandrum.

My firefly friend has flitted away, half way through the festival. No more lovely lunches at his club. No more drinks in the club bar. And there's nowhere else to drink in Trivandrum, a pretty dry town! The British built the club, so of course it had to have a bar.

I continue to enjoy wonderful films from Russia, Germany, Philippines, Cuba, Colombia, Chad, tending to focus on just a few directors. Of course the odd Indian classic too. 

Trivandrum day 2

I have been to Trivandrum several times years ago, but I never went beyond the station, which is situated in possibly the ugliest part of town. So I had a pretty poor impression of the place. In fact much of the city has traditional Keralan houses with pointed tiled roofs, surrounded by large, leafy trees.

My friend's enthusiasm for Kerala is boundless, but then he is Keralan. "The Communist state of Kerala is the most equal state in India. There is very little poverty. The roads are clean, public buildings are clean, hotels are clean and the food is cheap. There are fourteen cinemas in Trivandrum and the five biggest ones were all built by the communist party. They run this film festival and they make sure that it is big."

I have to agree with him about the cleanliness of the place, the cheapness of the food and wonder of wonders, the rikshaws all use metres. There's no arguing over the price of a ride. Just jump in and tell them to switch on the metre, if they haven't already. And if you want to walk they don't hassle you. 

We started early at nine o'clock in the morning with "A Season in France" by Chad director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun about African refugees seeking asylum in France, unsuccessfully, a very emotional film, moving but understated. Then we hopped in a rikshaw to go to a different cinema to see Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, a tour de force all shot in one take in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. I'm left wanting to visit the Hermitage, just the Hermitage, nothing else in Russia.

We rushed back to the club for a nice lunch, then to a very old Iranian film directed by Bahram Beyzal, after which we both needed a rest so we went to the India Coffee House, a wonderful spiral building designed by a British architect called Laurie Baker in the 1950s. Laurie Baker met Ghandi, who told him to help the poor so he devoted the rest of his life to designing buildings in Trivandrum that were cheap to build, functional and pleasing to the eye. He used brick or stone, depending on what was available locally, but no concrete. The seating in the coffee house is stepped all the way up the outer side of the spiral, so that each little table overlooks the one below it. The coffee and food are cheap, as they are in all the Indian Coffee Houses. Every city in India has Indian coffee houses and together they form the largest cooperative workers union in the world.

Prime Minister Modi has decreed that everyone must stand for the Indian National Anthem at the start of every film. Last year some people were arrested for refusing to stand. The festival organisers managed to release them. This year there are several refuseniks at the start of each film. So far none of them have been arrested, well not as far as I know. You never know whether there might be some of Modi's spies in the audience taking sneaky photos of the refuseniks. I hope not. Keralans are fiercely independent of the Indian government. 

The crowds are predominantly young men, a few young women and very few older people. So few in fact that over sixty fives are exempt from queuing. But I queue because I'm with a friend. No one takes any notice of me except the press, who keep trying to photograph me without asking my permission, which I consider to be rude, so I cover my face.

My friend is threatening to abandon me and return to his vow of silence. He hasn't actually taken a vow of silence; in fact he's the chattiest person I know, a fund of information on literature, film, music, art, Indian history, but he says that he spends more and more time alone, meditating and that after he's been with a person for a day he wants to be on his own. I rather like having a companion in this sea of Indian people. It makes me feel less conspicuous, but I know people will be nice to me, maybe even chat with me. 

Trivandrum

I was sitting in the ticketing area of the Kerala film festival, a large space with a roof and no sides with rows of young people sitting behind computer screens on one side of the room when my friend walked in. He is one of those larger than life characters whose voice booms across the room, cutting through the desultory chatter of the people waiting for their cards to be processed. His long, curly black hair and big black eyes give him the look of an Indian guru, a term he would absolutely abhor. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and I'd been contending with crowds of pushing, shoving Indian people since ten thirty in the morning, trying to get a pass to the film festival.
"I'm mighty glad to see you" I said.
"What's happening? Why can't you get your pass?"
"I really don't know. I don't understand what's going on."
"Tell them you are a life long member of the British Communist Party!"
"Go on! You are a white woman. Push your way through," indicating a wall of people.
I pushed, and reached a desk where people were thrusting pieces of paper at a desperate young man. I held out my piece of paper. Bodies squashed against mine all round me in the stifling heat. Eventually the young man said something I didn't understand. My friend translated.
"There's a logistical problem with the printing press. They say come back tomorrow. Let's go to my club."

The club is an old colonial place, all polished teak, wide areas with old fashioned arm chairs, a super cooled restaurant where the food is very cheap.

After a snack we took a rikshaw through the winding leafy streets of Trivandrum in search of an alternative film festival, making repeated stops to ask directions, only to wind up back where we had started, right behind the club. The alternative film festival had a board to list the films showing over the next few days, no programme as such and a few alternative young people sporting beards and sitting behind a makeshift desk. No crowds. We registered and took our passes.

Much later that evening I got my pass to the main festival. So now I have two passes and because of my great age I can get into any film I want without having to queue.