I have a few relatives that live near there; the rents are low enough I might think of moving there myself. But just now I am taking leave of Ben and Cathy at Sheffield, Yorkshire. Yorks has been having a spot of water shortage these past few months, long hot summer and all that, nothing a good rainy winter and spring and next summer won't fix up right. To hear it on the news it would also help if the water company would spend as much time fixing the pipes as they do making a profit. Sheffield was a steel making town, John Henry got his start here, Vulcan is the patron saint. At the top of the spire on the town hall there is an heroic statue of a nude Vulcan wielding a hammer. Pretty dangerous for a man working a forge. Sheffield steel use to be the main ingredient in most high quality knives.
When I last visited Ben and me went hiking along the Stannage Edge;
this time the weather was bearly suitable for walking downtown. On many
of the highways motorcars and lorries were askew and abandoned due to a
surprise attack of winter, a season that seems to catch folks unawares
after such a long hot summer as has been the case here. So downtown we
went, in search of round tea bags ... "no matter what flavour, so long
as they're round" wrote my friend in Acton, and also in search of a zip.
On my last visit to Sheffield all the pounds I was shedding then caused
the zipper on my wallet to lose some teeth and I replaced it here; this
time the same thing was again taking place so it was necessary to quest
after a proper zip.
Along the way we discovered another Internet Coffee Shop (Its all the
rage now you know for coffee shops to move into bookstores and internet
to move into coffee shops.) and needless to say I had been without a proper
netfix since visiting with Dave and Pauline last week so in we went to
see what my latest letter looked like in colour on the big screen. This
shop, on Westfield Terrace, had a 300dpi colour printer connected so I
was able to print a copy of my letter with all the images. And I left a
bookmark to my letters page. It certainly is magic. At a copy shop nearby
we were able to have the letter reproduced so Ben could keep a copy. That
part was pretty dear, ten pounds sterling for eight pages. I hope Ben sees
it like I do as eight pages worth framing. 
Next on the list of Essential Insanities was a chip shop for some proper
fish and chips served up in a paper pocket of newsprint with salt and vinegar.
Followed up with a pint (I had only a half since I was about to go into
training) at the Frog & Parrot on Devonshire Street, within a two minute
stagger of Vulcan. It is not clear to me if Roger has been the manager
for all of the 25 years this place is reputed to have been here, it looks
a lot older than that, but he has retired after leaving his name of several
of the brews. The barkeeps there now don't know much of the history of
their establishment, more's the pity since it would seem, judging by the
look of the place, to have lots of stories to tell. The Frog & Parrot's
famous ales are brewed on the premises ("Look through the floor!!!") and
include Roger's Reckless, a rather pleasant ale after fish and chips, and
Roger & Out; at 12% you won't get too far on a couple of pints of that
stuff. 
This day started out bright and sunny, just like yesterday, except a lot colder. There is considerable frost on the car as Dave and Pauline take me to Heathrow to find Air India flight 112 bound for Delhi, Bombay, and Madras. This is going to be a long day if Dave continues to pick the roads with the speed bumps. But finally we arrive with a few minutes to spare and I am able to commence the check-in process.
So now I am in Asia. The Gobi Desert is in here some place according to a crossword puzzle I am working through, way at the far end from where we are flying over the south shore of the Black Sea. This is a new continent for me, another place to fly my kite and watch and learn about how the local folks live. I have joined my friend Richard Cook from back in the old days on this flight. He is on his way to the CSI Children's School in Erode to work on several projects and visit the kids he supports. We will be there for most of three weeks. One is not supposed to bring Rupees *into* India; I smell a trap here. I just know ten Pounds of sterling is going to translate into a ton of Rupees and they will make it very difficult to sell them back on the way out.
Its Sunday morning in Bombay but still Saturday night in Greenwich Nice Time. All of India is on the same timezone: GMT-5.5 hours. I slept through the stop at Delhi; lack of sleep and maybe lack of water had caused some upset, mostly in the form of a headache. Hell of a way to start a new adventure but after Delhi the 747-400 was nearly empty and it was possible to find three seats in a row to lay down and sleep. Bombay looks a lot like London from the air at this hour, the green and orange of the ubiquitous sodium vapour and mercury vapour lights shows up through the winter haze. The temperature here feels about 65f. Now we must sit around in a transit lounge for three hours waiting on the flight from here to Madras.
New Woodlands Hotel on Radhakrishnan Road, Mylapore is the place for tonight. Several naps and snacks later Issac and me walked to the Mirana Beach and looked around for a place to fly pattams in the morning. A sign painted on a wall along the road, where there is another sign "Stick No Bills" proclaims 24% interest on constant amount savings accounts. Imagine what the inflation rate must be. Madras is one of the four principle cities in India, the capitol of Tamil Nadu, with a population of over 10 lakhs. One lakh equals 100,000. This part of the city is a little ways south of the port of Madras and runs the gamut from rich, guarded and gated estates with inside toilets to thatched hovels and children shitting in the street.
New
Tamil words for today: Mahdu, Aahdu, Vanakkam, Nanri, Pattam, Poondu, Rabadi.
In order of appearance: Cow (Holy), Goat (domestic but free ranging in
the city), Welcome (similar to Namasti (in Hindi)), Thank you, Kite, garlic
(akin to ajo), and lastly, rabadi is a thick milk desert, almost tart like
yoghurt but sweet and with a pistachio garnish. Yum!
Overhead four fans make enough noise to obscure the clickety clack of
wheel on rail and once the cabin lights are extinguished one of them spits
angry blue along with its share of buzzing and snapping. Eventually I am
able to finger out which of the half dozen pull-cords and switches call
the train conductor and which turn off the fans except that the most angry
of the fans only slows a little and continues to sputter. It is evident
that others before me have had this problem and the solution is made obvious
by the black electricians tape I find wrapped around one of the wires. 
They're are two toilets at each end of our sleeper car with one of the four doors labeled "Western Toilet" (the others are labeled with "@@!%?" which is as near as this American English keyboard will let me approximate the Hindi sign. At least I think its Hindi.) It seems to translate to something like squat-hole. Mr. Cook says its actually more sanitary than the western style. One of these days I will give it a try but not whilst I am on a moving train, the hole is too big and there is no safety net.
Yesterday and today have been wonderful adventures of learning the proper etiquette of eating with one's fingers (not hands), of flying pattams, dealing with beggars and vendors of everything.
Issac is a quiet, unassuming, flying wedge when it comes to wading through
the sea of humanity that presses around anyone who exudes the faintest
whiff of tourist. He works as a clerk-typist at the Secretariat, the ten
story headquarters of the Tamil Nadu government in Madras, and makes 3000
Rs (at this writing 1 US$ buys 35 Rs). We went to eat at several different
restaurants and he would talk me through the ordering of meals. For breky
this morning we had iddly and sambar, mutter paneer, tea and coffee; coffee
is coffee Issac said but the Indian way is to serve it with milk and sugar.
The sugar is at the bottom of the cup and you stir up only as much as you
want. 
He is trying to teach me to write my Oxton name in Tamil script; @@85uL@@. However if we translate Oxton first to Tamil and then write the result in English letters it comes out kottakai or tholinam. Our breky, without translation, consisted of steamed rice cakes and several spicy sauces. One breaks off a morsel of rice cake, carefully scalding the fingers on the hot interior, and dips it in the sauce. Or you can pour some of the sauce over your cakes and then pick up the resulting porridge. Instead of rice cakes you might have paan, a kind of flat, thin, baked wheat bread. Butter-paan is when this bread is fried and served hot. Tearing off a proper portion of this hot, slippery concoction to use as a vehicle to transport vegetarian curry into the oral cavity is a learn'ed task requiring more dexterity than the use of chopsticks. We traded lessons. It is a matter of holding down the paan with your thumb whilst tearing away a portion with your fingers or holding it down with fore and middle fingers and tearing with thumb against ring finger. Or any combination that works; except that you are not permitted to use your left hand at all but for maybe to steady your plate and keep it from skittering across the table into that of your neighbor.
After the morning lessons in etiquette we rented a car and driver for the day (for 750 Rs) and headed off to Mahabalipuram (emphasis is on the second syllable) and the Golden Sands beach.
Issac and I had walked the fifteen minutes from our hotel to Marina Beach, straight down the road from the New Woodlands Hotel to the Bay of Bengal, yesterday afternoon. I needed to get the kinks out after all that time sitting in a plane. Now I am sitting in a car with my head out the window as the driver races and dodges through crowded streets. I am reminded of Quito--cars, buses, auto-rickshaws, trucks, all drive with one foot on the gas, the other on the horn. But here they are far more polite. The horn seems to say something more like here-I-come rather than get-out-of-my-way.
What most westerners take as squalor these folks take for granted. It
is not so much that they are not interested in getting ahead but that they
are resigned to their fate for this time around. They will get another
chance later. There were 7577 castes indicated on the 1930 census and despite
the caste system being outlawed it still controls the lives of much of
the population. Getting ahead from one day to the next is enough challenge.
Construction workers live on the job with their families; sons work along
side fathers, women cook meals and keep house in a corner of the foundation
as the walls go up around them and young girls carry half a dozen bricks
or a hod of cement on their heads up scaffolding of spars lashed together
like a Boy Scout pioneering project. When the building is complete the
families of the construction caste will move on to the next job site. 
I find I am at a loss for words to describe much of what I see. I absorb
sights and sounds and smells but find my vocabulary inadequate to paint
a picture. Crowded implies uncomfortably close together; this place is
teeming, the people swarm, but it is not crowded. It use to be that a certain
separation had to be maintained between persons of different castes but
public mass transportation has ameliorated much of that need. Women are
beginning to take to the streets, an article in the daily paper talks about
how using motorscooters empowers women but that they are at greater risk,
but not all the kids go to school. Everywhere I look along the way there
are shops for selling and fixing and eating, little more than stalls opening
out right on the littered sidewalk, cows and goats competing with children
in the piles of refuse, thatched huts built against the walls of guarded
villas, women getting water at community spigots kept full by huge horn
blowing tank trucks, then we round a corner, pass an intersection, and
the whole character of the place changes, the edge of urban sprawl gives
way to pasture, rice paddy, rock quarry, and then a smaller village. 
Mahabalipuram is a small village about 60 km south of Madras which contains
several examples of ancient masonry construction where the entire structure
or piece is sculpted out of the living rock. Isvara Temple is one such
structure. Also named Olakkannesvara Temple, it is in the Rajasimka style
for the god Siva (Shiva) and dates from AD 674-800. Everywhere we stopped
the car was immediately surrounded by vendors of all ages pedaling carved
elephants, carved gods, painted silks, postcards... Dealing is permitted
and the elephant sellers will press their wares upon you from all sides
shouting lower and lower prices, two for one, I carved this myself... It
is like an auction in reverse. They go to school to learn the techniques
of carving and the pitch to sell it. And they earn five to ten rupees on
each 100 to 200 Rs sold; the rest going to overhead, supplies, instructor.
It almost seems not to matter how low the prices go but at some point you
have to feel some compassion for these guys and either buy something or
walk away before you insult them. A typical hard stone piece, about the
size of a can of soda (but undeniably more complex and better for you),
representing one of the myriad Hindu gods, takes from four to ten days
to complete depending upon the complexity of the piece and the skill of
the artisan. 
I find my Self attracted to the one who converses beyond the rudiments of his sales pitch. He listens to my questions and has ready answers, he begins to point out the relationship between what he sells and the surrounding monuments. Gradually the crowd thins, he has said something to the others that seems to send them away and he shifts into tour guide mode. Eventually I purchase a carving from this student artist huckster guide and we both are satisfied.
At another part of the monument a young girl has a different approach.
Instead of carrying her selections in a bag to follow us around in the
hot sun Nirmala has set up shop in the cool shade of a narrow part of the
trail. She smiled but was silent as we stepped around her on our way in,
she knows there is only one way out. But even then her beguiling smile
works better than the raucous voice of the others and she wins a sale and
a picture. 
In one of the stalls back in the village where the carving takes place a teacher is with three students. There are also some cold drinks to be had so we purchase Cokes and listen as the student presents his wares.
But what I really came here for is the beach. The sun and the wind are
dragging at my kite string even though the pattam is still in its bag.
I have several other kites to check out before bringing them to the school
in Erode (and Issac says there may not be all that much wind there--he
has not flown a kite since he was a little kid and I sense his anticipation)
so we shake off the train of vendors and find a more or less unpopulated
stretch of sand along the surf where the wind is right. First one small
stable orange parafoil I have been carrying all the way from the kite shop
in Christchurch and then a blue one are sent to the sky. Sampoornam holds
one of these, Mr. Cook the other. A few kids begin to gather and it crosses
my mind that one 
could set up shop right here... Next I launch a small traditional cross-stick
diamond with a long tail. This is a sprightly pattam and Issac takes it
away from the others while I get out its mate. This last is even more sprightly
and requires some nursing along to keep it airborne. When it crashed the
second time a small boy ran from the pack surrounding me with their buy
me din and lifted it from the sand. He knew which end was up and held it
ready so I gave a thumbs up and he let it take to the air. When he walked
back I gave him the string and asked his name; Peter, he said, what is
your name.
My big parafoil likes this kind of wind and flew nearly straight up above the other kites. Too bad I didn't bring the big two string aerobatic wing but then just as well as the place is getting too crowded. When we pulled them all in an hour later I gave Peter the one he'd been flying and he ran off up the beach yelling his thanks. As we got in our car to return to the city I could still see it flying above the palms beyond the temple Olakkannesvara.
Issac has instructed me to be introduced to the children at the CSI school at Erode as Poondu to see how long it takes them to make the connexion to garlic. Mr. Cook says it rhymes with Doodu...
Chocolate stores in jeopardy! The Lindt Cappuccino, open'd in London has begun to melt. It must be the humidity since the other bars which are still seal'd are properly firm, even the Milch-Chocolade et amandes grillees. The only way to save the cappuccino from running all over my pack is to spoon it from the wrapper. Hell of a way to eat a chocolate bar...
My first encounter with the phone system here is not indicative of fast reliable digital communications. The phone in my room is for local calls only. The phone in the lobby kiosk has a keypad but is rotary dial and there is some sort of metering device wired in which will make attaching a modem risky at best. I am going to close this letter and see about posting it from the school later.
Cheerio, ajo
A.J.Oxton, OA, OO, OAE, k1oIq
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Copyright © 2003, A.J.Oxton, The Cat Drag'd Inn , 03813-0144.