From the Shark Tooth to the Pearl; Pir Melinge

I have marvelled lately that all it took to get from the northernmost brushstroke of India, the Line of Control in Indian Kashmir, to nearly the southernmost pencil point of Kannyakumari (or in our case, Trivandrum, which is 60kms shy) was three harried days on the Enfield, and a total of four nights on the train divided over three different journeys taken over three months. When detailed in those terms, perhaps it does seem like an important stage to have nearly reached the end of India, both geographically and literally for our time left here. It seems, alternately, like we have floated here or crawled. And we are disbelieving that we are truly flying away from this vast place tomorrow morning, as we were expecting somehow that our lives would always carry the daily possibility of buying more Mysore Sandal Soap, seeing albinos that look more like they belong to Ireland than India's billions, and being harassed by young men selling drums in tourist areas who insidiously whisper "hello my friend, you like to buy drum?" and expertly run their fingers along a drumskin to produce an unmistakablly annoying psychedelic wooing sound. But we have been blessed with a mission that makes our eventual return less anticlimatic and are boarding our plane to Sri Lanka expecting to leave after one month, triumphant with a fresh new American visa in Alp's impressively arrayed passport (a visa that, I might add, will say officially "To marry Ingrid Hakala Millis, of Falls Church, Virginia"). Our wonderful friend Helaena is going to allow us to be her guests in Colombo and we are anticipating wildly and silently all the great small glories of a new nation, not to mention more passport stamps and stickers.

As for our last few weeks in India, we have confined ourselves to a small area of Kerala. Trivandrum is a busy, sunny city with many varieties of bananas and only thirty minutes from a beachy place called Varkala. We spent slightly over a week there, eating fresh tandoori fish every night, doing yoga in the mornings, breathing deeply after what was far too many months in assorted cities. It took us a while to find the beach, as the main one was far too rough for swimming and full of Indian families staring at the sea, munching on snacks and not knowing what to do with themselves. The northern strand was small, but offered continuous wave action that left me exhausted trying not to lose my bikini and Alp smiling like the little Turkish boy he once was playing likewise in the waves of the Black Sea... that is until we noticed that the surf was foaming with jellyfish carcasses and were unnerved. We gathered drinking water from a spring that flowed beneath the small rust colored cliffs of the seaside and took naps in the afternoon. Back in Trivandrum, we have visited the Botanical Gardens, a very nice wooden palace of the Travancore royal family, and nearly twenty footwear shops looking for replicas of my sandals. I have gotten over my original preconception that South India is terribly different in ambiance and mores than the North... Nearly everywhere in India south of Himachal is hectic, hot, and fun in a similar way. But the men here do wear lungis instead of pants underneath their western-style shirts, leading to a fashion look that Alp and I have described as "business on top, shower on bottom." And there are more curry leaves, mustard seeds, and coconut in the curries. We are sure to tell you all about what we find in Sri Lanka and until then, I wish we knew how to say farewell in Malayalam (the local language and an awfully long pallimdrone) but I imagine it sounds like this: bpoooluuuyuttappam (try saying this with marbles in your mouth).
Ingridkutty