South India : Madurai, Tamil Nadu - and carbon copy bookkeeping

(Meenakshi temple - Madurai)

We are sitting on the Villupuram to Madurai Express. In noisy glorious second class aircon. I reflect that much we have seen in India still feels like the 1980's. And at the same time India strains at the leash to be released from its past. So much positive change is happening in this beautiful land full of the starkest contrasts.

There are however some British colonial relics here that still seem to hold India back, and I'm not talking about Hugh and Audrey on a group holiday from Gerrards Cross.

The four berth railway carriage feels dark despite the fact that it's scorching midday 400 miles north of the equator. Chipped caramel painted walls. Flapping dull red flock curtains partially separate the carriage from the corridor. The small locked window is curtained and almost obscured. The visible area of window is thick with dust on the outside, the interior of the carriage is spotlessly clean. The noisy aircon is struggling but supplemented by an equally grinding ceiling fan. The seat easily converts to a bed with its drop down seat back. Chocolate brown faux leather. The upper bunk mattress hovers above the sitter's head. Suspended from the ceiling by heavy covered steel chains individually welded to the ceiling. If you are taller than four foot eight and stand up suddenly, concussion is pretty much inevitable. The upper bunk is reached from the corridor using a crudely welded steel ladder. The over head rack has white linen sheets and pillowcases. The linen serves to stop the occupant adhering on a permanent basis to the plastic bed. Baggage is stowed under the seat, or lodged uncomfortably on your berth.

A stream of hawkers ply the corridor between stations. Their call of "samosa, samosa, samosa" and "Chaaaa-i" is unchanged since our journeys' here in the 1980's. Did we know what a samosa was then? Todays one is crispy and delicious and filled only with onion.

The studious looking lady opposite me on seat 27 wears her wire framed specs as she meticulously copies invoice after invoice onto the pages of her ledger. Between each sheet of the ledger she places and smoothes a thin blue sheet. I recognised it of course. But it took me a full minute to recall the name, carbon copy paper. Those of you who know me well, may again suspect early onset alcohol related memory loss. No, actually fuck off, it's just an item of stationary lost deep inside perfectly functioning neurones. Thank you. It's been a very long time. I remember with surprise that infact CC (Carbon Copy) remains in daily use on email.

Her smart phone rang. Silpa answered it and then popped on her bluetooth headphones. I could only hear one side of the conversation, it was in Tamil. But there are so many English words in every sentence that I now knew her name, that she was speaking with her boss, and that she had nearly finished her bookkeeping.

It occurred to me that her phone contained more than enough computing power to safely land an Apollo mission on the moon. A mystery I'll probably never fully understand, except of course it's the way her boss wants it, and without the carbon copy paper she doesn't have a job. Under the circumstances she is unlikely to extol the virtues of the computerised Excel spread sheet already available on her android phone.

(Silpa doses after finishing her work)

Despite regular foreign travel, and relative internet savvy, we have failed to book our own rail tickets. The process of registering with the Indian Railway board, the complexity of the timetabling, plus the fact that it was only possible to place ourselves on the train waiting list, made it almost impossibly stressful.

We asked a local Pondicherrian travel agent to do it for us. He appeared to take two days to arrange it, which made me feel better. Several conversations, copies of visas and passports and physically signed declarations were required. Printed provisional tickets were delivered by bike. Despite planning this journey ten days ago we only received confirmation of seats yesterday. It cost an extra fifty rupees (50p) to the travel agent, but was money well spent. Frequent tiny amounts of income seem the life blood of the economy.

Contrast this with how simple booking an Indian internal flight was for us. No more tricky than booking from London to Manchester, and very significantly cheaper. Perhaps it's the same issue as the carbon copy paper? My guess is that both the Indian Railway Board and the bookkeepers boss, are still using systems introduced by the British. It really is time to shake off those and many other latent residual colonial bonds.

We exited at Madurai and hopped a TukTuk to our hotel. Like the middle aged travellers we are, we've opted to spend the last ten days of our adventure in relative luxury. When I say relative, I am of course being disingenuous. It's full blown Raj era style opulence for us now.

We've lived extremely cheaply for the last month. We have now opted to book into hotels and home stays that Hugh and Audrey from Gerard's Cross would frequent when booking through an upmarket UK travel agent. Don't ask me why, except that we could, and that we doubt our Indian experience is really devalued by a comfy bed, a fabulous cocktail and aircon.

Although Hugh does have an irritatingly loud voice, he is definitely less of an irritation than the group of UK business men we sat next to last week at a bar in Pondy. They seemed to have taken lessons in international diplomacy from the sitcom 'It Ain't half Hot Mum'. (I've probably just lost any reader under 50. Google it.) These 'delightful' men explained to their long suffering Tamil hosts, with much laddish jocularity, how one of them remained single at nearly fifty. It was not hard to see why. They then told the room that they could well afford the dowry, liked Indian women, and could their hosts find a nice Tamil wife for him? The host gritted his stunningly white teeth and feigned a smile. Trade is important. His face oozed the Tamil for "you absolute wankers". Being patronised, having all Indian ladies insulted and degraded, and being unable to punch them squarely in the face was clearly a small price to pay for their business. We were sadly aware nothing we could say would make the slightest difference, or top the look of distain they had already recieved. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

I digress, back to India. Madurai. The joy of a self contained villa with wet room, individual walled garden and private swimming pool. In the opulent setting of the former Madurai Colonial Club. Now a heritage hotel, imaginatively called The Heritage.

Madurai, city of temples, the Athens of the East. Our home for the night, along with Hugh and Audrey.

Next morning was blighted by our only encounter with "not quite warm enough Buffet" tummy. Note to self.

I managed to see the wonderful Meenakshi temple while Louise slept off the crab poisoning.

We left Madurai and headed for Kerala overland. The ascent into the Western Ghats was perilous but stunning. Perhaps luckily for her, Louise has taken enough Imodium, Quells and sedative to ensure a small rhino would travel comfortably to our next destination without moving an eyelid.

She slept like a baby as we overtook, undertook, and dodged our way round terrifying hairpin bend after hairpin bend.

Goodbye Tamil Nadu. Genuinely enthralled by your beauty, disturbed by your poverty, terrified by your drivers, fascinated by your glaring contrasts, and bowled over by your kind and generous people.

(the hilarious "boob" mountain Louise missed out on as we climbed out of Tamil

Nadu)

(Next stop is The Western Ghats and its tea plantations)