Madras
December 1st 1995
We'd planned to get out of Madras by Saturday lunchtime and spend at least a couple of nights away from the place before coming back to catch the boat. But now we'd moved into the peace, tranquility and good company that Broadlands offered, it suddenly didn't seem quite so urgent. On Friday morning i decided it wasn't worthwhile for me to go anywhere for a couple of days, as all the hassle involved in getting there would outweigh the benefits of getting out of Madras. I also began to wonder if i really wanted to go to the Andamans. I began to doubt the pleasure i'd get out of being there would be worth the hassle of a three day boat trip there and three days back.
After all, living in Australia, tropical beaches and forests and clean ocean water aren't really much of a novelty, like they are to the unfortunate inhabitants of northern Europe. I could spend as much time as i liked, any time i liked, on clean, deserted, jungle-fringed tropical beaches. There didn't seem to be much prospect of anything better than that to be gained from the six days on a ferry that i was afraid might turn out to be like the Kelimutu had been in March. By four o'clock, when we went to pick up our permits, i'd definitely decided not to go.
Apart from the dubious benefits of the journey, i'd begun to like Madras, now i had a place to escape from it when it got too much to handle. I began to think i'd enjoy spending a bit of time in that city and i might even find something interesting to do or get involved in.
That evening, i was sitting on the roof, having a beer with Jenny just after sunset and a canadian woman came and joined us. Just to make things confusing, her name was Jenny too. Larry came up later and the four of us spent a few hours sitting around, chatting and cracking jokes. The great thing about hanging around with Jenny and Larry was that we were constantly laughing, joking and taking the piss out of each other. Fortunately the other Jenny had spent a couple of years in London and understood the weird british sense of humour. If she'd been fresh out of Canada, she wouldn't have stood a chance!
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Jenny and Larry left early on Tuesday morning to get the boat to Port Blair, which is the capital of the Andaman islands. I decided i'd had enough of staying in that dorm and got myself a single room at the back of the hotel, overlooking the mosque park. It was on the first floor and was smaller than most of the other single rooms there, but it had a great view from the window. Almost all you could see was greenery. There was a big tree, maybe a hundred feet away, and in front of that there were loads of little trees and shrubs. You could see a few houses a fair way off in the background and if you went right up to the window you could see the mosque.
And as well as being able to see the mosque, you could certainly hear it! Every morning at about half past five, the muezzin would start up the call to prayer "Allaahaa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa akbar...." and this was repeated three more times during the day. However, apart from the sudden awakening, the chant from this mosque was much more beautiful than any i'd had to listen to in Indonesia or Malaysia. For a start, there was no distortion, which was unusual enough on its own. Then, on top of that, the muezzin had a great voice and it was actually a pleasure to listen to. It was a pleasant change from the rest of the ones i'd heard, who apparently didn't care how ugly they made the sound of god's name.
One of the main reasons i wanted a room of my own was so i could start using my laptop and catch up with this writing. I'd been writing on paper since i'd left Maldon, and i didn't want the work of typing it in to build up too much. I didn't feel safe bringing a laptop out in the dormitory and advertising the fact that i had a valuable piece of easily stealable electronic equipment sitting under my bed. As it was, i was a little nervous about leaving it there when i went out.
Over the next few days, i became quite good friends with the other Jenny. She was in India for a year, on a grant from some educational fund, to study temple and hill fort architecture as part of an art history course she was doing at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
One day i went with her to the library at the University of Madras, where she was hoping to find some material she needed in their manuscript library. She didn't find what she was looking for, but one of the assistants there showed us some incredible old Tamil manuscripts which were written on sections of palm leaf, about two inches wide by eight or ten inches long and bound together in bundles between two strips of thin wood. They were, i think, about two hundred years old, but the assistant was handling them very carelessly and managed to do some kind of damage to every one he showed us! However, it was nice of him to take the trouble to show them to us at all, and it was really interesting looking at them.
Jenny was going to Senji, a small town in the hills about a hundred and fifty kilometres south west of Madras, at the end of the week. I decided i'd go with her as it would be nice to have a couple of days out of Madras and breathe some real air.