Trivandrum

Wat I find very weird in this city...

• They are very conservative people. Shops and everything closes by 8'O clock mostly. Nice homely people. But, they have a shop called "The Condom shop" on their MG road.. perhaps the only BIG shopping road in Trivandrum. It is complete with a condom vending machine and painted in pink color.. two different extremes I say! I REALLY want to know how would an Indian mom react if her child points out and asks.. "amma wat is that shop for..?" or just reads the sign and keeps repeating.."condom--condom---condom"..!!!!

(picture for this particular one coz its hard to believe)

• Most of the older keralite women dont wear the pallu of the sarees, they have their lehenga part of the Saree and a normal blouse. They just put a towel sort of a thing as a pallu if they are stepping out of their homes. But, I am stared at (badly) by workers on site.. they even keep giggling away if I wear a kurta 4-5 inches above my knee level... over a straight cut jeans.
• You dont get a decent plate of idli here.. like the rest of South India, their most famous snack in the Idli-Dosa family is the plain Dosa and wada.. you get these two at any part of the day anywhere.
• Coconut in everything, to fry the curry or used as coconut oil, use coconut gravy for a gravy base, grated coconut to give substance to the curry, use coconut milk for flavor.
• Go to the kovalam beach, buy a cut-fruits on the beach.. grated coconut is added as a topping!
• Ladies and hair.. beautiful, long, think, dark hair they have. Just that it is always oily and open. Ladies here oil their hair everyday in the night and wash it with water the next morning. They dont rinse with a shampoo so, its just oily and wet. Since they cant plait it like that, it is always open.. ALWAYS. I asked a Auto driver about this weirdness of having oily hair everyday and he said.. "kerala women good hair madam.. very beautiful, this is our style. U dont have good hair!" I agree with him totally. But... just imagine being in a crowded bus in the morning amongst so much oily-wet hair!

• There are actually lungi ads on the local TV. I met really high ranking officials in lungis and asked in curiosity, the answer I got from the lift-man was "we are followers of Gandhiji and khadi.. simplicity madam"
• They think I am North-Indian. I no longer am calling or branding anybody anything, I went to Bombay and they call me South Indian while they are just above my state. I come here and they think I am North Indian as I dont know Tamil and can talk fluent Hindi.
• You will never find a boy and a girl together on the roads or on the beach or anywhere here. BUT, you will find guys holding hands on the beach, or sharing an umbrella, or sitting on each other in the bus having their arms around each other, sleeping over on the beach and what not. What I figured was ...there cant be so many gay men at one place and its just normal for them. What one of my Malyali girl mate said was that "they cant hold a girls hand so.... " SO.... !
• Roads are really really really small... you would be surprised that people have absolutely no problems with these roads here. There wont be street lights in most places and the roads are at the most 2.5m-3m and almost all are in HUGE inclinations. When somebody tells you there is no provision for car park in my house, one would think that there is no parking place. But here it means that there is no access to the house. The access lanes are usually as small as 1m also, one would be surprised that that such small lanes lead to so many homes. HUGE homes-No roads!
• Only Indian city where I have seen so many Beef shops on the road. Its a very popular meat here.
• They haves such beautiful HUGE homes, Oh my god... all of them have SUPER awesome independent bungalows. But they dont prune gardens or keep it all spic and span, in most homes one would find an organic growth of different types of plants and trees. Also many of the bushes and all would house snakes and many other insects. People here dont bother with little things like that!
• They stand in a cue at liquor shops. Kerala is one of the largest liquor consumers of India (read in some random survey and a localite here also told me proudly!) and they stand in like a proper-proper cue in front of liquor shops, even better than ITppl standing for their meals during lunch time.. :P
  
• You must carry an Umbrella all the time, it is very very hot and sunny or it might pour down on you at any point!
• Trivandrum city is famous for its institutions, educational institutions. One would be surprised to see so many institutions around, schools junior colleges or even degree colleges.. WHOO... too many of them. It seems Trivandrum is popular for the quality of education here and all the Keralites either move here for their children's education or put them in hostels here. So one would imagine that naturally there would be a LOT of eateries, bakeries etc around for the students to hang out. BUT NO.. NONE where you will find students. I am yet to discover if they hang out at all here.
• They dont celebrate Diwali or Dushera or any other festival with the same zeal as we see in the different other states. All these festivals are just small pujas here.. they have only one festival where they go all the way out with celebrations (it seems.. i am yet to experience it!) that is Onam! .. also they have other holidays as the "Hartaal holidays" when the city shuts down for curfew because of the hartaals happening so frequently!
• A very hot day and you are completely dehydrated, you walk into somebody's home or a restaurant ask for a glass of water... you get a HOT drink in your hands which is mostly in orange-Pink color! YES.. they drink boiled water with some Ayurvedic medicine in it. They dont get separate water like the rest of India which is the municipal connection of clean water. They just have one water supply that is good enough for drinking also. So, this is their way of making sure it is clean-Boil it with some herbs and drink! Yeah... we cant take it, cant get used to hot water or even if it cooled down one just cant get used to digesting water that feels heavy in the belly!
• If you get boiled water for drinking, you will have to do with cold water for bathing. They do a head bath everyday, but use only normal cold water. :P
• So unspoiled by the unnecessary advancements in various fields that they dont husk their rice and when boiled it is HUGE and has a reddish tinge to it. Its supposedly very good for health (as insisted by my mom) BUT very hard to get used to for people who are used to normal plain rice.
  

But, its a beautiful city out here, sometimes just the everyday bus ride home is so beautiful that it cheers me up! People are friendly and nice once they stop getting freaking out of you being an intruder. The auto guys who make friendly conversation in broken English and my broken Tamil- Yes Malyalis understand Tamil easily, some smiles that you get from older ladies... just stays with you. :)