Contrasts - a competition winner

Thought I'd share with you a short piece I wrote back in March, inspired by my trip to India. It was a Cloudie competition entry and it won! 

And yes, it's formatted differently because I've copied and pasted from the Word Cloud site - and it's copied the formatting too! Enjoy.

Madness!

I step out of the way of an oncoming tuctuc, dodge around the bike laden with pomegranates and squeeze into a gap between sari-clad women and a group of young men.

“Mam! Mam! You want?”

“No. Thank you.”

My eyes betray me though, enticed by glittering jewellery and coloured scarves – a richness that comes cheap in terms of rupees.

The jingle of a bell announces sweet treats as the candyfloss seller touts his neon pink wares, the sound quickly drowned out by a near constant cacophony of vehicle horns.

A jolt, deep in my stomach, as I realise I can’t see Mike any more – have I lost him in the crowd? Then I see the heads turning, attracted to the pale skin among the dark.

I’m on the receiving end of a few stares myself. A white woman, here? The crowds press closer and someone grabs my arm.

An old lady, holding the hand of…her daughter? She speaks.

“Hello.”

“Hello.” I smile and she grins a gap-toothed grin, the skin around her eyes wrinkling with pleasure and sun and age.

The crowd shifts, a few steps now instead of a shuffle. I have to catch up.

The woman takes my arm again as I move away. “Goodbye.” A wave and a head wobble.

“Bye.”

We reach the road. The proper road, not the narrow strip of tarmac crowded by stalls. It’s as wide as a dual carriageway, but a free for all for motorbikes, tuctucs, buses, lorries and pedestrians. It’s deafeningly loud, chokes me with exhaust fumes, and has the first ‘green man’ crossing I’ve seen, which no-one pays any attention to. I step into the road and realise - too late - that I’ve misjudged the traffic because the locals stay on the pavement, leaving me to dodge round several buses, a motorbike coming at high speed with three people on it, and an ox cart.

Then it’s down the steps into the church compound, kick off my shoes at the door, and enter the holy place.

It’s not silent – there are still the echoes of distant traffic – but deep quiet descends. It reaches far up into the vaulted ceiling, stretches blessed fingers into the side chapels, and brings men and women to their knees in the nave.

Including me…

And I know that, right here, right now, I am where I am supposed to be, as the turmoil of life slips away.

A quick update

Things haven't quietened down at all...

Presentation about India. Check. Went well - lovely food, lovely company, and lovely to share some of the other highlights of our trip with church members.

Two school assemblies on India. Check. Great to share the Union Christian School with children from Holywell. Learnt not to ask questions in assembly, as it takes too long...

Typesetting edit of StarMark. Check. Sent back to Bink - amazing how much you can spot that needs changing, even at this late stage. It's shaping up really, REALLY well, and I am so proud of the book. I read some bits and wondered - 'did I really write that?'

Quilt blocks assembled. Half a check - I managed to get all the blocks put together in strips, sew half of the strips together, AND learn how to put the binding on the edge of my sample rainbow quilt piece. So...maybe that's three-quarters of a check?

Decorating finished. Check. The paint's all dry - though we sometimes need to go out of the back door to get the front door open first thing in a morning! You know that little bit of stickiness that remains on gloss paint after it's dried...?

Beta reading a friend's novel. Half a check - it got put on standby 'cos of the typeset edit, but I'm back on it now.

Booking into the Festival of Writing in York in September. Check. Woo-hoo!

And now... going to choose a carpet for the stairs. Catch you later!

Busy, busy, busy!

What a week! Because of it, this is a HUGE blog post, so grab a cuppa and put your feet up for a few minutes while you read it!

We've got the decorator in. No, that's not a euphemism - we really DO have the decorator in.

Chateau Squidge has been in dire need of decorating TLC for some time; our loft extension was completed Feb 2007, and we promised ourselves we would decorate the hall, stairs and landing as soon as we were able. I bought the curtains I liked (cream base with brown and green circles on them) and painted a few match-pot squares around the place to check I'd found exactly the right colour...

However, about the same time that the loft extension began, Big Bob (our wind turbine) was being built, and that took rather a lot of pennies - pennies we didn't have as Mr Squidge also cut his hours at work so he could manage the project. Couldn't afford to decorate, not just yet.

Then the house started to fall down. It's quite common for 1930's semis like ours, with the staircase built onto the outside wall, to have the outer wall begin to bow and peel away. Unfortunately, in our case, it wasn't helped by leaky drains in the drive. So - drains were mended and the wall was pinned back in place. No point decorating until all that was done...and it took even more of the pennies we didn't really have.

We also needed a new bathroom. A shower was much more practical for two teenagers than the old cast iron bath - which, being essential - rather took priority over prettifying the hall, stairs and landing.

Oh - and then Mr Squidge decided to insulate the same outside wall that was now securely fixed. By now we were OK with the pennies, it was just a matter of lining up the jobs in the right order.

Finally, we were ready to paint. We've cheated - got a man that can in to do it, because we were working on the theory that if he does it for a living, he'll be a lot quicker than us! Plus, although Mr Squidge's back is vastly improved after his operation, we didn't think that so much painting would be particularly good for him.

Dave has done a brilliant job so far - here's the pics to prove it. Mr Squidge had managed to do most of the wallpaper stripping before his recent back trouble, but the ceiling was done by Dave and his mate, Paul. It was a pig of a job for them - and took out some of the ancient plaster as well, it was stuck so firmly...

But we're already lining-papered and painted - still got the gloss to go on a few doors, but we've got walls of Faded Leaf and Crushed Pearl instead of mucky pink...

I am ridiculously excited to think of having everything smartened up at long last. There's only the new stair carpet to sort out now...before I move onto decorating the lounge. At least I can manage that one myself.

But there's more! The final edit of StarMark has been seen and sent back to BInk...I think I might have mentioned that it was available for pre-order? *wink wink* And I've been putting out feelers for a venue for a launch event...

I've also had to prepare some presentations on my trip to India, which will be delivered next week to members of our church congregation at a social event AND to around 400 schoolchildren in two assemblies! Lovely to revisit the photos and go back through my notebooks and remind myself of that amazing experience. If you've not read the earlier blogs about it, you can find them here: First impressions; Saratha's and saris; Tea and elephants; On India and spiritual matters. 

There's something else I've been doing too. Remember I did some quilting?  Made a small quilt as a bit of an experiment? And that I was booked onto a quilting course, with the idea of making myself a rainbow quilt? Well, I've done two of my four Mondays on the course...and I'm loving it!

For the 'Falling Blocks' pattern I'm making, each block is constructed from three pieces;

Oh, the seemingly endless cutting to size!

I ended up with 80 blocks - spot the not-strictly-in-the-rainbow colour, which I had to include to make the finished quilt wide enough for our double bed. (I also had two emergency extra colours in mind to add on the far end if eight colours weren't enough...but I don't think I'll be needing them.)

I had a play with layouts...

...and plumped for the last one, because it has more rainbows in it. Look closely and you'll see there's a rainbow from left to right; diagonally up from left to right, and diagonally down from left to right.
Here's the entire layout on the floor of my lounge;

Next week, I hope to get all the blocks pieced together ready for the actual quilting. Because it's a big project and I only have two more lessons left to complete it (which would have been perfectly do-able if I'd stuck to the small quilt planned!) I realised there is one important thing I don't know how to do - add the binding around the edges - and I'm never going to manage to do all the quilting on the sewing machine before I finish the course. So...I had a play with a smaller quilted project, with the aim of trying out hand quilting AND asking the teacher about the binding.

In my fabric stash, it'll come as no surprise that I have quite a few fabrics left over from different rainbow-y projects made over the years. I decided to add a few more into the bedspread ones and make a vertical rainbow quilted panel. Apart from the fact that I had to buy a lot of extra cottons to match the fabrics (which will be used on the bedspread later), it's looking rather good, and should be enough to find out how to bind it properly.

Not convinced I've got quite the right shade of
green for the top green stripe...

If it was turned the other way up, apparently
the colours are perfect for my chakras!

All that, in just one week! I'm exhausted reading it all back...but I hope you've enjoyed seeing what we've been up to - and why I've not blogged for a few days. 

Here's to a less busy week next week?

Tea and elephants

Time for another India blog, I think.

Half way through our visit, we took a five and a half hour drive to Valparai, a remote town in the middle of the Western ghats, where as far as the eye can see, there are tea trees.

The drive itself was interesting - not least because of the thousands of pilgrims we saw, walking barefoot along the side of the motorway. (If you want to read a bit more about my impressions of spirituality and India, check out this earlier post). And wind turbines - hundreds and hundreds of them. I did try to spot whether any of them were related to Bob, our turbine, but I think most were distant relations at best...

And the landscape changed. Gradually, we moved into much more agricultural land, with groves of coconut trees and rice paddies and other vegetable gardens lining the road. That's one thing that never ceased to amaze me about India - how green it was, in spite of the heat.

Finally, we saw the vague outlines of the mountains; indistinct and hazy, as though someone had pencilled them into the landscape and rubbed them half-out again.

We began to climb.

The road into Valparai has 40 official hairpin bends - every single one of them is marked to tell you exactly what number you're up to. I would love to know whether there are official angles for hairpin bends, as I'm sure a lot of the non-official bends made it into the 'hairpin' category in my head!

We stopped at one point to take in the view over a lake. Below us, the road twisted and turned through the green-ness, a dark ribbon along which the occasional bus, lorry or motorbike would rumble. (You had to hope you didn't meet them on the bend, because there was no right or wrong side of the road in that situation, just an 'I need to get round this corner' vibe.)

What was a little alarming at this point was that half of the retaining wall of the viewing platform had already collapsed - leaving nothing between us and the long, long drop down the mountainside. In fact, when we stood at the side of the platform, there was a huge crack in the stonework of what remained, which makes me think that at some point, quite a bit more of the platform might disappear too...

We carried on through the hairpins (the only time I felt car-sick in the whole of my time in India!) up and over the mountain and into the tea gardens.

I cannot express in words how green the tea bushes are, and what a distinctive landscape they are part of. It was breathtaking. We stopped briefly at a tea shack in the Waterfall tea gardens, where a team of pickers were at work. The ladies consented to having their photos taken, but I didn't take any at that point - I think I might have mentioned on earlier posts that sometimes, taking pics felt like an intrusion, depending on the circumstances.

Valparai itself  is a town built on steep slopes either side of a river; it is busy and bustling and was in full festival mode, as we discovered when the nearest temple (massive complex with lights to rival Blackpool illuminations) began loudspeakering prayers at 6am the next morning, which woke us up in spite of the double glazed windows in the hotel. And which is the reason why I found myself watching the sunrise before walking round the town at 7am, jotting notes and sketching the amazing view...

Sunrise in Valparai

Looking down to the river...

My scribbly sketch of the same view...

From the road just behind the hotel, looking back at
where I stood to take the previous photo...

We spent two days in Valparai, visiting remote churches (each tea plantation has its own community facilities, which often includes a small church building), on wildlife safari (we were accompanied by Rev William who is a fabulous photographer - you can see some of his pictures here on facebook - and Dr Relton, a wildlife expert from Bishop Heber College. Without them, we wouldn't have seen half the animals and birds we did), and a tea factory.

Over the course of our stay, we heard a lot about the tea plantations and workers. The men and women tend to do different jobs; women pick the tea (managing between 300 and 400 bushes a day) while the men transport the bags full of leaves, spray pesticides and work in the tea factory.

When you next brew a cuppa, bear in mind that the people who made it possible face lots of dangers in the tea gardens. They might look idyllic and peaceful, but in these isolated areas, there's a very real risk of snakebite from king cobra...being trampled by elephants...attack by leopards, sloth bear or wild dogs...cuts or neck problems from using mechanical shears...

The tea factory itself was a huge revelation. I'd always thought the tea was picked as a harvest - once a year, probably. I hadn't realised it was year-round. And the process was completely opposite to how I'd imagined; I expected the leaves to be dried and then chopped up, but in fact it's the other way round. Providing I can remember the process correctly ( we weren't allowed to take photographs and it was sometimes difficult to catch all that the manager was telling us because of the noise levels), this is what happens:

The tea comes into the factory and is chopped up. Because it's wet, it is dried and allowed to oxidise. Then it's dried again, in huge tea-tumble-driers fed with warm air heated by enormous furnaces (the woodpile certainly put Mr Squidge's efforts to shame!) and ground again. The resulting different tea types come out as granules, not leaves, and are graded on a variety of categories before being packed and sold. Every hour, the tea is tested by the tea taster, and depending on how it tastes compared to the standard, slight adjustments are made to the process to bring the flavour and appearance back into line.

Mind you - it was also an eye-opening experience with respect to health and safety. No ear-defenders, no thermal gauntlets for opening the furnace doors, no cages around hot or bladed equipment... Which is one of the reasons these kind of visits aren't usually allowed, because Western folk tend to get a bit upset about the safety aspects. Given that knowledge, it was a real privilege to have been allowed into the factory, both to understand the process and to witness the working conditions. (And there is part of me that thinks that by removing all risks in our society, we do future generations a disservice, because how will they be able to judge risk for themselves if they are never exposed to dangers?)

There were known to be elephants in the area at the time of our visit. Indeed, the manager of the tea factory told us about his 'pet' elephant, which had several times trampled his garden or damaged part of the house, yet had also seen off strange elephants from 'his' patch. (Oh - and the leopard which had eaten his dog...) He was erecting an electric fence to try to protect his home, but there had been stories of elephants taking logs to knock the wires down before they trampled gardens or broke into houses. We saw elephant damage; a huge hole in the side of the house...

Anyway, Dr Relton made a few phone calls to try to pinpoint the elephants' location.

Now. Just before Christmas, one man had been trampled to death when he surprised an elephant on his way to work early one morning. And days before our visit, some tourists had been injured as 'even the click of a camera shutter can make the elephants mad.' Oh - and did you know that an elephant can run at 40 mph? I didn't. I also didn't know that they can run uphill easier than down - which went completely against my natural 'if-you-need-to-get-away-from-an-elephant-give-it-a-gradient' instinct.

So we headed deeper into the hills to look for elephants. We turned onto a private road and were stopped by the factory workers; it turned out we were waiting for a guide, a tea worker who had seen the elephants a short while ago. We were told it was best to leave the car and walk.

I won't lie - I was really nervous. We had no chance of outrunning an elephant, and now we were on foot, looking for one? Sheesh. After ten minutes or so, we came to a steep slope that led down to the river, where the elephants had been seen. And we heard them! My heart leapt, 'cos now we knew we were close...

Our guide began to walk down the path between the tea trees, and I remember asking M 'at what point do we say we're not comfortable with this?' If I remember right, he shrugged and we kept descending...

There was a track across the slope, so we spread out and watched the jungle on the opposite side of the river. We saw a tree shake - definitely something in there - and I was glad we were on the opposite side of the water.

Then we saw him...a tusker, framed in a small clearing between the trees. He was there only moments before he moved off and was hidden again, but it was a real, live elephant, with tusks and everything! Unfortunately I only caught his back end by the time I got my camera out...

See that brown lump in the middle?
Look closely...

Walking back to the car, our guide pointed to something on the track; elephant footprints. Each one the size of a dinner plate, and we'd been totally unaware of them on the way down. Mind you, I also hadn't noticed the porcupine poo (imagine rabbit poo but bigger and more ovoid), porcupine quills (SO sharp at the business end!) and mongooses which scuttled away from us under the tea trees...

So every time I drink a cup of tea, I'm transported back to Valparai...to the green-ness, the peace in the tea gardens, the hidden dangers, and how much work it takes to pick the leaves that make my brew...

Tea will never taste quite the same again.

Saratha's and saris

We arrived in India around 3pm on the Saturday afternoon, Trichy-time. One of the first things we did was head to the textile shop, because one of my travelling companions is being consecrated as a bishop later this month and wanted some clerical shirts made in Bishop Purple (if that's not an official colour, like emerald green or sky blue, it should be!), while my other companion is a curate and needed clerical shirts in black. (Plus he'd bought a shirt order from another vicar too!)

So, off to Saratha's in Trichy we went...

On foot, we negotiated oncoming tuctucs, two-wheelers, cars, carts and pedestrians in the narrow market street to reach the 1.5 million square feet complex. Started in Trichy in 1969, it claims to be the largest textile showroom in India, with a huge range of fabrics and ready-made clothing.

What an experience! It took some considerable time to find the right shade of Bishop Purple. "Too pink. Too bluey. Too purpley." Yes, really...Bishop Purple is actually a sort of pinky-purple that nudges towards cerise, but isn't. A bit like this:

Anyhow, suffice to say that finding black was a lot easier - though there are actually a lot of different shades of black. And white, which I'd never appreciated before.

The next step was a churithar suit, for me. Oh...boyoboyoboy!

Now, you know when you walk into a UK clothes shop, and there's just THE colour, for that season? And the shop has nothing except that colour in it? (It's a revolting mess of mucky green and grey and black and camel for this spring, it seems). And nine times out of ten, you can guarantee it's not a colour that suits you?

Well, in Saratha's churithar department, there's none of that. You need to know your size - I'm apparently a 40, which sounded huge for my petite frame but did fit; I tried a top on, much to the interest of shop assistants and customers because I took off my shirt and was wearing a vest top under, thus exposing shoulders and cleavage (what little I have) which is NOT the done thing in India.

Then you choose your colour. Simply go to the shelf or rack with that size on it, and the assistants pull out pile upon pile of folded suits, spreading them out for you to take your pick of the myriad colours available. It was like being in a candy store. Contrasting colours, toning colours, pastels, brights, glitter, embroidery...I could've spent hours there, drinking it all in.

Ready-made churithar choices...

More choice if you want to make them yourself...

The devil's in the detail...

The one I finally chose was pink with brown embroidery, brown trousers and a pink-printed brown scarf. It was sleeveless, and I asked about getting one with sleeves - what I didn't realise is that the sleeves are never attached. It's up to you to get them sewn in if you want to.

A rather bad selfie...

 

Embroidery detail around the hem

When you've decided on your purchase, there's none of this wandering around, stuffing it and other items into a mesh bag to go to the tills at the end of your visit. Oh no. One of the (thousands, I'm certain of it!) shop assistants is called over, given the item that you wish to purchase, then you follow him - and it's always a man, the only female assistants we saw were on the bra counter - to the cash desk, where the process of paying begins.

Paying in Saratha's - a step-by-step guide.
1. Assistant hands item(s) to till man no.1.
2. Till man 1 asks if you are paying cash or credit.
3. You hand over your money or card.
4. Item and money are given to the cashier. He sorts out your change. AT THE SAME TIME, you are given a receipt by till man no.1 to say how much your purchases were and that you've handed some money over.
5. You move along a line, trying to keep tabs on your item(s) and hand over your receipt to till man no.2 to show you've paid.
6. Till man no. 2 (or 3, I rather lost track) gives you back your change, your stamped receipt and your purchase in a Saratha's bag.
7. Repeat as often as necessary, depending on how many different departments or counters you make a purchase from...

If you want to see how fast these guys work, take a look at this video clip...Cashiers! 

On the Sunday evening, we went back again - this time to look at gold fabric for other bishop-y accessories (we nearly had a disco-bish when we were shown gold-sequinned lace...!) and to purchase a sari - for me, not the almost-bish - because we were going back to Pudukkottai village on the Monday and Sarah, Reverend Benjamin's wife, had agreed to dress me in a sari for our visit to the school.

I chose a rather beautiful pink and gold silk one, because the Women's Fellowship in the village wear a uniform sari of pink and gold; mine didn't exactly match, but it would be a link. Then we headed off to buy a ready-made sari blouse and petticoat. The gentleman on the counter took one look at me, said "34" and found the right shade of pink to match the embroidery.

Sari bling...

Now - I digress a little from the Saratha's experience here, but if ever you buy a sari for yourself, be aware that most of them come with a blouse bit. This is an extra length on the material which is cut off to make a matching blouse. Except I didn't know that, so poor Sarah had her work cut out when she was trying to use up an extra metre or so of fabric in the draping when she dressed me.

Back to Saratha's...

We had a rest day later in the week, and N and I planned a shopping trip, to buy gifts for our families. Clothing is cheap and there is such a wide choice available...so we headed back to Saratha's again. Another visit to the churithar suit counter, but for N's wife this time; I'd enjoyed wearing the pink sari so much, I decided to buy a second, lighter one. This time, we were accompanied by two teachers from Bishop Heber Secondary School, Shineo and Josephine, who helped us with our purchases. And this time, I had my camera...

Now, there was so much choice, I could have spent hours and hours choosing. In fact, this must've been the norm, as we saw families sitting on the floor in the shop eating lunch, they'd been there so long...

Look to the left, where folk are taking a rest...

I ended up making quite quick decisions, in spite of the teachers encouraging me to keep looking. I couldn't properly explain how having such a massive choice was alien, that I was used to having limited options and found the variety somewhat overwhelming!

Anyway, purchases were made. I left with shirts for Mr Squidge and T, a shawl for J and a purple and lime accented, black and white patterned sari with black blouse and petticoat for me.

You'd think that would have been enough, wouldn't you? Nope.

*whispers* We managed a fourth trip!

And we did it on our own, on our last afternoon in Trichy, this time because N wanted to buy himself a dhoti - the traditional sarong-like item that a lot of men wear - and I wanted to purchase a second churithar suit.

Dhotis were purchased, with the help of a dhoti-dressing team; a young man who had been appointed our guide and four of his mates on the towel counter, one of whom spoke a bit of English and took on the task of showing N how to wear the dhoti. (Some of them have velcro!). Then it was churithar time again...

I was torn between a wine-and-lime-green or a turquoise-with-chocolate version. I could've bought both (good job I didn't, as my suitcase would never have closed) but resisted, as I felt that my Western materialistic side was beginning to rear its head at that point and I felt a bit greedy. So I plumped for wine-and-lime and we set off back to the hostel on a tuc-tuc ride that I will never, ever forget...

Hem embroidery

Neckline detail

I loved Saratha's. The wimp in me, who didn't like the thought of bartering, found the price tags much easier...and next time I go to Trichy, I will book an entire day in the shop I think!

The weird thing is, back in the UK, the gold on my pink sari has lost its gleam. There's something about the light here, about the way we're all wrapped up and the grey skies that seems to suck the colour out of everything. I was moved to write a poem about it the other day;

Indian colour.

Gilt thread, which gleamed in Indian sunlight, 
has lost its brightness in the pale winter light of England. 
The glitter of diamante is replaced with tacky slogans, 
elegance by shapeless leggings and baggy jumpers. 
That coloured world is gone, replaced with black and grey and denim blue. 

Before, there was baby pink with lemon yellow,
wine with lime,
royal purple with satsuma orange,
turquoise with chocolate brown,
forest green with midnight black.
Stiff silk, chic chiffon, cool cotton and luscious linen.
Patterned, embroidered, printed, plain, 
gilded, silvered, jewelled.
No two the same, no ordered rainbow, 
simply a feast for the eyes, 
satisfying an appetite with rich shades, fresh pastels, unexpected contrasts or subtle blends

I wanted to drink in the colour until I was full -
so that I need never feel colourless again.

On India and spiritual matters...

I've been told that you can't really go to India without experiencing something of the spiritual, whatever your opinion on faith-related matters.

Based on what I encountered, it's true.

One of my travelling companions, M, who's been to India several times before, said that when he steps off the plane, it's as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, because suddenly you're in a place where possessing a faith - celebrating it, being open about it - is normal. And it's at that moment he realises how much matters of faith are hidden - too strong a word, let's say 'not advertised' - in the UK.

But this isn't a post to debate that fact; it's a post about the effect that Indian spirituality had on me during my recent visit. And it might be a bit longer than my normal blog posts, so feel free to have a cuppa in the middle of reading or come back to it later...

In Tamil Nadu, there is a higher than average percentage of Christians (around 5% instead of 2.5%) and in Trichy District, where we were based for much of our visit, the percentage is even higher - around 9%. That said, the majority of the population are practising Hindus, a fact made very obvious by the loudspeakers of the nearest temple, located a short distance from the hostel we were staying in, which transmitted music and prayers until 11pm on our first night (and often relayed a few more for good measure around 3.30am most mornings!)

So let's start with Hinduism first...

I don't know much about the faith, I'm ashamed to admit. I know there is one god, worshipped in different forms. I know there's karma - that if you do good in this life, you will achieve better in the next. But I didn't need to know much to be able to see what impact the faith has on Indian society.

It's hard to comprehend how visible and all-pervasive the Hindu faith is; there were roadside shrines, garlanded gods and men in business shirts praying openly on the pavement. Men and women (mostly men) would be smeared with sandalwood paste on their foreheads after morning prayers, schoolboys would have green or orange prayer scarves (I assumed) over their school uniforms, and I saw both buildings and factory machinery smeared with blessing patterns, as three fingers daubed the same stuff onto things rather than people.

A bank in Valparai

There were brightly decorated temples of varying sizes, tucked away in streets or in the middle of tea plantations or built atop great rocks, like the one in Trichy itself.

Looking down on the main Rock Temple in Trichy
from teh smaller shrine further up the rock.

There were stone monoliths, built thousands of years ago and still centres of prayer today. And there were pilgrims...thousands upon thousands of pilgrims, dressed in green or orange or red, walking.

A handful of pilgrims - nothing like the numbers we saw
in the days after this pic was taken

It was festival - and therefore pilgrimage - season. I will never forget the sight of the masses, walking 200km to say their prayers, following motorised shrines or carrying kavadi, extra burdens to show the sincerity of the prayer. The rest stops, where a van loaded with cooking pots would set up by the side of the road, waiting for a particular group to come past. The centres where pilgrims could be fed - free, by a village community who happened to be on the route - or get checked over by a doctor, or take rest in the shade. Pilgrims of all ages (babes-in-arms to grandmothers), all intent on making the journey.

I couldn't help remembering walking through my own town on Good Friday in a 'walk of witness' a few years back, self-conscious and a little bit fearful of our reception...

Faith in India is normal, part of the everyday, essential...and that was just as evident in the Christian community. There were several things that really stood out for me as challenges to my own faith.

For a start, Christians work together. They are Christian first and foremost; denomination comes second. I saw examples of Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Church of South India Christians working together to build schools, hostels and churches with different communities. How often have I dismissed an action or worship style 'because that's what THEY do', losing sight completely of the core of the faith we share?

Secondly, whatever our view on the Empire and the way the British treated natives of their colonies, at no point did I get the impression that Tamil Christians were forced towards Christian conversion. In every church we visited, whether it had stood for hundreds of years or relatively newly built, there was a list of priests and presbyters to be remembered - because the missionary fathers are looked upon with gratitude for bringing the faith to India.

Right back to the late 1700s...

Memorial to Schwartz, one of the missionary
fathers, in Christ Church - Fort, Tanjore

What you have to understand is that many Christians in India are of the Dalit castes. The untouchables, the criminal castes, those who worked on the land and did the jobs no-one else wanted to do. Officially, there is no caste system in India now, but I saw things which led me to believe that it's not gone from society yet. (And I could write a whole other blog on this subject, so I won't delve into it too much now.) The message that Christianity delivered - that you are loved by God as you are, that all are equal in His sight, that Jesus Christ came to save, combined with the example of the missionary fathers to educate lower castes and work with men of all faiths - was received like water in a desert. Christianity cut through the restrictions of caste and colour and showed how life might be lived instead...

How often do I look back at the people who've helped me to develop my faith and live it out in the world? Not as often as I should.

And the Christian faith is lived in India. I'm not saying it isn't lived here in the UK - I know many whose faith shines from them in their person and their actions - but I'm beginning to think that I could learn a lot from being more visible, more open about my faith. I say 'I'll be thinking of you', when what I mean is 'I'll pray'. But I don't say what I mean for fear of how it might be received. Yet in India, we were asked to pray with groups and clergy and families, rooting our meetings in a relationship with God. Yes, I do pray - in public and private - but I wouldn't dream of going for a coffee with Christian friends and ending our social with a prayer.

Maybe I should.

The last thing which left a deep impression on me was the overwhelming generosity and genuine welcome we received. Food, shawls, gifts, traditional welcomes and blessings, being taken under the wing of the Women's Fellowship to be dressed in sari and have my hand hennaed, being driven miles by the wonderful (and very safe) Michael, being greeted everywhere we went with so many smiles...and being given sugar cane by an elderly woman in a Dalit village, where the diet was so poor the villagers themselves lived on white rice flavoured with spice because they couldn't afford meat or vegetables. I didn't feel as though I deserved any of it.

Bananas over St Mary's, Pudukkottai church door
- a traditional sign of welcome

Being hennaed...and having a go myself

Going native

I looked at myself then, long and hard. How overwhelmingly generous is my God to me? And how often do I really, truly, acknowledge that fact?

Not often enough.  

The other thing I found while I was in India was that it was so much easier to find God. To spend time with Him and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. That probably had an awful lot to do with not having to look after a family, just myself. Or it might just have been the spirituality of India, which sort of seeps into you and sets your faith connections tingling...

One moment in particular stood out; we visited the Hindu Rock Temple - all hustle and bustle and heat and noise - and then visited the Jesuit church, a most beautiful place. I walked into that church and had an overwhelming sense of peace (in spite of the main road and the usual traffic chaos right outside), of being in the right place, at the right time...and I cried, because I felt immensely blessed to have said yes to a trip that had scared me and pushed me so far out of my comfort zone but felt like it was what God wanted me to do. But it was by no means the only 'moment' I had...

Holy Trinity Church, Valparai - where the lady seated told me
how glad she was to see Western 'missionaries' and how she was
praying for her daughter's marriage...

I can't say that my spirituality has been awakened by the trip - it was already present - but I do feel that I have been challenged in my faith by my experiences. I hope I can rise to the challenge and apply some of the lessons I've learned, so that when I go back again - oh, yes, I'll be going back! - I will be a better Christian than I am at the moment.

India - first impressions

Welcoming.

Garlanded. Shawled. Drummed into the village. Blessed with flowers. Smiles, crossing all language and cultural barriers.

Photo :CSI St. Mary's, Pudukkottai

Photo: CSI St. Mary's Pudukkottai

Photo: CSI St. Mary's Pudukkottai

Noisy.

A cacophony of car, bus, tuctuc and two-wheeler horns. Hindu prayers transmitted by loudspeakers into the streets at 3am. Muslim prayers of varying loudness at 5.30am. Dogs barking. Tamil voices.

Colourful.

Saris and chudithars of every colour and hue imaginable: diamanteed, gilded, embroidered, glittered, sequined, patterned or plain.

Impossibly high stacks of fresh oranges, ping-pong-ball-sized gooseberries, red-gold pomegranates, red bananas and green coconuts. The glitter of (fake) gold jewellery and the gleam of (real) silverware in a store. Flourescent pink candy floss, announced by a ringing bell. A rainbow of rangoli powders on a cart.

Smelly.

Petrol fumes in the street. A pile of rubbish, waiting for the invisible sweeper to clear it away. Madurai jasmine and rose at the flower stall.

Incense in both the temple and the Roman Catholic churches. Spices as you walk past the street vendor.

Spiritual.

Garlanded roadside shrines. Sandalwood-streaked foreheads after morning prayers. Dash-board crosses and Jesus bumper stickers.

Neon lit crosses on church roofs. Green and orange garbed pilgrims, barefoot for 200km, walking their prayers to their gods. Tinsel garlanded shrines on vans, bright with lights and loud with song. Peacock-feathered kavadi burdens carried on the dark shoulders of half-naked young men. Towering stone edifices that have stood for a thousand years.

New churches, loose-wired and unfinished as the community raise enough rupees to complete the job.

Wild.

Beautiful striped and green tea gardens, in which hidden dangers lurk: leopard, king cobra, wild dogs, elephant, sloth bear...

Four species of monkey in a day. A black and yellow Hornbill, gliding effortlessly into the trees above us. Butterflies and birds in the college campus. The deadly embrace of the Strangler Fig. Poinsettia bushes, five feet high. Porcupine poo. An elephant's footprint in the earth, the size of a dinner plate, then seeing the tusker in a clearing on the other side of the river. The chattering call of a red whiskered bulbul.

Delicious.

Fried okra. Chilli chicken. Dhosa. Idli. Coconut chutney. Fried fish. Biryani. Chicken fried rice. Chai - sweet beyond belief.

Sticky-sweet orange Jelabi. Banana fritter. Tender coconut juice. Bread omelette. Paratha. Mutton stew. White rice. Raita. Curd.

And so many other things besides...but they are blogs to be written at another time.