Friday, 22nd November

And it all comes together in the end. We've actually seen our hotel bills and they are less than Rs100 a day! A rapid rehaul of budget later, I discover that the Reverend Athisayam would have been making a profit of thirty pounds a month! This may not seem much, but it is almost a month's wages for most people here. And for us, it's (120 that we'd rather keep ourselves, thank you very much. Maybe M.'s original estimate was right after all. We had Chinese last night (we asked Kumar to get us noodles or fried rice, he got us both) and it was delicious. At last, food we can eat!

At Schwartz last night we were flooded with 12th Standard boys who had discovered that if they came to us they could skive their private study. Luckily, after a few minutes of failed communication we were rescued by Mulder (An English teacher who really does bear an uncanny resemblance to the agent of the same name, hence the nickname), who sent them out for being too noisy. It was very hard work. We tried to play Noughts and Crosses¹ which we had gone down well with St. Andrew's on Wednesday but the boys don't even know what a sentence is, let alone how to form one. So we settled for answering questions about our favourite colour, Indian food, cricket and other subjects of similar fascination. The girls at St. Andrew's, although below Schwartz Matriculation standard, played Noughts and Crosses so well that we decided to move on to twenty questions. This proved somewhat more difficult as all the questions revolved around 'Is it a flower?', 'Is it a tree?' We are going to try again tonight and see if we can't move the game on a little.

Now I've got the flu that C. had in Madurai. I think it must have abated a little when I was throwing up on Monday, but it's come back with a vengeance. I think it's an English flu, because C. had it less than a week after we arrived. I hope we're not going to be responsible for the sudden demise of several million Indians! What the country needs, some might say...

There is a boy who lives straight over the road from us called Yesunesun. It means 'Believe in Jesus'. In fact he is the same boy who was attacking us with chess on our first night here. He is in 9th Standard, is fifteen going on twelve and is proving to be a valuable contact between the other children and us. He is a great kid. His English is excellent and we are also using him as a mediator between Kumar and us. He is going to take us to the Ramnad palace tomorrow and has promised to tell us when there's an English film on.

The invitations have started, on Tuesday we were invited to the house of one of the St. Andrew's teachers to meet her family. Her husband is very eager to learn how to speak English 'properly'. They were all good people and asked us to go to their house every night! We managed to negotiate them down to twice a week ("but we couldn't possibly come every night," "Why not? What are you doing?" "Erm – we need to see other people," "Oh yes, Who?" "er- just friends..." "What friends?" Are they better than us, of course you want to spend every night here with the same people for six months. There's no one as interesting as we are and anyway, what would we tell the neighbours?) The day after, a boy called Arun invited us to his house where we met his family who also wanted to learn English. They are a Hindu family and we are hoping to learn a great deal from them about the 'real' India. They gave us a meal, with the detestable iddly's and I spilt water down my front. Great move, but they don't touch the receptacle with their mouths because it's dirty. Or they're mad. They took lots of photos, making us feel like tigers in a zoo and invited us back on Sunday for a proper welcoming and 'liquor'! They also want to present us with a gift, about which I was doubtful - having nothing to reciprocate - but Arun's father said that only when he came to our house in England should we give him something. It's being told these things that stops us making fools of ourselves. When we left, Arun gave C. a small sandalwood Ganesh,² and told him to keep it in his pocket because it is a powerful 'Shakti' (power, or something). Okay...

I have started collecting music, Yesu has been bringing me a wide variety of stuff. Unfortunately most of it is well dodgy Eighties drum-machine noise, but I have found some good songs. I will have to buy the soundtrack to Indian and another film, Kadalan. Traditional music appears to be hard to come by – I'll have to wait until I'm back in Madurai with Henry Joe. One of the boys at Schwartz has offered to teach me carnatic music. He has a tiny two-octave keyboard that's impossible to play, but it seemed rude to say no. Anyway, I want to learn something and I've got to start somewhere.

Our Tamil learning is progressing, we now know:

"How are you?" (ni nalumar?),

"I am fine" (nan nalum),

"Stupid" (mutard),

"Pig" (pandri),

"Goodbye" (poite varukirum),

"Have you eaten?" (sabding la?) ...and all sorts of fruit. I can also write my name in Tamil:

I don't think that learning the Tamil alphabet is a good idea – they've got two hundred and forty-seven letters! Why they can't use twenty-six like most sane people I'll never know.