A real day of rest

January 10th

This is the life- keeping cool by the pool

 

Today really was a proper day of rest as we took ourselves in a taxi to Vellore, to the luxurious outdoor swimming pool. We hired the driver for the afternoon and evening so the poor chap had to hang around quite a bit. He gave Pam his card showing that he has a BSc - but finding professional jobs in this area is not easy. He took us on a route that goes past the Golden Temple, which has only been constructed in the last fifteen years and was the vision of a poor local boy from Vellore who somehow managed to get people to buy into his vision. It is now a huge tourist draw and the razzamatazz that has grown up around it is extraordinary. The whole area teems with cars and people and the road is lined with new shops, cafes, hotels and guest houses. It is quite an amazing phenomenon and so very very Indian. When we returned around eight thirty it was even more bustling with life and there were long queues of people waiting to go in. 

We spent a happy afternoon lounging at the pool, doing a few leisurely lengths and watching a group of middle class Indians who were having a celebration of a 60th birthday by the pool side. This meant tinny music, the sudden appearance of enormous amounts of food in large stainless steel vessels and general jollity. 

From here we went to supper with Dr Rita, the RUHSA head of department. She has had a beautiful Keralan style house built in the same leafy suburb of Vellore as the pool and even since we were there a year ago I can see how well the garden is developing and greening what was a brown field building site when she first moved in. Dr Rita comes to her house every weekend after work finishes at  midday Saturday until Sunday evening, and for the rest of the time she lives on the RUHSA site. She had invited two friends, a doctor who was her ' batch-mate' - ie in her year at CMC when she trained as a doctor, and his wife who is a nursing professor at CMC. They had lived for a while in England and we had a very interesting hour or so of conversation, with the lovely Keralan meal that Rita had had prepared. Home again, and, perhaps thanks to Ganesh, or Hannuman on his birthday weekend, nothing too dire on the road home.