Happy New Year. I got to 2006 a half day faster than I would have if I'd just stayed home.  Yesterday I spent the day cruising the balmy, palmy backwaters of Kerala,
watched men in mini-skirts play tug-of-war and, and saw a 10m-high
Santa Claus burned in celebratory effigy. Yup, just your usual
New Year's Eve.
Kerala is famous for its backwaters - canals through
tropical palm swamps. You ride through on a boat that is piloted
by two gondoliers who use bamboo poles to drive the craft. It's
all really quite peaceful. I wish we'd had a bit more instruction
from our driver/guide (e.g. One of my fellow passengers: "What is that
white flower?" Guide: "That is called 'white flower.'") but it
was still great to pick out our own sights: white eagles, iridescent
kingfishers and, of course, the local life on the shore. I don't
know why I'm so captivated by seeing people do their wash in the river
but I am. We probably saw a half-dozen methods of fishing on the
trip. The highlight of the day was probably lunch. We
stopped on a small peninsula and feasted on South Indian fare, all laid
out on a banana leaf as a plate. The menu consisted of big fluffy
rice, watery stew called samber, fried rounds of bead, mango pickle,
and two vegetable dishes, one of which I think was cooked in coconut
milk. The place is truly swimming with coconuts. Of course
we ate with our hands which is pretty normal here. It's a bit of
a tricky mental adaptation but it does make you feel a bit more involve
with your meal. It's just funny to get pruny fingers from a
half-hour of eating. We returned to Ft. Kochi, inspired by rumors of big
beach-side festivities for New Year's; parties that might serve coconut
beer which is a local delicacy that is made from the naturally
fermented sap (ok, maybe it's not really sap but it's some sort of
internal juice) that is tapped from the trees. It turned out that
the beer was not to be had - or, at least, not to be found, but I did
get in a good walk around town before nightfall. I gave a few
rupees to kids dressed up as Santa who were trick-or-treating (for lack
of a more precise term), and then watched some of the locals as they
played Indian pinata and an inspired few rounds of tug-of-war in the
region's traditional dhoti wraps. In the background, a giant
Christmas-cum-New Year's tree towered over a local park, festooned with
stars and streamers. Aside from occasional fireworks that people were
shooting off, there wasn't much build up to the final countdown to
midnight. In fact, I don't think there was any of the 10-9-8 -
stuff, unless it was in Malayalam and I didn't understand it. It
was funny to not have any contact with the outside world at the time;
I'm so accustomed to watching TV and seeing what's happening in other
cities in other time zones. At the stroke of 12, a giant Santa
Claus structure was set on fie on the beach. Throughout the
evening we heard about this immolation of St. Nick but I just couldn't
believe that was the tradition here in Kerala which maintains its
strong Portuguese and Dutch Christian heritage. I asked a lady at
my hotel why they do it - bear in mind that my hotel has Psalms as
decoration and an eerie red-light-lit framed photo of Jesus - and she
said it wasn't a Christian tradition but has evolved by mischief makers
here in town. Well, whatever the story is, it was probably the
first and only time I'll see the old year pass in such a fashion. After the big burning, a bunch of us headed back to
the restaurant bar and tried to make an evening of it. Mostly a
British group, they kept the beer coming - which is served here with a
nod and a wink in tea pots (so you have to order the "special tea" if
you want beer). Despite the big crows of locals in dhotis (India
seems to have a special advantage in rallying huge crowds of people),
the sound of tabla drums and the flutes I associate with snake-charming
in the background, and the fishy smell from the seashore, it all seemed
very Western for a time. I decided it was time to call it a night
when I began to seriously discuss doing a modern-day stagecoach trip
across Europe with one of the Brits who's planning such an endeavor. A very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2006 to all. | 
