An Indian Christmas

Now is the time in my trip when the days start blending together. I am having trouble keeping track of the days of the week, much less the days of the month. What I do know is that Charlie and I spent Christmas in Varkala, Kerala, along with our friends Kate and Steve. There was a beach involved and a couple of books and a swimming pool. And some alcohol was imbibed and then slept off.

I currently am reading Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, which contains the following timely passage:

Christmas, that Northern invention, that tale of snow and stockings, of merry fires and reindeer, Latin carols and O Tannenbaum, of evergreen trees and Sante Klaas, with his little piccaninny 'helpers', is restored by tropical heat to something like its origins, for whatever else the Infant Jesus may or may not have been, he was a hot-weather babe; however poor his manger, it wasn't cold; and if Wise Men came, following (unwisely, as I've indicated) yonder star, they came, let's not forget it, from the East.

Thank you, Mr. Rushdie - at least for the first 150 or so pages of this novel; he spends pages 151 through 425 making me hate and become bored with the beautiful and charismatic characters and story that I, at first, was captivated with. I feel compelled to finish the novel only because it takes place in many of the places Charlie and I have traveled - Mumbai and Fort Cochin and Goa. And it serendipitously builds on the last book I read, A Concise History of India, from 1200 to the 1990s. Both books have been guides for my trip.

What I will most remember about this Christmas was the Ayurvedic massage Charlie and I treated ourselves to. Remind me to tell you all about it the next time I see you so that I can reenact the all too embarassing and revealing positions we were both (separately) asked to assume while being doused in about a quart of oil while wearing less cloth than a sumo wrestler.