From God's Own Sauna Land

I am writing this from malluland or as I would call it presently: Gods own sauna land !! I came here greedy for a long deserved vacation, phinally PhinisheD as I was.

Yes I would most humbly like to request you to call me Dr. M as of now. I simbly will not listen to you if you don't :-). I caught the first flight out of the country as soon as the graduate college deadline passed. The graduate college employs people to make sure every one of the 150 paged thesis is spaced at a 2:1 ratio, among the thousand other rules (don't ask...they should give us all a second degree just to figure out all the formatting mumbo jumbo in the thesis manual). Only after successfully completing every comma, space and font requirement are you worthy of the ‘Dr’ title. And now, I cannot even stop myself from formatting this crude write-up in note-pad….it becomes an obsession.

So, with dreams of a perfect vacation, I landed in the surprisingly neat and tidy airport in Cochin. I do not joke, when I say Kerala feels like a giant sauna without an off switch. It’s hot and humid all day long and the men walk around with hiked up lungis, barely covering themselves. My in-laws stay in a quaint village south of Allepey. The most ideal place for a vacation, I tell you. But I have sworn off a May vacation to this part of the world. I don't do well in hot weather. I literally run around like a guillotined chicken. You don't want to be near me when the mercury is risen so high. Just ask my husband! I genuinely fear I might catch fire (I also speculate on spontaneously combusting, but I don't remember how that works). But can I walk around in shorts and t-shirts? Even the thought of that makes me laugh uncontrollably. On the contrary, I am fully clothed and bejeweled at all times, just in case the ever curious neighbors stroll by the house in the hope of getting some of the chocolates from Aameriga. God forbid if they catch me without my gold necklaces, bangles, bindi, oiled and tied hair (i.e. whatever is left of it after washing it every day). I do not possess the trademark long black curly head of hair that every female here struts around in, which makes it really difficult to fit in. My mom-in-law is pretty sure I am balding. I try to tell her my hair type is ‘fine’ and requires all the chemicals in the shampoo and conditioners to get some body into them. She tells me (in mallu of course. On a good day I can decode only 20% of whatever is spoken in the house ).“Put oil nicely and just rinse with water …all this shampoo is what is stripping out all the hair” . Have you seen anyone with fine hair that is dipped in oil? Come on over.

So, my vacation till now has been cribbing about how hot it is, overeating on all the fish, chicken, duck, every imaginable (unrecognizable) seafood available here, and then cribbing and cursing some more. And oh yes, watching out for ants. Yes, ants. Not mosquitoes, or roaches, or lizards, but ants of all the pests in the world. The nasty little red ants can bite off an entire chunk of flesh if you let them. They are all over the house, but their favorite place is our bed. You can clean, dust and spray all the poison in the world, but they are right there sprawled on the bed by bedtime waiting for us. My surface area is covered equally with boils and bites. I layer myself with DermiCool all day and walk around looking like a panda…a bejeweled panda with oily strands of hair. But I don’t care how I look like as long as I am comfortable. I guess getting married for 2 years contributes significantly in developing this kind of attitude.

I must stop writing now. Its time to wipe the sweat of my eyelids, crush all the ants on the bed, layer some DermiCool all over again, taste mom’s shrimp curry, and guzzle down another liter of ice water. Who said vacation means no work? Now if only the heat could also melt away my fat, then I wouldn’t mind the may vacation to my sauna land after all.