The boys are back in town...

So I have spent quite a while droning on about India’s little quirks and idiosyncrasies that I haven’t really had a chance to talk about the boys town – specifically what makes the boys town tick – the boys who live there. By the way though my title for this post is completely wrong - the boys are just leaving for the hols... oh well its a good song and it sounds nice!

It is an odd bunch of people who live here, each and every one a unique character with their own ways of doing things… whether that is an obsession with cars, marbles or even flared trousers (Although an unhealthy interest in flares isn’t actually unique to one kid, the whole of Chennai are smitten with them – they even make an appearance in the majority of school uniforms). There is even one boy who has been trying every Mission Impossible aerobatic, James bond sleight or Covert-op sneak to try and get past me to grab an extra pack of biscuits from the office – forget not being able to watch BBC, I have my very own ‘Spooks’ right here…

Oops – a toad just leaped into the office and over my foot…

But I digress – the boys’ one overriding interest is cricket, which is brilliant as I can’t stand the game! They play it morning, noon and night – except if its raining, drizzling or even slightly spitting – schools get days off due to rain storms, which despite being labeled monsoons just remind me of a rainy day in England except slightly hotter – nothing really to complain about. I find it funny that if a patch of rain comes along India grinds to a complete halt, people dive for cover and the power cuts suddenly out… thank God they don’t get snow, eh?

Back to cricket however as the overriding interest, generally the boys play four games simultaneously in their playground (which isn’t very big) with four rubber cricket balls which tend to accidentally bombard anyone passing by. I still, despite having several attempts at playing the game, cannot see the attraction in standing around for five days hitting a ball with a stick, but they seem to love it…

When not playing cricket typically the boys will play marbles, do their washing or even study. I noticed the concept of studying in India is different from that in the UK – in India when studying they sit on the floor or at a desk and read their books write out class notes in complete silence for many hours on end. In the UK (Note: this is for me at least, and I can admit this only now I have finished my A2s with half decent grades) studying was lying on my bed, watching movies on my laptop whilst trying to psychically absorb the course information from the textbook open on the desk, halfway across the room…

The boys also have a real love for Tamil movies – basically Bollywood but in Tamil – the local language. These are all musicals and really the sole form of entertainment – all of the music they listen to is from their movies (which means you end up hearing the same songs from the latest movie about 20 times a day which drives you mad!) If you turn on a TV you can only really either watch movies or cricket… neither of which I understand! They couldn’t comprehend why when I whacked out the Ipod, before it broke RIP, I didn’t even have a single Tamil song – they completely believe that apart from Michael Jackson, Tamil songs are the only and most famous music in the world! In honor of the ground-breaking Xmas number 1 in the UK, I played them RATM and their reaction was hilarious as they tried to be polite about it… I guess they aren’t ready for rock yet…

But the boys are brilliant, intelligent, funny and caring. Every single on of them works harder and is more dedicated to their studies than I ever could be – for a starter their universities don’t have the opposite from the UK culture of drinking, clubbing or partying – they just go to learn, and learn completely sober... One day I tried explaining ‘Fresher’s Week’ to them - they couldn’t grasp it, they were shocked by the idea of people their age drinking. The ethics in India are so different – no wonder India is growing technologically so fast when universities are actually places of learning!

However whilst I make quirky little jokes, there is more... Behind the smiling faces there are children who have known complete abject poverty, children who have lived in slums made from materials salvaged from the rubbish tips. Some of these boys will, at the end of this very week commemorate the anniversary of the great Tsunami that indiscriminately stole their homes, their sibling and their parents. There is even one boy in the project, a boy who dreams of one day working for NASA and reaching the stars, a boy who only survived bone cancer by having his infected leg amputated above the knee; he is now condemned to spend every day hopping around on old crutches because his prosthetic leg gets caught in the bike he has to pedal everyday to school… These boys are incredible, young, vibrant people and they have seen things we cannot imagine, still however they get on with life and strive for more with a cheeky little grin and the odd pinched pack of digestives bikkies…

Waitlist...................................

OK, now i actually have several excuses for why its taken so long to publish a new post - these range from sporadic Internet connection, the worst power design in a building EVER and the fact that I just had my birthday so I had to 'ahem' celebrate in the Indian family fun sober way!

But seriously I have also spent the last 17 days stuck inside of the local 'Railways of India' corp ticket office... This is due to me deciding i was much to cozy and lazy here so i have completely changed my January schedule. Originally this consisted of me going to a different boys town and generally hanging round Chennai a bit longer but I decided to something a bit different, how i do not know though - I have somehow conveniently forgotten to work that bit out yet... but one part I know have decided (as with every other backpacker in the entirety of south Asia) to head to Goa for new years... if you haven't heard it is famous for its parties (esp. new year and on full moons - the full moon this year happens to be on the 31st - double party!!), it also has some of the best beaches in the world and is within a days travel from me - or so I thought...

I was impressed with myself as i walked into the ticket office on the morning of the 9Th of November for being so organised and early in booking a ticket... the hour long queue seemed like minutes and I didn't even notice the incorrect English on the reservation sheet... then I got to the lady at the counter and handed in the sheet thinking how wonderfully simple India is...

I first got the impression that this wouldn't be so easy when the lady opened her mouth and started talking with one of the thickest Indian accents I have ever heard - and it didn't help that she was only whispering over what i was beginning to notice was a more of a mad angry mob than a queue. I told her that 'I wanted to go from Chennai to Goa - though not on the direct train but through Bangalore' this was because the direct train only leaves once a week and it was leaving to early... She promptly spent the next ten minutes trying to book me on the direct train , (O.k. - I know it would be very easy to blame me here by saying she probably couldn't understand my accent, but I had handed her a sheet with the exact itinerary of what I wanted) - when I pointed this out she then spent ten minutes undoing everything before typing it back in and ending up with the same direct train... as soon as she realised this she told me I had filled the form out incorrectly and she started helping the customer next to me. After four more attempts at filling out the form she finally accepted it (I only actually filled out two forms - the one that in the end she accepted was the same one she had turned down - I just gave it to her again without her realising)

Eventually she worked out that a if a man wants to get from point A to point B but there aren't any direct trains he can connect through point C (point C being a place nicely in the middle of point A and B)... five minutes later it had even clicked into place that Point A: Chennai B: Goa C: Bangalore, a few bits of data entered in and BAM - a result!!! I would be wait-listed...

It turns out that whilst India has a population of about a billion people they actually have the rail capacity of Luxembourg. The trains are apparently so few and far between that to actually get some of them you have to tell your mum to start queueing before you have even left the womb... it is however very hit and miss because some trains fill up randomly and with no rhyme nor reason why there was a sudden boom in tickets...

so we checked about 37 different routes to Goa through the most roundabout ways possible all of them either impossible (ending up spending 3 days waiting in a rice paddy in the middle of nowhere) or *Tada* wait-listed behind 200 other people - One pretty major part of the problem is that there is a quota on the amount of foreigners on a train. It's obvious though if you think about it - too many white people in one place - we might break out into an impromptu game of golf...

So in the face of hoping that 200 people spontaneously decide not to go on that new years holiday trip I just did what any sensible person would have done - I walked out, drove home, logged on, had a cup of tea and booked me an overnight coach ticket on the world wide web...


** Apparently a lot of you can't leave messages - if you click the title of the post it takes you through to the posts individual page where you should be able to leave a comment