On the High Street

Vallethode is the name of this village, but that’s never been any use when I have spoken to bus conductors or rickshaw drivers. Thankfully, someone has usually overheard my linguistic struggle and repeated the word until the other party grasped my meaning. If you Google “Mehrin Bakery, Vallethode” and you’ll find a building icon on the map, and if you go to Google Earth, you’ll have a better idea of the terrain. It burgeons, richly verdant, on either side of the North / South road, with paths heading off eastwards and westwards to small-holdings, or sheds where women squat on the ground peeling tiny prawns for freezing, (cook before using.)

The village itself comprises a number of simple stores, such as you might find anywhere in the Third World. The goods are scattered around, sometimes using display material that the sales rep. has supplied, but more often just lined up on shelves behind a makeshift counter. Lightweight items like household brushes and plastic utensils, children’s toys, packets of potato crisps and sugary confectionery hang from the ceiling or from the awning outside. There is no pressure to buy; I am a guest on the shopkeeper’s territory and he will talk to me when he has caught up with the local gossip from a passer-by.

The range of goods on offer in Indian village shops is steadily changing as the supply chain alters. The hardware shop still has locally woven basketwork winnowing trays, but these are now outsold by the ones that are factory-produced in brightly-coloured, injection-moulded plastic. The same shop has a few mattocks and trowels from the local blacksmith, but most of the ironware clearly comes from a distant manufacturer. My search for handicrafts is not very fruitful; I should have started a decade ago.

Thanks to Mattindia, the people of Vallethode are used to foreigners, and share a mutual lack of English in conversation and negotiation with the majority of the continental European guests. It is usually assumed that I am German, probably from a combination of my large size and the fact that Brits are comparatively rare at Mattindia. Whenever I have been in India, I have always met a resoundingly positive reaction to my nationality. A few days ago, travelling here from the ashram, I met a man around my age, who engaged me in conversation in the railway buffet, and went to great lengths to explain to me just how grateful India was to Britain, for the infrastructure and education system that had enabled India to achieve its current thriving expansion. Having lived in pre-independence Africa, and experienced something of British colonialism first-hand, I have never felt Britain should wallow in remorse and guilt for its role in history. Anyway; that’s history, and India is now showing its teeth and showing the world how to build a nation in the 21^st century.

The village barber, one of three along the street, but the only one I've tried, operates from what might generously be called a shed, except that most sheds are somewhat tidier. A dozen pairs of scissors and assorted combs lie jumbled on a wooden shelf and various electric clippers await their opportunity to reshape a personality.

Far too respectable for me !

I was relieved when the proprietor hygienically fitted a brand-new razor blade into the cut-throat handle, to scrape around my neck and ears, but glanced askance at the heaps of black hair on the floor, onto which he casually brushed the clouds of snowy fluff he had trimmed from my head.

I knew there would have been no point in trying to explain that I just wanted a light trim, and since I’ll be flying home in seven weeks with plenty of new growth to hide the damage, I decided, in the spirit of adventure, to let him do his worst.

He did.