Off to Kerala again!

We are in the usual chaos of packing to go to India next week. I keep thinking that I have done this so many times that it should only take me an hour or so. I remember writing about my packing in my book, and nothing has changed much.

I looked to John Murray, a nineteenth century expert:"Murray’s advice on packing initially reflected my own need to put everything into my suitcase “just in case,” but my luggage was not a patch on the Murray inventory. He helpfully divides the lists into two, one for men and one for women. I doubt whether any woman’s wardrobe today contains the vast numbers of garments essential for a visit
to India: huge amounts of underclothes including mosquito trousers for sleeping, flannel petticoats, four dressing gowns and a morning robe, forty-six handkerchiefs and quantities of thick lisle  stockings. For the long sea voyage the 3 cwt, or over one hundred and fifty kilograms of baggage
allowance did not include the furniture required in the cabin, but did include three sofa covers and mattresses and a bag with a hammer and nails. This was more like it. I thought that a hammer and nails would be useful for getting the mosquito net to stick to hotel fittings, but Murray added them as an essential for nailing your cabin furniture to the floor in case of rough seas."
A recent visit to SS Great Britain in Bristol made me rethink the hardiness of these early travellers. The cabins were cramped and claustrophobic, even in first class and I couldn't imagine where they put the furniture.
"Current baggage allowances did not faze me, but there were things which I would not throw out of my case. The medical kit, at first crammed with disinfectant, water purifying tablets, of which I used precisely none, antibiotics, medication for various kinds of internal disorder, antihistamines and so on gradually shrunk to a manageable size. It still held enough stomach upset medication in it to Mr Modi. a large ox, even though we never have had a tummy bug in all our visits, lots of anti-insect products, high factor sun screen and pain killers. James kept telling me you could get anything in India where there was little restriction on the sale of pharmaceuticals, but I had seen an Indian pharmacy where everything sat jumbled together in the heat. The mosquito net remained a packing essential. I would have relinquished my pants quicker than those reassuring white billows. If the air-conditioning worked, the mosquitoes went away, but electricity was a fickle commodity and mosquitoes weren’t the only things which menaced me in the night. Geckos and detritus from their wriggling meals and on one occasion, a tree frog, fell on us. Mice raced around the rafters in the more eco-friendly places and there were tell-tale bits of ecological stuff on the bedspreads. An empty bag went into the large suitcase to take account of purchases and to hold the dirty washing, festering in the heat, kept apart from the things I have managed to get to the dhobi."

I would now add a couple of clean pillow cases and a wind-up torch.
As well as looking forward to seeing how the biennale is progressing, I am interested to see what the people are making of their new Prime Minister, Mr Modi. On our last visit I was fascinated that everyone, Muslim, Christian or of no faith had decided that Narendra Modi was the one to turn the economy round, as he had done in Gujerat. A year in, some of my less optimistic prophesies are beginning to come about, as he divides the country via the language, proposing to make Hindi the official language of government and turning a blind eye to some of the excesses of his ultra-conservative party members. His apparent move towards Pakistan and developing relationship with the USA look good in terms of global capital, his desire to get rid of organisations like Greenpeace which upset the status quo, less so.