Monday, January 7

Up early, feeling fresh and happy. I started the morning with thirty minutes of exercise, after which I could feel several muscles objecting.

After breakfast I started proofreading the entries for this diary that I had made in Scrivener since we left Helsinki. Scrivener has proved extraordinarly useful, and I seem to keep finding more and better ways of using it. I cannot imagine actually writing in WordPress anymore.

While I did this Irma worked on her laptop, and had an online meeting with Kipa. She talked happily about how delighted she felt about getting all this (laptop, Jio router, vpn, Facebook Messenger) to work together seamlessly.

In the early afternoon Tangaraj took us to Trivandrum in his rickshaw. Irma has done this before. I have always gone in a car.

Eventually we get to Chalai Market and I take a photograph of Tangaraj pushing his rickshaw into a parking place.

The market stands in unobstructed sun, and we feel it as we walk up the road looking for the shop we have bought trunks from. We find it and buy one more handpainted tin trunk, so that we can leave stuff here for next year.

We will also buy coffee from the shop we buy from every year. The three old men will remember us and the process of buying coffee will extend to fill the amount of jollity available.

Unions have declared an all-India strike for tomorrow and the day after. Nobody seems to know how seriously people will take it.

On the way home we will make a precautionary visit to the beer shop and to Divine Hypermarket for milk and a fresh papaya.

In the evening we will eat again at Raahath. This timw we will both have chicken tikka and Arabic salad. Irma will have paratha and I will have a naan bread.

We will both like the restaurant as much as last time. Here I could eat regularly.