Tuesday, January 8

I woke up at 7:00 to what sounded like rain. I got up at 7:30 and went out to discover that it was raining very hard indeed. The air was fresh and the sound made an interestingly soothing background noise.

Auo got up at 7:50 and seconds later Halo appeared. It is not afraid of us at all anymore and followed me when I went to get the catfood. I went back in to put the bag back, and when I cam out it looked up for a second, saw it was me, and carried on eating as I walked past it. Two weeks ago it wouldn’t allow us to get closer than a metre.

The rain stopped at 10:00 just before breakfast. We ate, cleared away, and sat on the porch reading while various electronic equipment charged. At 12:00 the rain suddenly started again, and this time it was like a monsoon. It poured down so hard and fast that it was difficult to talk over the roar it made.

Now it has more or less stopped. It is either a thick mist or a thin drizzle, and we are walking to Spoonbill. A man is carrying eggs in front of me.

At Spoonbill I will hear a cd of an interminable but interesting version of Hare Krishna. It will turn out to be from the cd Pilgrim Heart by Krishna Das. It will turn out that this cd is available all along the beach. I will buy it.

The drizzle will energise itself and we will get a taxi home, driven by Aju, the man who took the Luke and us to Trivandrum two weeks ago. He will insist on giving us his phone number.

At home we will have some, but not all, our electricity working. Thirty minutes later Uday will come round and turn the mysterious knobs under the fuse box, and everything will be alright again.