Tuesday, March 04, 2003

My time at the beach proved that I must be under some illusions about my status as pasty white man, because for some reason I decided it was okay to wander around with my lower legs and feet bared, without sunblock. Not so. I spent the morning and most of the afternoon in the shade of a fishing boat, painting a slightly depthless watercolour of the beach, being bothered by a couple of touts (my least favourite being a man who wanted to extract earwax from me using a metal stick. He claimed he'd been sent by my father, which was a little disconcerting). Two couples of children appeared and seemed to be fascinated by my paints (more so than my painting), and the ever-impressive Rough Guide to India, a book which all Indians seem to be understandably curious about.

The day after, somewhat the worse for sunburn and only really comfortable when sitting in a bucked of icewater, I was pursuaded by Tina, my hostess, to go to see the carnival. Tina and Tony run the guesthouse where I'm staying, a secluded hang out for mostly single travellers and with the usual preponderance of very brown Scandanavians (I've never seen a pale Swede yet). Tina treats her guests a bit like friends of the family who've slightly overstayed their welcome, but who, if they were to offer to leave, she would insist that they stay another week. She was very insistent that I didn't go to the beach, so I made the trip into town to see the carnival, which marks "the run-up to lent" [© Rough Guide].

I've been dragged to a fair few village fetes in my time, but this really was quite stultifying boring. I'm not often stultified, in fact I'd say I'm a stranger to stult. But sitting in the sand, sunburnt and being attacked by ants, while a bad cover band (who I'm 60% sure were miming the words) played a setlist whose song-choices became increasingly crap as their playing became more confident, and a 'procession' of 'floats' (some trucks with dancing idiots on them, sponsored by Honda, AT&T, Kingfisher Beer and of course those bastards Nestle), well, I can think of better things to do, put it that way. The less said about the competitions ("now competition to find woman with most number of colours" ... "most number of rings on left hand") the better, and, dear god, I swore if he announced the details of the following day's fancy dress contest one more time... After three hours of this I hobbled through the huge crowds and dodged scooters for half an hour until I found the bus.

"Yes, I really enjoyed the carnival," I lied to Tina. "Very impressive."