Scenes From the Mysore Rail Museum

INSPECTION CAR NO. 07330
MY STORY

I stand aloof as I am the snobbish inspection car used exclusively by Senior Railway Officers for the Inspection.

There is nothing wrong, and in fact everything right, with relating history via anthropomorphic storytelling. I am Jack's bile duct, etc. The rail museum also contained a semi-restored Maharani's saloon car, where old-time Indian nobility would have travelled in style - a mega-first-class train carriage that would cause Wes Anderson to get the vapours. Peeking inside the carriage was a moment of butt-clenching jealousy. Oh, to forgo the dust and cockroaches of modern-day Indian Railways...

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The Shore Family Jam Band managed to join forces after all, despite the extra day or three that my parents spent languishing in London during Europe's "freak weather" in the week before Christmas. A few inches of snow in December, what calamity! But now we know with absolute certainty that the Heathrow Airport Authority, among other players, is managed by a squadron of effete turds.

We did a lightning tour of Kochi and Allepey, then spent a few days around Christmas in the Wayanad district of northern Kerala. The longstanding communist government in the state of Kerala must be doing a few things right - more [relative] wealth, less garbage, better roads, and is it possible that the people even seem happier? One of our hosts at Varnam Homestay in Wayanad, Varghese, certainly gave the impression that life is good for many Keralans, including his family. And you can trust a man with a stellar mustache. This much I know.

It's difficult to compare life in Kerala to that in the Yukon. Watching Varghese stroll around his property barefoot in a dhoti (balls free and living the dream), I think of boots and parkas. Sigh. In Wayanad, they grow black pepper, cardamom, coconut, banana, coffee, tea, rice, nutmeg, mangos, tamarind, jackfruit, cinnamon, curry plants... in any old backyard. Goats, chickens, water buffalo, fish pond. Anything a man can't grow, he can buy in the local market a few kilometres away - very likely locally sourced. In Dawson, if the supply trucks stop rolling, we'd be out of edibles right quick. If (when?) our current society implodes, Varghese and co. will be eating like kings and plugging away at the rice harvest while we in Dawson become rioting, cannibalistic jerks. I realize that I'm painting an overly idyllic/idealistic portrait of Keralan living, but...

Altogether it was a successful Christmas in Kerala. We ate homemade, traditional local meals thrice daily, lounged in hammocks, swam in a waterfall, argued over euchre, ate too much chocolate, slept in. My pops gave me some 'light reading' as a gift - Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion - which helps counter my guilt over the fluff-heavy reading list I've been building on this trip. Incidentally, the worst of the fluff has some pretty religious content. Nicholas Sparks has become exceedingly rich writing books about dull (Christian) goodie-goodies, while (Mormon) Stephenie Meyers makes revoltingly un-sexy fiction about vampires and werewolves. So... yeah, I'm having a rich chortle reading Dawkins. He's doing a pretty fine job of convincing me to drop the agnostic safety blanket and jump right in. Indeed, I'm betraying the hippie backpacker tribe - I have not, and likely will not, "find myself" through Indian spirituality. (Sorry.) Three cheers for atheism! I very much enjoyed the following, which was quoted by Dawkins in his book:

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -H. L. Mencken

Tomorrow the Jam Band travels to the delightfully-named Ooty, formerly a British hill station. Tea, spices, and so on. My phone appears to be back in working order, so if anyone want to give us a dingaling, I think you can call us from Canada by dialing 011 91 0967 416 3361.