three processions

This past weekend we went to the beach. 

There's not much to say about it: it was wonderful. We took Friday off and drove north about 45 minutes to a small hotel with three rooms, across a quiet road from the beach. There was almost no one there except the fishermen. We floated and swam, then walked up the beach to the little town for dinner. (We had a bad meal, but no one got sick and it was picturesque.)

The next day they brought us breakfast in the little dining room that adjoined our room.

Potato curry, parottas, toast, omelette, oranges, bananas, and watermelon juice. Oh yeah, we also had a private pavilion/covered porch outside our room, with ocean view. Total cost (not including the bad dinner): $56.

We returned home Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the weekend doing various errands around town: buying a textbook for Henry, getting nail polish for Agatha, grocery shopping, etc. As it happened, we also saw three processions. 

Saturday afternoon, Agatha and I happened to be passing the local temple when someone urged us to go in and watch, because the elephants were just passing through:

Agatha didn't want me to take too many pictures, but in front of the elephants were devotees, shirtless and wearing their mundus (a kind of wrap skirt), people setting off fireworks, drummers, people holding multicolored umbrellas, people with torches and candles, and guys playing big silver curly horns.

As we were walking home from dinner Saturday night, we saw a Christian procession, right in front of the college:

It was strikingly similar! Except there was an icon in a cart, instead of the elephants. The drumming, the candles, the parasols, the horns, and the fireworks were all there. 

Sunday afternoon, I walked down to buy Henry's textbook and ran into the Marxists.

They were gathering in Gandhi square and preparing to march north, past the park and right past our apartment, up to the main open space where all large gatherings in Kochi are held. Henry, who is quite interested in politics and who apparently did a report on Communism last fall (a fact which I learned yesterday), watched them process and took a lot of great photos and videos, while Michael talked with a party member on the sidelines. This was the CPM party, which is only one of the Communist parties in Kerala. The CPI(M) is currently in power-- Michael's friend said that one party is more inspired by the Chinese example and the other by the Soviet example. Anyway, it is definitely not a failed ideology in Kerala! It's a huge and powerful party. Hundreds of people marched by and there were drummers and horns and parasols here, too. Women had a much bigger presence, though, and there was even a troupe of female drummers:

 By the end of the day yesterday, the red hammer and sickle banners that had lined the streets were all down, replaced by the Indian tricolor banners for the Congress Party (the founding party of Gandhi and Nehru, in power for decades but currently out as India is dominated by the right-wing Hindu nationalists of the BJP). Today Rahul Gandhi is coming to Kochi to launch the Congress' national election campaign. Modi is required to call for an election within the next two months, so things are really heating up. They are expecting 50,000 people at the rally; we will walk up there and see what we can see.