The World Is Phat

They say that no man is an island. I think that means that in lieu of being constantly surrounded by the ocean, every so often a man has to go to the beach. Because metaphorically speaking I am actually an island. A big, volcanic island with lots of parasitic lifeforms on it.

So I strolled into the beachside community of Varkala and noticed immediately that the beach itself wasn't terribly convenient, as it was at the bottom of a high, treacherous cliff. Along a narrow strip at the top of the bright red cliff runs an uninterrupted chain of cheapo hotels, reggae-playing restaurants, ramshackle "bars", ayurvedic massage centers, and trinket vendors' stalls. It was outside one such cafe that I heard my name being called, and turned to find a trio of chilled-out amigos I had met in Gokarna. I thought, OK, this could be pretty chill. Half an hour later I ran into another duo of acquaintances...my partners in crime from Gokarna and Hampi. Oh dear. History was doomed to repeat itself, with the addition of a dangerous cliff.

The high tourist season is over now. I can tell why. It's too fucking hot and sticky, and it's only going to be getting worse the longer I stay in the south. All the lodges were looking for business, and I ended up being invited to stay at an ayurvedic treatment center. This is the sort of place you go to have disciplinarian Indian people force you to vomit and shoot water up your butt before they subject you to weeks of dieting and herbal massages. I just took a room and declined the ayurvedic regimen, as I doubt even 4000-year old wisdom can rid my body of all the toxins that are coursing through it at this point. And indeed, the very first night I was there I ended up having to break into my own hotel's garden by climbing over a wall and hopping into a bush when all the gates were locked. Apparently, guests coming home stinking drunk at 2am is not usually a concern at ayurvedic health resorts.

Awaking the next morning, my first discovery, besides the location of my trousers, was that there is not a whole lot to do in Varkala. The stairs to the beach are a bit of a pain in the ass, and not the sort of commitment I am willing to make more than once a day while I am ostensibly at my leisure. Instead, you end up sitting at a succession of hilltop cafes, trying to devise ways to kill time in between eating unneccesarily large meals. Eating really does dominate the social scene at this time of year. For lack of alternative activities, you can end up eating four or five full meals a day, encouraged by the surprisingly good international cuisine available. I can't tell you how good it feels to gorge myself on an entire properly-cooked brick-oven pizza with honest-to-God bacon on it. A pizza which was preceded by a three-course English breakfast, and followed by a steaming plate of shrimp pasta.

The real culinary attraction of Varkala, however, is fish. At about sundown every restaurant along the cliff starts preparing their outdoor seafood presentation, unloading buckets of the day's prawns and squids onto chilled tables along the clifftop path. After that come the fish, the waiters emerging from the kitchens using both hands to wield each gargantuan sea-beast and flop it onto the table. Dear lord, the fish here are truly monstruous creatures. You can tell if a cafe isn't serious about its seafood if it doesn't have anything over three feet long with its head drooping slackjawed off the end of the table. If you're walking along the cliff, you pass an interminable gauntlet of dead aqua-demons that look large enough to eat just about any domestic animal. You don't see any cats in the Indian Ocean. Wonder why that is, hmmmmm? You ask the waiters which fish they have on offer today, and if you're lucky they won't shuffle off and return to thrust a 4,000 pound mutant snapper in your face. They'll tell you "Sir, tonight we have prawns, calamari, salmon, snapper, grouper, barracuda, butterfish, great white shark, deviltrout, Moby Dick, curry of man-eating seahorse, and Rhino of the Sea." Before making the crucial choice, the savvy customer ambles over to the fish display, pokes and prods a bit, and makes pensive faces before feigning an informed argument about the monetary value of roasting a fully-grown Elephant Trout.

After dinner, the cafes start shifting into booze mode, preparing to serve ice-cold domestic beers to shiftless, fish-gorged tourists. The remains of the catch are hauled back into the kitchen by the tail, many little more than a head with a five-foot patchwork of sliced-off fishsteak portions trailing behind. In go the fish, and out come the beers, typically served from faux-classy English teapots because looking stupid is much preferable to paying for a liquor license. Sensible travellers such as myself relax, enjoy the sea breezes, and head for bed. Less sensible travellers, most emphatically NOT including myself EVER, have several more drinks and have to be warned by their friends "That's a flowerpot. You're leaning on a flowerpot. And there's a cliff. Pot, cliff...just stand up."

It was recently Holi in India, a marvelous holiday you've probably seen pictures of, on which everybody in India throws paint and dyed water on their friends and complete strangers. At the time I was up in majority-Christian Munnar, so I hustled to get down to a Hindu town as fast as possible, only to be told that they don't celebrate Holi in Kerala and Tamil Nadu at all. THIS IS BULLSHIT. This being India though, Varkala happened to be having another festival at the Durga temple around the corner from my hotel/ayurvedic enema wonderland. Fireworks, bells, and megaphone chants and seeing could be heard 24 hours a day, unless you happened to be drunk enough to sleep through it. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I walked around to the temple to find it completely covered in flashing lights, with fireworks flying about in impressive displays, and crowds of Indian people buying custom-made stenciled doodads. I ran into my friends there and they told me that earlier in the day there had been costumed elephants as well. DAMN IT.

I went back to a hotel with one group of friends and began having socio-political insights about globalization. In particular, I was thinking about Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat, which was inspired by a visit to India. I almost always disagree with Mr. Friedman because most of what he says is utterly obvious or spectacularly wrong, but I found myself this night shaking my head in agreement. The whole world is connected, man. It's a level playing field. The world is flat. You can go anywhere in the world, anywhere, and still do Aquafina-bottle bong rips.

I was sitting over breakfast this morning (if you can call a giant pile of garlic-buttered calamari "breakfast") and realized that in two days at Varkala I hadn't actually done anything. It was time to move on, so I hopped on a train and a few hours later disembarked at the very tip of India.

I'm straddling the tip right now. Just the tip, to see how it feels.