Free Indian Takeaway by Hardeep Singh Kohli Page B

course it would have to be right over the head of the bed. But the room, such as it is, is clean and comfortable and it’s home for the next few days. It has been more than twenty-four hours since I last felt clean. I need to feel clean. I wash the day’s journey away with the only water that is available: dirty, cold water and I step out to examine the rest of the ‘resort’ that fatigue had blinded me to on my arrival.
    Greenwoods is actually a very charming place. An old rambling house, it is built around a beautiful central garden, tended to and loved by the family that run the guest house. The garden is full of trees and flowers and plants and in the very centre of this fecundity sits a multi-coloured shrine to Lord Ganesh, the elephant god. It’s low season so there seems to be more family that guests.
    There is a terrace all the way around the first fl oor, looking in and down on the garden. The errant child is attempting to cajole an older female relative into coming and seeing something high up in a tree. She refuses to move. The child disappears out of view and returns with a long cane at the end of which is a home-fashioned wire hoop. The cane is perhaps three times longer than the grubby-faced boy, but when has endeavour ever stopped a four year old? He lifts the stick up into a mango tree and after a series of sharp, awkward movements, his bounty is released. A large green mango falls to earth. Enormous actually.
    The green-fruited prize assuages his Tamilian moans, and he and his younger sister now work out how best to cut the bugger. The joys of childhood.
    After this brief tour and the ad hoc circus performance, all seems right and proper in the world. I ask the older female relative for directions to the Fisherman’s Colony. When Mamallapuram was hit by the tsunami and the seafront devastated, a lot of fishing families lost their livelihoods, which were fairly basic to begin with. The Colony took a year to rebuild. I have arranged to meet one such fisherman, Nagmuthu, son of Mani. He sounds like a character from either The Lord of the Rings or the He-Man cartoons that used to run on ITV on Saturday mornings.
    I would like to say that I had found Nagamuthu, son of Mani, by writing a letter to a cousin’s friend who knew a man at the local newspaper who searched the local records and spoke to local people and found a likely candidate. But I actually found Nagamuthu’s email address via a website about the events surrounding the tsunami. Why him? Well, he seemed able to communicate in English and he was very happy to let me come and cook.
    Greenwoods was telling the truth when it referred to itself as a ‘Beach Resort’. It’s barely minutes from the sands. On walking to the sea one soon realises how tourist driven Mamallapuram truly is. Trinket shops, cyber cafés, massage centres, guest houses – it’s an unending line of consumer-driven businesses. One of the little stalls sells but three types of produce: cigarettes, cold drinks and toilet paper: surely the distillation of the western tourist’s needs?
    Soon I’m off the hot tarmac and have the sand between my toes. There are a handful of beach-fronted shacks and I have yet to see anything that looks like a fishermen’s colony.Two boys play cricket on the beach; one is wearing what looks remarkably like an Arsenal football top. As I draw closer I realise that it is an Arsenal football top. As an Arsenal fan myself, I consider stopping and chatting to him about the fragility of our midfield last season, to ponder as to whether the back four is less well suited to the offensive component of the modern game and discuss at length the options for an ‘in-the-box’ striker; but I think better of it. Instead I ask him where I might find Nagamuthu, son of Mani. It would appear that I am standing right outside his shack, the Fisherman Restaurant. I should have guessed.
    Mani’s shack is little more than a lean-to covered in bamboo. A new concrete