Market in Madurai

 Well we didn’t go to the flower market yesterday because it was too late to see it at its best, instead a visit to a palace and a street market. The palace serves as a due warning to those who check their horoscopes everyday. Only a quarter of it remains, the rest was demolished by the raja of the time whose’s astrologer informed him that it would be unlucky to live there. As you do, he started to tear down the palace and was using the stone to rebuild a new palace (perhaps called dundemolishin), [Sue insists I add a groan from her at this point] but died at 75% complete. This remains.

Then a walk through a street market which evoked that familiar composite feeling of fascination and despair. Fascination at the vibrant, colourful affirmation of  humanity striving and achieving under (seemingly) intolerable conditions.

The despair? We stopped to wait for our air conditioned car to pick us up by a restaurant, serving freshly cooked Indian bread and omelettes. 

I’ve always thought the story/parable concerning the beach full of washed up starfish was slightly hypocritical on one side and callous on the other. Two men walking along the beach, starfish as far as the eye can see. One man picks up a starfish and throws it back. ‘Why did you do that, it doesn’t make any difference?’ asks the other. ‘Well it did to that one’ comes the reply. So we paid for one, very old lady to eat, which of course didn’t touch the rest of the beach or erase our guilt and hypocrisy.