Wednesday, November 9

On Sunday and Monday evenings I found myself chatting on the phone to someone in Helsinki late into the night. Having done that I also found myself waking up at about 6:30 at which point the drumming of the endless rain and the squawking of the three thousand birds that live in the trees around the house conspired to prevent me drifting back to sleep.

Last night I determinedly went to bed at 22:00 with my phone on voiceless and didn’t wake up until 8:55. If it rained in the night then I didn’t notice it.

I spent the day working through a long list of small tasks: finishing a paper for Arcada, explaining how to set up a ticketed party on Eventbrite, uploading the next three Miaaw podcasts and sending out the publicity for this Friday’s episode about the lessons we might learn from Ambedkar.

Now I have decided to pay the Chai Man one more visit before I leave. I set off for the beach and on the way I notice a line of ducks entering Abhi’s Café for coffee or juice. I only caught the tail end of the queue; the ducks numbered about fifteen in all.

I will see Anu on the beach who will tell me that the Chai Man went that-a-way. I will walk in the direction Anu points but never find him. I will wander back and talk with Anu for ten minutes instead, and then I will walk back home.

In the time I will take to walk from Leo Restaurant, where Anu stands against a lamp post, to the lighthouse and back, I will spot an increasing throng of western tourists. The beach now contains as many bikinis as saris; and already a smattering of thin, ascetic, serious-looking people, with higher things on their minds, have arrived, to begin walking up and down the beach-front observing from on high how the less enlightened dribble away their time.

We will see more of them when we return.