Proud and grand in its greenery stood the Botanic Gardens. What I got out of absorbing as much as possible from the Gardens were:

1. A clear understanding of what a blister means. My first blister ever to come out of walking.
2. A question: where are the insects? After all, if you have so much foliage, sections of which are labeled ‘tropical rainforest’ you do expect to find beetles, bugs, ladybirds, and all kinds of black things with several legs. Have they been trained to hide during visiting hours, or have they been eliminated efficiently?
3. Another question: it’s botanical, right, and not botanic? But this is not as serious as the previous point.

Why I hardly ate during the trip:

1. Joined the wrong queue at Subway. So much non-veg on display. So much. Meat. Pink meat. I can’t eat. I can’t eat my veg Sub. Is it possible to fast today? But the mild gastritis I had picked up even before I picked up my visa wouldn’t let me fast. I hate biscuits more. Subway it is. Never, ever, look at the non-veg display.
2. This one can be blamed the most for why I hardly ate during the trip: if you have one grill for all kinds of sandwiches and you have mostly non-veg sandwiches, how will I eat your lone veg sandwich? Especially if you explain to me that only the bread touches the grill and not what is inside. Because that made me run off with a horrified “I’ll come back later!”
3. Breakfast after the incident at the single-grill place? Terribly hungry but couldn’t eat. Only a plateful of bananas suddenly appeared before me. I was so surprised I asked the person at the counter, “Are these for sale? How much for one?” That banana and the ubiquitous Milo made my day.
4. Food Courts, according to my (non-veg but considerate) friend, typically give decent veg food. I have the guts for (I can stomach?) one experiment. I go to a Food Court, and realize that if I don’t find a veg stall soon, it will have to be Subway. Because each non-veg stall I see takes away my appetite drastically. But I spot the lifesaver: a veg-cum-non-veg stall which has things for me. And they are things, because they are mostly just cooked vegetables. There’s brown rice though. Finally I get something I don’t hold in my hand and bite off. Sometimes I doubt whether we Malayalis can ever eat “piece” food comfortably. (Except our bananas.) At least not me. When I am really stressed, I need food that I can stir with my hands or at least a spoon. If not rice and curry, I need pasta or risotto. Roti, noodles, and horror of horrors, bread, don’t work. Anyway, I sat down, looking at my food with hopeful longing. It was the best of my meals there, and the worst of such rice-plus-curry meals in my life. Despite telling myself it didn’t matter, I will not forget that the veg and non-veg dishes were ladled out with the same spoon. Yes, with the same spoon. No, I could not have fasted.

More observations (besides the usual comments on cleanliness and efficiency and so on):

1. Coins are so shiny! So, not all countries have worn-out coins.
2. The people who clear and wipe tables are really, really old. In our place (nammade avide in Malayalam, whatever that place is construed to be), we don’t find people so old people out there working. Perhaps their children take care of them, perhaps they have enough of their own savings. Here, the underlying desperation struck me as sad.
3. Store-shelves with goods are open onto walkways in malls. In India, one sees open, accessible exterior storefronts only in streetshops. And we all know why malls cannot have goods displayed outside the store: there are far too many people who have too little of those goods to be bothered by ethics. Or so I think.
4. You can get coins from the passenger helpdesk at the train stations, but they will not issue tickets. For that you have to go back and put change in the machines.
5. There are no people with physical disabilities… What happens to such people…
6. What a beautiful climate! Especially for a Malayali. Rain and/or sun all day. Never cold (except indoors, if airconditioned), never dry. And the greenery all around. But I miss natural greenery. Which is not grown up to patterns and cut down to size.