Sitting in Cachi, in the square right in the middle of the town, one cannot but help feeling very removed from the calm rocking of the ship. It is now almost 7 days since we left the ship.
The square is full of life. As we noticed late in the night in Vigan (Philippines), the square is occupied even later into the evening. All through the last two days, we had assumed they were all local people. However, this morning, we noticed that the people were not just locals but included tourists as well. Even the non caucasians, clearly Latinos, sat in groups, looked around, got up in between to find certain angles and took photos.
A mother stood in the corner eating ice cream while her son sat sipping a sip up – memories of my childhood when sipups were banned for us but also given as a once in a while sin to be indulged in came bounding up. I remember, standing at a small little shop outside our school in Thalaserri without even the 50 ps to spend on sipups because pocket money was not normal in those times.
We had chosen a bench facing the statue of Jose de San Martin, not because we knew a lot about him, but more because the bench had shade and there was an old man who had also decided to sit there. He wore a very beautiful hat, a beige pant, and a white shirt. He had come there with a younger man, also in a beautiful black hat, who had left him sitting there. I had assumed that they two of them were also tourists – because the younger man, in the black hat, had left the plaza in the direction of the tourism office.
As we sat there, me looking for potential photo targets, M reading his Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, a very young man came up to the old man, greeted him respectfully and started talking to him. Soon, he took a seat next to the old man and the two continued talking. Clearly he was not a tourist – sounded like a respected person here on this small town. Who was this person? A professor, a teacher, a former mayor perhaps or just a prominent personality of the town? A few minutes later, the younger man got up to leave. He said his goodbye and started walking. “A….”, the old man called out to the young man, and said a few more sentences. A responded and then left. In a few seconds, the old man looked at us, gathered the small bag that looked like a camera bag, and left. I jumped into his seat seat. My seat had become exposed to the sun.
In the meantime, the square’s balance had tilted. More Caucasians had appeared. The Latinos were disappearing except for the police personnel. When we had passed by this morning, there were much less number of police. Now they were there in three corners.
Was it because it had been too early for tourists? It was getting to be noon – perhaps it was time to find a place to eat?
The square is surrounded by places of commerce. There are grocery shops – there is a shop that reminds me of the time when supermarkets started coming up in India. It is just at the precipice of a mom and pop shop and an infant supermarket. The groceries are stacked into shelves, neatly arranged in categories, there are refrigeration units at the back of the shop, there are some brands stacked in prominent positions, coke and other fizzy drinks too. There is a trolley at the side of one of the isles. I am reminded of Malta, Vigan besides India.
Another shop is a cloth shop. As you continue walking on the periphery of the square, there is the Municipal rooms, tourist office, a bank, a library on the same side as the cloth shop. This morning, we had gone to the tourist shop – the lady there knew a few words of English – a bit more fluent than David whom we had met earlier in the day as we had walked down from the street of our hotel to the square. David, had asked us, as we photographed his small shop outside the Mercado Muncipal whether we speak English. We were delighted to hear that. Unfortunately, we did not understand too much of the conversation. This lady, at the tourist office, was far better in her English, as we would have expected though not as much as in normal tourist places. She had pointed out the places we can visit. At the tourist office door, we had seen a poster for a movie that had played three days ago in the Municipal office – looked like a children’s movie, another poster for a Bodega and yet another one for the Pena that plays at the local restaurant. We were very interested in Pena. We made a note. We had also visited the Bibloteca this morning – a small room with four walls covered with book shelves and another couple of book shelves in the middle. On the bigger table sat 3 ladies making handicrafts with wool and three children looked at the children’s books. The ladies were happy to talk to us in spite of our google translated Spanish and we took pictures with them as we left. One of the ladies was not happy with her posture in the group photo. I took a portrait picture of her and she was very happy. I took pictures of the other ladies. We took down their WhatsApp numbers so I could send it to them later.
Last night we had been to Oliver’s, a recommendation from Lonely Planet and blogs – again, this sat on the side of the square which seemed to be the restaurant side. The four of us ordered Pizza. The base was crispy, the toppings similar. The Oliver’s special was the best. I wondered whether there was a reason.
We now have one more side where we have not visited anything. Time to jump up and go now.
Life of P(ay)i 