Shiva and family

We have made our first Indian friends and this was harder than it seems. When we got to Mamallapuram we met an English guy- Matt who has been coming to India for 15years and first came to Mamallapuram with his family when he was in his teens. On their first visit the family met with one of three shop owners Shiva and his family (Mamalla now has about 40shops). Through Matt we got to be friends with Shiva his wife and his two daughters and the their friends. They were lovely people inviting us to sit out the front of their shop and chat feeding us with coffee and snacks and showing us their family snaps and even photo's of Matt on his first visit. They generally took us in, dropped us to the bus station when we were leaving and invited us to stay with them if we returned or call them if we needed help.

This was rather a lovely surprise for us as it is hard to tell sometimes in India or I guess anywhere whether people want something from you or really want to be your friend. We also befriended another shop owner Albert who insisted we come and talk to him and not have to buy anything, after a few days of buttering us up with tea and conversation, just as we were leaving he asked us if we would give him money for his daughters education - send it when we got back home and he would send us the bills. After three days of being hit up by every beggar and shop owner continuously as well as the staff at our hotel who claimed to have lost everything in the Tsunami we were both a little tired. One such incident relates to the photo of the three little kids on the beach, I offered them some money for a photo and after I had taken it I asked the boy where his parents were and he told me he didn't have any and asked for a 100rupees, later I saw him with his parents who sell beads on the main street.

India is a bizarre mix of extreme generosity and demand; we are still and probably will continue to learn how to deal with