An Indian among Andeans. Otavalo, I love you!

A typical impression about Kerala is that anywhere you go on the planet, you can expect to run into a Keralite.  Hence, the joke that a Keralite welcomed Neil Armstrong with a cup of tea when he landed on the moon.  (BTW, the Keralite population living outside the state and remitting money, particularly from the Middle Eastern countries, has led to the state earning a dubious recognition as the "money order state.")

It was yet another experience along those lines when I was in the city of Quito, in Ecuador.  Even in this South American country, the only one in the world to be named after the equator, is an Indian restaurant—Chandana Tandoori.  It is located in the busy commercial part of Quito, very close to where many foreign tourists hang out, and is owned and operated by a Gujarati, who has been living in Ecuador for more than a decade. 

Is there any decent-sized city anywhere on this planet that does not have any Indian eatery?  

To some extent, Chandana Tandoori’s location is logical—in the contemporary global village, tourists and locals alike are typically used to various cuisines from around the world and, thus, an Indian dining place in Quito makes as much sense as a Thai restaurant, which was only a couple of blocks away.

Even more interesting was “Govindas,” which served up a hearty vegetarian lunch for a ridiculously low price.  It is run by the Hare Krishna folks in Quito, and the small place quickly filled up with foreign tourists sporting backpacks large and small, along with a couple of locals as well.

It was not the food at this Hare Krishna center that was surreal as much as the fact the women wearing saris and the men wearing dhotis were all native Spanish-speakers.  Thus, while the spectacle of saris and dhotis rushing around chanting “Krishna Krishna Hare Hare” was tempting enough to think that I was back in India somewhere, and while some of the women looked like they could easily be from India, I was pretty much the only Indian there.  Well, an Indian-American, to be precise.  

One of the women seemed to be delighted at the sight of me, because of my Indian roots.   She knew enough English, immensely more than the couple of words I know in Spanish, to ask me whether I wanted to pray at the temple.  After declining her offer, I felt rather bad to see the disappointed look on her face.  

I thought there couldn’t be anything more Indian to top Chandana Tandoori and Govindas as examples of how far geographically ideas from India have diffused.  I was soon corrected when I went to Otavalo.

Otavalo is a small town, about two hours of a drive northeast of Quito.  This town, with a population of less than 50,000, has for centuries served as the market for various indigenous groups who engaged in trade by swapping textiles, precious stones, etc.  Even now, Otavalo has a huge open-air market where the Andean men and women sell, among other things, jewelry, coats and ponchos made of wool from llamas and alpacas, and a whole bunch of hats of different types.

After spending a few minutes in the market, I walked around and less than half a kilometer away was a prominent sign that loudly announced a center for “kundalini yoga.”  Yes, kundalini yoga in this very old and historic small pre-Incan town of Otavalo, in a far, far away Ecuador.  

 I do not know whether the instructor in this center is a Keralite though!