Cambodia: Where Spiderman carries you to Kamasutra!

By
KT Rajagopalan

Total Recall

Drivers of tuk-tuk (The Cambodian avtar of our very own Phut-Phut) in Phnom Penh swarmed around the weary passengers disgorged by the bus from the Ho Chi Minh City. The one I engaged haggled hard, but once the price was settled, he became cordial and compliant. He was keen to drive me around wherever I wanted to go; and whenever. To be picked up from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) after dinner? No problem. Royal Palace? Fine. To the airport at five in the morning? Okay, I’ll be there.

But how do I locate you when I get out of the FCC, I asked. Here’s my cell number, said he, fishing out a visiting card from the hip pocket of his bermuda shorts. I could not conceal my surprise at the name: ‘Spiderman’. In response to my query about the unlikely name, he said, ‘Much easier than Mam Bun Heng.’ His compatriots had names like Camera, Superman and Computer, he added. Quite practical, I thought. Names foreigners would find user-friendly and easy to recall.

Kamasutra and Sansara

More on names. The Indian restaurant in Siem Reap, where we had dinner, went by an equally unlikely monicker: Kamasutra. Cambodian girls wearing Kerala sarees served kadai chicken and raita. The joint was owned by a Malayali. Along with the bill came a small brochure which exhorted the customer ‘Why not try South Indian delicacies at Sansara in the next lane?’

Footloose in the streets of Siem Reap the next evening, we spotted the same Cambodian girls in Kerala sarees under a new sign – Sansara with the sign-off line ‘for mouth-watering delicacies’. It did not need a cartographer’s skills to infer that Sansara was right behind Kamasutra. I discovered that they even shared a kitchen and a chef. Talk of Indian ingenuity!

The India Connection

The friendly tuk-tuk driver asked my companion what his name was. He replied, Hari. Oh, Haree as in Haree-haraa, they said in a chorus. They had heard that Indian name in some context. The guide in Siem Reap was thrilled to meet us. Indians built our temple, he said, and gave us our culture. We had Khmer rulers from your country – named Jeyya-Vermman, Yesso-vermman, Sooriyya-vermman, In-dra-Vermman, Udeyya-Vermman and the like, he said in his heavily accented tongue. I felt that, being an Indian, I was almost being worshipped. A great feeling!

A Red Herring

The young man who took me around the Angkor Artisans Village in the suburbs of Siem Reap, where breathtaking handicraft items are made, sported a plastic nameplate on his shirt. Pram Bir, it said.

Having seen several shops with Indian sounding names like Archana, Kartika etc, I was ready to bet my shirt that Pram Bir is an adapted form of Param Veer or Prem Veer. What does your name mean, I asked him. Five plus two, rather, seven. Seven? Yes, because I was born in the seventh month. Quite an innovative method of naming your kids, I thought. And, so much for the ‘adaptation’!

The Young Salesperson

There were over a hundred hole-in-the-wall shops under one roof. They all sold souvenirs and trinkets. As we ambled through the aisles between rows of shops, we were accosted by vendors (all women), urging us to step in: ‘All items very cheap, sir’ and ‘Only one dollar, Sir!’ As we passed by one shop, a tiny voice repeated the call. It was a boy, barely three; I suspect he did not know enough Cambodian, but he could echo the ‘Only one dollar, sir!’ of his mother.

Parallel Currency

The official currency in Cambodia is the Riel, but US Dollars are as popular. So are counte

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