pondicherry, 5-8 aug 07

pondicherry was i think just what we needed at that time, after a rough start in chennai and mahabalipuram. white town all cool and serene and painted up and down the streets in a clean white, broad avenues and beautiful houses, set on the sea. a place to just be, wander some pretty streets, see some pretty churches, hide away for a few hours in this cafe or that under the whirr of fans overlooking a courtyard strewn with potted plants, breathing. dawns fading into lazy mornings into sleepy noontimes into slow afternoons into soft sunsets...

true, not much to see exactly, a few churches simple n elegant, a rambly botanical gardens, the streets of white town, the seaside with its piles of stones boulders guarding against the rough sea, a scattering of hindu temples with their classic domes crowded with brightly-painted statues... but still, atmospheric and calming for a frazzled schmemma and schmabil...

our first night we spent in a place called the ajantha guest house, right out there by the sea and promenade. there we managed to create a bit of drama and disapproval, i think it is safe to say. first by giving the guy who carried our suitcase up the stairs a measly ten rupees (he gaped at us in disgust and marched out of the room in indignation), then by creating a scene with the manager, claiming we had a reservation there and a printout that showed rates for the room at half of what this guy was asking for, only to discover the online reservation thing had been a total hoax, the ajantha guest house that we had booked at was in fact called something completely different, no relation, not even nearby. after that embarrassment we tried to keep a low profile, and planned to get out of that place (a bit too costly for us anyway) soon’s we could. so the next morning after breakfast we got ourselves together, ready to set out for the ashram-affiliated guest house across town, on the canal that was the dividing line tween white town and everything else. porter dude again brought our luggage down the stairs and schmabil doubled his previous tip, pressing a twenty into the outstretched hand. in response this guy gave us the ugliest face and went over to the manager and waved the twenty in his face, shouting something in tamil before giving us one more angry backward glance and storming out.

what a relief to find our new accomodations, half the price, lovely, and with an elevator. no porter problems here. maybe lacking the terrace looking out on to the sea, but clean, large, airy. with a courtyard full of mostly potted but a few planted plants... rather like the mission back in kolkata.

the next few days floated by, sitting in satsanga restaurant drinking the best coffee i’d had in i don’t even know how long a year maybe just letting our minds wander sighing and talking tough to the cutest puppy who kept coming by and putting his pointy head soft against my leg and looking up hoping and so sweet, this puppy had his game down for sure, and i gave him a firm talking to, no human food for puppies! schmabil messed with the camera while i wrote and we both teared thru more than a couple crepes, more than one basket of brown bread... one afternoon into evening in a gorgeous hotel the dupleix sipping fruity champagne cocktails (and in schmabil’s case a cucumber martini, which at least he liked, weirdo) our planned brief stop for a drink turning into hours, talking about i don’t know what, the world, the future, lotsa nonsense there too, then moving into the courtyard to leaf thru old fashion/travel magazines and giggle, before again back into the dining room for a fancyschmancy dinner, all of this of course way beyond our means but after this it would be 20 rupee thalis and 7 rupee idlis all day and all night so we let ourselves be a little ridiculous... brick oven pizza n fresh lime sodas at au feu de bois cozy and rustic and especially so in the sudden downpour outside... tho was freaked out after a certain point that at most of these restaurants the bill was invariably given to me, what do they think, that schmabil was some kind of kept person? weirded weirded out.

but yes there were other things beside endless food and coffee and wine, and all of our walks, there was a sad little museum, some peeks into the aurobindo ashram, and then there was a trip out of town to a beach, our autowallah was mean and dropped us off at some random point at the seashore claiming it to be serenity beach and us having no proof either way we got out paid him and walked only to discover fishermen’s boats and nets, determined however to find a proper beach we walked on thru the scorching sand til we reached some small set-up, a sun-shelter and a clean-ish beach, peopled by some unexpected foreigners in bikinis along with a couple dudes in lungis. an interesting pairing of beachgoers. we sat there under the shelter with them reading, before schmabil decided it was time to play in the water, which was fun til it caught us unawares and soaked me up to my waist...

i shouldn’t skip tho the whole ashram thing, seeing as the aurobindo people are rumoured to own half of pondicherry and really were a subtle but ubiquitous presence. an order founded by a bengali former freedom fighter sri aurobindo and built largely by his chosen partner, a frenchwoman with a penchant for the most bizarre headresses to be worn over the end of her sari which she pulled over the top of her head, termed only ‘the mother’. pondicherry is the location of aurobindo ashram’s headquarters, as well as the place where sri aurobindo himself is buried. it is all pretty low-key, it seemed; we visited the ashram to eat one meal and it was just room after room and quiet folk overwhelmingly indian shoveling thru bowls of the blandest food, and at the sight of sri aurobindo’s burial it was also rather quiet, the faithful and the only interested alike silently passing through... maybe the main action of the ashram is at their city auroville some ten kilometers or something outside of pondicherry, where thousands of foreign ashramites along with thousands of native ones live together...

we did get a chance to attend some film screening that was supposed to give more information, be a set of short doucumentary films on the mother and the aurobindo ashram. half of the films seemed rather less strong on the informational side of things, and to amount ultimately to a kind of audio-visual puja. the first especially, fade-ins and fade-outs of flower upon flower, in fields, in solo close-ups, interspersed with images of the mother, music of her own composition playing in the background. in fact, this film was termed an ‘offering’. other films followed, a couple attempting to impart some amount of information perhaps but the sound track was so scratchy it was hopeless... the worst was the final in the series, which was a loop of the same exact footage of the mother giving blessings to the masses, five minutes long, shown four or five times in a row, it was moments like these when we wondered if one had to be on drugs to appreciate this (the films were after all done up in psychedelic colors and produced in the early 70s) or else truly be swept up in some devotional fervor, truly believing this lady (who seemed really a little crazy) was god (as she claimed to be, at moments).

altho the aurobindo thing was interesting, and i wished we could have gotten out there to auroville and all that, the overwhelming impression i was left taking with me of pondicherry was mostly that of the colonial city, not of some spiritual center. its cafes all charming and open and airy, all these cutesy-wutesy boutiques with their soaps and incense, blouses and scarves and broad-legged pants in light south indian cotton... all the eeriness and all the guilty pleasure of a city still half colonial, from what we saw.

we were surprised and somewhat weirded out in fact by the dominance of french folk, it felt almost as if in these old colonial ‘white town’ areas that most of the people on the street were non-indian, and in restaurants it was as if the empire had never ended, tables occupied by foreigners gregarious over glasses of wine or pots of good (praise the lord!) coffee, barely a brown face to be seen but for the occasional except of course for the servers, chefs, guards, etc. it really struck us in the boutiques of the town, they were all over... for instance the place casablanca, whose tagline was ‘the world is yours’ (eek!). it felt like some kind of ex-pat pottery barn cum anne taylor or somesuch thing, full of classy cunning home furnishings, here and there a touch of the indian, along with fine leather bags, designer jewelry, stylish clothing for the westerner finding his/herself in these tropical climes—an exquisite balance found in these wares between environmental conditions and cultural imperatives (of both cultures, the indian, to be modest, the french, to be stylish). this seemed to be a store for the ex-pat yearning perhaps here and there for the touch of the exotic, but basically not willing to compromise on anything fundamental to their sense of aesthetics and/or lifestyle. for their fine, manicured lives, all the luxury of india without any of the dirt, without the cheap stitching and fall-apart fabric.

an interesting place, and we stayed longer than i thought we would. but finally one day we decided it was time, to the relief of our bank accounts and consciences but with a bit of wistfulness in our hearts, at leaving the comfort and calm that we had found there. we had other cities to get to, trichy, tanjore, madurai, so we bundled up our things and set off for central tamil nadu.

out of delhi, up into the hills

i left delhi at daybreak, lurching out of my room with my excess baggage and trundling it all down onto the sidewalk and out of the complex, a bulging bag under either arm and my suitcase trailing grumbly unhappily behind me. it was all still half dark so i didn’t even notice pascal-ma’am out there on the bench until i was almost right on top of her.

caught off guard i open up with an awkward and confused, ‘oh, hello, i didn’t see you! good morning.’ to which she gives me such a look, and, cutting to the chase, says, ‘where are you going?’ feeling a little criminal, caught in the act, although i had totally cleared leaving today with her the evening before, i say simply, tho a little embarassed, ‘dehra dun.’ she nods, thoughtfully, her brow slightly furrowed, perhaps trying to figure out how dehra dun might fit into my whole kathak back-story. then she starts, ‘well...’ taking an awkward pause of looking, before she culminates with the classic indian (unless americans say this all the time and i have been missing it?) all-purpose expression of good wishes, ‘best of luck.’ she gives a matronly nod of her head, and i am dismissed.

i had always been nervous of pascal-ma’am, always looking, watching, sometimes there being a little half smile there at what really you don’t know, but mostly some unreadable blank. her coming out like this to see me off, or at least to watch me as i lugged all this weight on past her, wobbly and all, caught me by surprise. this display of that kind of feeling of maternal responsibility to her charges. it left me almost getting prematurely nostalgic and sad at parting this working women’s hostel.

then i called back to myself the memories of all the sloppy platters of dal and potatoes day after day, the big slippery cockroaches hidden in corners, the bread and butter breakfasts. thus cutting my nostalgia to size, i gave one last smile and a ‘thank you so much!’ over my shoulder, and was outta there.

outside of the gate on a big empty bhagwan das road there was not an auto in sight, and only the distant sound of long-haul trucks and maybe a few buses with the blueline out perhaps for an early killing. i was about to start cursing myself for not calling a cab and thinking an auto could be managed, when out of the distance appeared the light of a single vehicle, coming towards me from the blackness of mandi house. i squinted and scrunched my eyes to look into the glare, and to my excitement there it was, an empty auto prowling the empty streets. i stopped it, laughed at the bloated price offered me, told the auto-walla what price it was going to be (no argument, tho i imagine not so much from his intimidation so much as my just wanting to get out of there and so giving him a totally generous/fair price) and with his help piled all my junk in. and we were off. we flew past men asleep in their autos, autos in line for gas, a few other vehicles but mostly the streets were empty and before i knew it we had reached new delhi station. seeing my wheeled luggage most of the coolies kept silent and curled their lips as i went by. another lost job.

i was way early, i watched a couple other shatabdis come and go before mine came, the 6 50 to dehra dun. with a little help from the guy sitting next to me, solicited in my baby hindi, i got my suitcase aloft and sat down proud in my aisle seat. it was an uneventful ride for the most part, altho there was the issue of the cockroaches. i had noticed a couple coming in but thought it only cuz back there were the cooking areas. but then i saw them in the coach itself. first crawling up the walls, then crawling up some man’s chair and then quite suddenly right in front of me upon my newspaper. the rest of the ride, all six hours of it, i spent either peeking around to make sure none had come to crawl on me or else telling myself pointedly not to look, focus on newspaper, focus on music playing in my headphones, focus on scenery flying by outside. i had never seen roaches on trains before, the numbers of them were so confusing, especially considering these shatabdis are expensive and at least supposedly of a higher class, fully air-conditioned as they are with free meals free newspapers and free water... but anyway. you did not find me touching my lunch that is for sure.

at length we arrived in dehra dun, and successfully i made it out, and down the congested path to the government-operated taxi stand. just as i was loading myself into my ambassador of choice, i saw standing right there another foreigner girl, and as our eyes met we asked the simultaneous question that came to mind: landour? i told her to pile in to, much more simple than me cuz she came lightly luggaged only. suzanne from holland, here for a month, with a week doing the hindi study thing in landour. our driver was mercifully safe and conservative, honked at always by those behind him who would rather have him making dashing passes of other vehicles around sharp turns into the blind beyond.

it only took an hour to get to landour, curling up around the hills, bouncing down the narrow cobble-y streets. my guest house is at the bottom end of landour, called northern store. except that its actual name seems to be terrace cottage guest house, at least on all official documents. i am sure they have all the good reasons. it is a family home with i think only four rooms available, tho i am the only guest at the moment. the room is big, homey i suppose, with a cozy rug over the poured concrete floor an enormous bed a lounge-y chair for reading, a fireplace, a painting of a couple of terrier dogs and a cute little paper indian flag by the door. there is a door to a room with a broken sink hanging off of the wall, and a tap for running water and a bucket, as well as some old abandoned furniture and a full length free-standing mirror. out the door from there around the corner is the toilet, kind of an outhouse really, and then a huge tub of water with a baby bucket to make use of (no flush, just water thrown into it afterwards). this tub is so old and rusted and the whole thing so rough hewn and ramshackle that it really does give that funny feeling of some other century... when they delivered to me my first morning a hand-formed metal bucket of boiling water with which to take my bath it reminded of some scene from the little house series.

so mostly the place seems nice, a little musty (a fact the proprieter denied when i asked when someone would be in to do some dusting, but proven by my resurgent asthma since i have been spending time in this room) but cozy. i was surprised to find a dead mouse in the room with the watertap, in one of the abandoned cupboards there, but the fact that there was nothing live, and it seemed nothing had been there to munch on the creature’s remains somehow made me feel better about the whole thing.

after this i went to see the layout of landour, and most importantly, to figure out where the school was and find myself a meal. it was a serious steep climb for twenty minutes fore i reached char dukan (‘four shops’) but reach i did, and sat down for some food. then i wandered some more uphill, found the school, and sat for a while out by it, looking down the steep incline at the mist breathing in curls and swirls all slow between the tall and slender trees that shot up from seemingly impossible footholds on the hillside.

finally after some time i started to get chilly, and decided it was time to go back down to my little home. i descended again thru the layers of mist past the drama of the trees and sudden steep slope, my path curling down it safely to my place. where after dinner i curled up in my comfy chair by the (nonfunctional) fireplace to read myself into sleepiness...

evening, a.i.w.c. working women's hostel

the lightning of an approaching shower begins to spark and scatter thru the pink-orange sky. in this dusky darkening day warden-ma’am pascal ma’am is sitting out on the bench in front of the houses taking in the air, as the wind sweeps the fallen deep pink flowers before it out from under their tree on to the asphalt in front of me. three girls in knee-length dresses, age ten tops, are jumping up and down before pascal-ma’am and singing a folk song, dancing off-beat off-coordination arms everywhere and feet shaky as pascal-ma’am nods on and a grey tabby cat lets out a yawn from where he sits lazily in his corner under the tree.

i settle my things back into my room with a thud, i make an attempt to neaten up, fail, sit back down at my desk to study, trying to bend my mind into some kind of compliance, to push myself thru these pages of mein versus meine, mujhe, mere, lists of verbs tenses and constructions. my brain i think to myself has been cooked by a long day under the sun, it is no use, i will have to face the tutor’s wrath (and even worse, my own shame) tomorrow. just as i go to lay my copy down i hear a rustle followed by a roar followed by the running of water.

i go to my window. all people have vanished, the pink the orange has vanished into black, rain is coming down in the near-darkness, and the grey tabby is hiding mournfully under the benches. the flowers are being swept away into the gutters. scorching day has settled into rainy night. i stand outside and breath in and out, i stick my hands out from under the shelter i have taken to feel the rain. and then (good girl) i go inside wash my face and go to open up my book again. gaya, gayi, gaye, gayin, khaya, khayi, khaye, khayin, piya, piyi... the rain pattering away outside.

wandering among the tombs

i set out early, but already the scorch of the sun was setting in. i walked down these almost empty new delhi avenues, towards humayun’s tomb, the stream of traffic on my right, the blank high walls surrounding various very important (or so it seemed) offices and institutes of various kinds on my left. my map said it would be simple, a straight shot down zakir hussain marg, but somewhere in the middle of that i got lost in the maze below some gargantuan flyover, a tangle of roads going off in so many directions i became dizzy... a few trial and error turns and much frustration and suspicious speculating on (angrily) why this city is made for cars not people later, i made it.

humayun’s tomb, isa khan’s tomb, barber’s tomb, a whole mess of mausoleums. humayun’s tomb itself is set in the midst of recently restored gardens, grass and trees set out on a kind of grid run thru by narrow marble-lined passageways of running water punctuated by pools and fountains. raised on a platform in the center of these gardens, humayun’s tomb rises up all majestic and grand, clothed in pink and white marble. climbing up the steep stairs into it, i circled the outside, peering in thru its many jalis (stone-carved screens) til i got to the opening. inside it was simple and spare, a huge space, still grand of course but with few details, empty of any kind of fancy decorations... in the middle stood the cenotaph itself. and in the many side-rooms, more of them, cenotaph after cenotaph, appearing mostly in clusters, lined up, with inscriptions in arabic (unless it was urdu or persian?) calligraphy

i wandered from there to the other tombs in the compound, more cenotaphs, more jalis, variations on style of domes, shape, decoration... none comparable to humayun’s tomb in striking-ness. really, most of the other ones were crumbling apart. of the whole complex, i think it is the external view of humayun’s tomb that is the best part...

i left, crossing the street and with a turn, following the signpost, found myself thrown into the sudden congestion and crowding of these back lanes full of butchers bread-friers and really i am not sure what else, was trying to avoid stepping into some pools of goat blood running to onto the sidewalk and avoid the eyes of the people all around me and looking. after stopping to ask one paan-walla i find the lane leading to hazrat nizamuddin aulia dargah, the shrine and burial site of the renowned sufi saint nizam-ud-din. other famous individuals are also buried there, or in the immediate vicinity, among them mirza ghalib and amir khusro. the attention of sellers of various prayer paraphernalia is almost too much to bear, so i rush along the narrow lane leading into the dargah at a heated pace, past all the “hello ma’ams” and “please, pleases”...

thru a jalis i try to look into amir khusro’s tomb, i see only a bunch of men in pale-toned salwar kameez sitting beside some kind of entrance, on the white marble floor. i move on to the shrine itself, glittering and rainbow and gorgeous (no photos allowed), a trio of qawwals sitting out front below a colorful canopy singing their songs, amidst a small group of men mostly, around the sides of the shrine were crowds of women, not allowed into the interior (only men, please) praying as best as they could at the distance... i would have liked to stay longer, but the attention of too many eyes made me feel too awkward and out-of-place so after a brief circle of the shrine itself, and a moment of listening to the music, i left, out past all the beseeching voices of the flower and sweet sellers, back out to the main road. next stop, lodi gardens.

i think really lodi gardens was the first thing that really got me interested in delhi, the first time i came here. my first day in delhi, after a lunch at the cafeteria at habitat center with another fulbrighter, i was left with an empty afternoon to occupy. having been confined only to my defense colony hotel room for the last day i was hungry to see something, anything... and lodi gardens was right down the road. i didn’t know what i was expecting, but the sight of these peaceful open spaces with well-groomed grass, palm trees, and unexplained old ruins scattered about the grounds was a revelation to an eye used to the uninspired gardens and parks of kolkata, with their tacky shrubbery and kangaroos waste bins. this time i came armed with a map and a book, telling me where and what these crumbling old tombs were. washed out by the forces of nature and the passage of time, thick with bird droppings, these tombs felt their age... some beautiful stone-carving, some odd tiles left here and there, pigeons perched on ledges and flying above you circling below the dome...

after this, home, water, a ten minute nap. then, wireless cafe, lunch with molly and another fulbrighter from the good old days in kolkata. and then four more hours of addiction... two pots of coffee, two booked plane tickets, numerous emails and newspaper articles and innumerable checkings of facebook later i packed up my computer and caught the first rickshaw home, at the very onset of sunset.

dilli days dilli daze

my days have been floating by, wandering around ancient ruins, breezing round the curves of new delhi streets in autos, brief forays into the alleyways up by chandni chowk looking for the remains of shahjahanabad amidst the warehouses and small-time businesses, milling around malls and other shopping strips in front of restaurants like t.g.i.f. bennigan’s ruby tuesdays etc shops like levi’s united colors of benetton reebok marks and spencer’s etc in a cloud of confusion at all this familiar foreign-ness all at once, sitting around in cafes with wireless in a disturbing state of excitement drinking away pots of tea as i rediscover the lures of internet addiction, spending over my budget on the all-too-numerous all-too-tempting fancy schmancy restaurants that seem to call to me from every corner...

napping away scorching afternoons in my cave (aka sad little room in a working woman’s hostel)... going mad from another meal of dal and potatos same’s they served the day before and every day before that... nervous under the gaze of our ever-watching warden pascal-ma’am who i thinked liked me until i appeared outside in something sleeveless, .... checking the corners for giant cockroaches like the waddling one i saw in that other room they tried to move me into last week...

only a few days left here before i run off up into the hills for a month of study for real, hindi/urdu up in landour. two weeks in delhi, n i still can’t figure out what to make of it. all the open space in south delhi, and the alienation of this elitist weird bubble, all the cram and crunch of north, all these far reaching enclaves and colonies, all this (exciting) ancient and (usually not so much exciting except sometimes hmm in a i-have-not-been-home-in-a-year-and-really-need-it kind of way) new, it all feels funny somehow. it is leaving me curious to know more, but yeah, hmm. i have a feeling that in the end i would not be comfortable or happy with all the segregation of rich and poor, all the posh-ness and hip-ness and gated-ness of the world populated by the privileged on one side and then the rest on the other, and neither place feeling really like it has a place for me...

but then, two weeks is nothing. to know a city? i will have to come back i think, if only to get to know it good n proper. you listening, schmabil?

mamallapuram aka mahabalipuram, 4 n 5 august 07

we sped down the coast on our crusty old public bus out of chennai, flying over the smooth coast road past beach resorts before these walled enclosures gave way to open land, fields and trees and beyond them, from time to time, glimpses of blue-gray sea cool and hazy and distant, the wind blowing up into the bus smelling like green and saltwater.



took a turn-off past some blackened shacks on a road deep in mud from recent rain, came out onto mamallapuram’s east raja street. we offloaded onto the street and by autorickshaw got to our hotel, center, hippie-town. crusty hippies wandered about, along with clueless khaki-clad kids with wide eyes, tender mouths, guides clasped to their chests like shields.




sitting up in the hotel cafe, a gaunt man in a lungi garlanded with beads recounts his story as he cradles a puffy-eyed baby on his lap, the mother sitting across peaceful with wild long hair and baggy clothing. he has been ill, there have been visa issues, but ok, he’s been on the road who knows how long now, where in fact he met this girl and they became travel-partners, where to go they don’t know, maybe continue floating, baby added, really i worried for this baby. the woman takes the baby and lifts up her shirt to reveal her lack of undergarments and begins nursing where everyone can see, schmabil n i avert our eyes, father talks a good bit of all the coughing-up of blood and hospitalizations with a couple of sympathetic brits in short shorts, who seem to have had their own share of maximum-strength antibiotic injections or what have you, one begins to wonder why these people persist in staying on, why they all dont just go home.



with relief we depart that cafe, get out into the town to see the famous rock carvings. fine, not bowling-over impressive, pleasant to ramble around tho... the most impressive piece arjuna’s penance, a multitude of figures carved across a single wall, but ruined by would-be guides and postcard sellers that followed you all the way up and down all around, making enjoyment impossible... kids squatting down and relieving themselves in the park, dealers approaching us with offers of drugs on multiple occasions, dirty looks, overpriced tickets to all these attractions, finally we retreated into some french-run cafe, fresh lime sodas and cool away from the sun and dust and people. confusedly trying to figure out why the travel guide had said that this was the kind of place you could lose track of time in, failing to mention the shady dealings and ashram-dropouts or whatever who seemed really to be on their last legs ill and faded-out and lost...



the one thing about mamallapuram was the sea. rough and dark, we watched from a pile of stones sitting the crowds hanging about the edges of the sea, not venturing deeper than maybe a a foot or so in, mostly fully clothed except for a few boys who stripped down to their underwear, people in blue jeans or salwar kameez or sari getting soaked from top to bottom as the waves surprised them where they stood or as they pulled each other down laughing into the surf.



but sea or no sea, we decided it was time to move on, we had had enough, so a day early we left mamallapuram. early at a busstop on sunday, us and a jumble of other foreigners, across from a ramshackle church from which clanged and clattered out the joyful noise of its worshippers shouting out their songs, the clamour of tinny cymbals and the rough thumps on drums, interrupted only briefly here and there for a short sermon, perhaps some prayers, continuing the whole forty five minutes that we waited for our bus...which finally did come, crowded, we squeezed us and our monstrous large suitcase in and held on tight, as the bus took off, leaving musty old mamallapuram behind in a cloud of dust...

chennai, 2 and 3 august 07

we arrived in chennai at noontime; the slow ride thru knotted traffic past billboards for the latest movies in tamil hindi and english as well as for political purposes of some kind or another, boasting towering and terrifying images of sonia gandhi, jayalalitha, others... at length arriving at our hotel hidden down some side street in triplicane. quiet and airy and simple if smudgy and flaking and rough around the edges, tho the presence of a film crew throughout the bottom floor, overflowing from the courtyard, wires snaking out around a tumble of tables and chairs, meant that at night as they shot some seedy cabaret scene we would awake listening to loud tamil voices and bangs, cracks, stompings down the length of the hallway.

whatever the disturbance of these doings in the hotel, it was a welcome refuge from the city, which from what i could tell seemed mostly made for cars, walking almost impossible. the only real nice walk we had was down the edge of the beach, past all the thatched huts of fisherman, past the huddle of their boats on the beach, past women pounding away at their laundry, past fish spread out on the pavement to dry in the sun.

what else? a dance-drama about manipur with dancing and incredible staging, all the time each moment looking like a picture, at the music academy with roopa, tapas at a too-cool-to-be-true restaurant down the street afterwards... our first south indian thalis, yumyum... the supposed resting place of st. thomas in a modern, brightly lit, antiseptic and marble-lined crypt... the most adamant auto-rickshaw-wallahs i have ever encountered, insulted and in fact closed by any attempt at bargaining down to a fair price...

other than this, there some temples, some churches, some malls, some museums, all were fine and nice but i felt like i didn’t know how to make it all coherent, i couldn’t draw connections and figure out what chennai was really. maybe partially because it isn’t a walking city, things felt like they didn’t coalesce into something i could see as unique or even really identifiable in some way as being chennai rather than being some other city. maybe it is a city that takes more time to know. maybe its the kind city that hides away in people’s homes, and other un-public places. or maybe we were just missing something.

in the midst of all this dust and congestion tho we didn’t feel much like sticking around to wait for chennai’s heart n soul to reveal itself, so we set off ahead of schedule for mamallapuram aka mahabalipuram, down the coast.

slow sunday: my first day in delhi

sailing around and down wide boulevards
past greenery crumbling monuments
govt buildings residential enclaves
quiet
curves
a long morning running into afternoon
from mexican omelettes into pots of tea
curled up in the corner of a cafe/gallery
where the man next to me orders his starbucks cappucino
with a face like he had just come into heaven