Chennai: Day Four

Monday, August 16, 2010, Chennai

10:25 p.m. India Time

I could get used to this. In fact, except for the fact that I don’t know what anyone is saying, I feel pretty much at home already. My Tamil is limited to a few words: Ammaa (mother), Appaa (father), Paatti (grandma), Thathhaa (grandpa), Aththai (aunty: dad’s sister), Annhi (sister-in-law), Akkaa (sister), Maamaa (uncle), Maami (aunty), neelam (blue), oorugai podu (bring me pickles), vaa (come), aama (yes).

“Wake up, wake up, you’re oversleeping!” was the first thing I heard upon waking this morning. Given that it was about 6:40 a.m., I didn’t take any heed to the chattering Monkey, and snuggled back down. However, at about seven I got up, dressed for the day in a red and cream top with colorful mirror work and green churidar pants.  The first order of the day was to upload the blog from last night, which I couldn’t manage to upload due to connectivity issues, much like the ones I’m having right now.

Aunty brought me some of her delicious coffee, and I simply enjoyed it as I typed away, checked messages and listened to the boys babble. After breakfast (eggs and toast and coffee and something else, I can’t remember what for me, and Easy Mac for Monkey), he and I played some badminton together. I have a pretty good serve, but the ceiling in the foyer is too low for much successful volleying. Anni came over and we were laughing as the boys made inappropriate jokes (see this morning’s song, for example.) Then, Anni and I went out to shop.

WARNING: The next part is all about shopping, which the boys tell me is boring and too “girly-girl.” So if you’re not a girly-girl or a girly-boy, or a boy-y boy who happens to like shopping, you can skip this part if you want, but you don’t have to.

We went to another fabric store to try to buy some stuff to finish the ends of my saris so they don’t fray. However, the place was so busy that no one would help us, so we left. Outside there were a lot of stalls selling all kings of chachkis, so I bought some more bindis, some hair clips and a couple pairs of cheap earrings.

As we were waiting for our driver, a beggar woman came up to me, begging for coins. I know that in the middle of a crowd, you can never give any beggar anything, or you will soon be surrounded by dozens of people begging for money. It was very hard to look at her, see her poverty and need and humiliation, and not do anything. I had to look at Anni, and converse with her, all the while, this little broken woman with cupped hands was standing right by my side, saying “Madam? Madam?” It almost made me cry. I kept thinking, “God, I will do my best to help in another way.”

After our car came, and we left the fabric shop,  the true shopping began. We went to a mall where Anni has a good friend who runs a textiles shop. She often buys things from him, and also brings her friends in to patronize his shop. Even when she doesn’t buy anything, she stops in to say hi to him whenever he is in town.  Therefore, she was ready to drive a hard bargain.  I mentioned earlier, as I was preparing for my journey, that one had to be ready to bargain if one wanted to shop in India. Well, Anni is a master bargainer.  I looked at all kinds of textiles (fabrics and things made of fabrics) At the prices he wanted, for the things I wanted to buy, he would have wanted about 14-15,000R. (That’s around $300.00 U.S, give or take 20.00.) With Anni at my side, I ended up with 22 beautiful items for 8,000R (about $170.00 U.S.) Still a lot of money, but the lot would have cost me at least a thousand dollars if I had bought them in the U.S.

After the hard bargaining at the textile merchant, we went to another shop where they sold jewelry made of silver and semi-precious stones. This stuff is nicer than the plastic and glass of costume jewelry, but not gold and diamonds. Things like amethyst, garnets, jade, laboradorite, moonstones.  I looked at a lot of earrings, pendants, and rings. In the U.S., things like this cost a ton. People come over here, import them to the U.S. and charge 100x the price.  I bought myself two gorgeous rings, two pairs of earrings, and a pendant for 2760R ($60.00) I am so nice to me.  :)

(SHOPPING PART IS OVER)

Too much shopping makes one hungry and exhausted. We had promised the boys that we would go swimming today, so we went back home to drop off the stuff and pick up the kids.  After an amazing lunch: rice, fish curry, fried fish, sambar, shrimp, that cauliflower/pea thing I thought I’d hate, but loved, and yogurt on the side, we gathered up our swim suits and headed out. First, however, we stopped at a fancy new mall in town (filled with American shops) and just looked around. Most of all, we looked at an arcade on the top floor to see if the kids might like to come back sometime. They decided they would.  We got back in the car, and this time I sat in the front passenger seat for the first time. Apparently, if you sit in the front seat, you’re required to wear a seat belt; and now I can see why. I took some video footage, and for the first time I think I got a little of the madness on screen. We stopped a couple of places in search for cold soda, and then headed for the hotel. After passing through Security, Anni’s husband met us and took our extra stuff upstairs. We went down to the gym/pool area and went into the changing room to change into our bathing suits.

The changing area in the hotel was really nice. I changed into my suit and joined the boys and Anni outside. The pool was an outdoor pool, and was pretty clean, although there were a few bees floating in the shallow end. I got in, and because it was so hot outside, the water was lukewarm. I was hanging on the the edhe of the pool on the shallow end, when I felt something crawl on my hand. I looked and (I admit) I screamed a bit because there was a GIANT BLACK ANT crawling on my hand! I flipped it off my hand and into the water, but it DIDN’T DIE. IT JUST SWAM BACK TO THE EDGE OF THE POOL! Aaaaaaaagh! The Man Cub was busy laughing at me, when Monkey screamed, “OMG, It’s a queen ant!” It wasn’t, but that’s how big these ants were. They were the size of, oh, I don’t know, a cap eraser? Scary, I tell you. We played around in the water a bit, and the kids spent a lot of time jumping on me, having me carry them around and having me lift them and thrown them into the water (when they weren’t planning how to drown me.) I swear Monkey jumped right off the edge of the pool into the piggy-back position on my back. Isn’t there a saying about that? After a while, I got a little tired, so I got out of the pool. At about that time, Raja got off work and came to join us. I was still supervising the kids, as Raja and Anni don’t swim that well.  Soon after, though, we decided to split up. Anni would take the kids home, hitting KFC on the way, and Raja and I would go to a temple before doing a few other things then coming home.

Before we left, Anni’s husband (I feel sort of bad that he doesn’t have a nickname in this blog, yet. Maybe I’ll ask her to help me come up with one) gave us some gifts. For Raja and me, there were solar-powered LED torches (flashlights) “so we could always find each other,” and for the boys, walkie-talkie watches, so they could talk to one another. Pretty cool!

Raja and I said our goodbyes to the rest of the family, and went to find ourselves a ride.

Riding in an auto rickshaw has to take years off your life. I had to take tons of footage (which I will upload soon) because this was one of the wildest rides of my life. An auto-rickshaw is in the middle of the road (so to speak) in the traffic right-of-way war. It goes something like this: Cows-buses-trucks-big cars-little cars-auto rickshaws-motorcycles-scooters-bicycles-pedestrians. Riding in an auto rickshaw is actually really fun once you accept that you just might die, but at least you’ll have a story to tell St. Peter at the pearly gate. The dust and exhaust rush up into your face, but you can really see, smell, and feel the city as it rushes past.

Since my experience with the begging woman, I seemed to see even more of the poorest people on the streets. I saw a man so thin he looked like a skeleton.  I saw one old man lying in the dirt on the side of the road with his eyes mostly closed. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was even alive. It’s odd here. You see so many beautiful and unusual things, and so many strange and sad things at the same time. Many people say it is a land of contrasts, and it’s true. One thing about being here is that I know how fortunate I am to have a place to live, food to eat, nice clothes to wear, access to decent medical care, and a job that I love and that doesn’t break my back or my spirit.

As we approached the temple, Raja reminded me that there are no pictures allowed inside (of course) and that they don’t allow Hindus (which usually means any Westerners) into the inner sanctum.  We left our shoes in a guarded waiting area (sort of like a “coat check” for shoes) and entered the temple grounds (no one ever wears shoes into the temple. It’s like going to church naked or something: it’s sacrilegious. We walked into the temple, and went to honor the main deity. The temple we went to is called Kapaleeswarar Temple, and it is devoted to Shiva. (Some of my students will remember him: he’s Ganesha’s dad.) The temple is more than 350 years old, although that’s relatively young. The temple in Tirupathi is 5000 year old. In the temple, there are many shrines. They are sort of like stations. We went from one to the next to pray. At the stations there are statues of the gods, and people often leave offerings. At one spot, we walked around the shrine of the celestial gods in order to align all the stars. People can walk in any multiples of three. We only walked three times. I noticed as we walked around that there was a tiny kitten near the shrine. It was kind of sad. I really wanted to pick it up and take it home, but it’s never a good idea to touch stray animals in India. They may carry rabies. After we walked around the celestial gods, we turned the corner, and a cow started following me. I took that as an auspicious omen.

As we entered the inner temple (the sign said only Hindus allowed, and as I was with an Indian and dressed in Indian clothes, no one stopped me) there were priests who came up to us at each station with plates filled with powder, flowers, and lit lamps and/or incense. We gathered some of the smoke over our heads, and Raja put  an offering (some rupees) on the plate.  Sometimes the priest would ask our names, then go up to the statue of the god to gain blessings for us. The priests at each station gave us some flowers (e.g. jasmine) and powder. At some points, Raja would put the powder on his head, so I would too. At one point, the priest gave me the tikka, putting red powder on my head. I think there’s a rhyme and reason to the way the powder is put on the head, but I haven’t quite figured that part out yet.  After we prayed to and had been blessed by all the gods, we walked sunwise around the temple. We then went to buy some Prasad, which is food that has been blessed by god. Lots of times, Prasad is sweet, but some of the types are savory/spicy instead.

We left the temple and walked a few blocks through the back streets to a little bookstore that sells school books. There, Raja bought eight workbooks for the kids. Raja always makes his kids do extra work on the weekends so that they will do well in school. Their mom does the same thing, so it’s not like he is extra mean. The kids do very well in school. Monkey knew all of his times tables when he was only in the first grade.

After we got the school books, Raja decided to take me to a bakery, one of the oldest in Chennai. He said that some of the newer bakeries were probably better, but that this bakery made things that no one else did, hence, that was where we would go.

We hailed another auto, and this guy made the last guy look like an old granny driving a mule cart. His driving was so crazy, I thought for sure that the whole auto would flip over, or that we would at least hit a pedestrian or two. Still, it was sort of exciting, sort of like a real-life video game (you know, that one game you can’t talk about in my classroom) but without the crime or mature themes. Luckily, I have a lot of footage of that ride, too, for your watching pleasure.

At the bakery, I had a seat, and Raja ordered us four things. Three savory/spicy things, and one sweet. The spicy things were like flaky turnovers filled with veggies. One was mixed veggie (I think there were potatoes) one was gobi (cauliflower) and one was chickpeas. All of them were delicious. For dessert we had sweet coffee and this cake that I was so good that I can’t even describe the amazing scrumpdillyiciousness of it.  I almost forgot to eat only with my right hand.

One more auto home. Before we hailed one, Raja indulged me by buying me a bunch of (four) movie magazines. He knows how much I love Bollywood, and he even tolerates it. Plus, he wants to read them too so that he doesn’t get bored on the train to Bangalore, where we are traveling next week.

We made it home without much ado, and I gave the flowers I had received at the temple to Aunty for her puja (prayer) cabinet. Anni and the boys had brought me a cold drink from KFC. They have some awesome drinks here at KFC that they don’t have in the U.S.  One is a creamy mango drink, similar to a traditional drink called a “mango lassi” and the other is something that Monkey refers to as a “Virginia Mojito.” It has lime and mint in it. After slurping down my Virginia Mojito, I sat down to write this day up. Aunty came in to my room, and we had a nice long talk. After that, I showed Raja the textiles I bought, and Aunty brought me some tea. Raja finished up his work for the day and settled down to watch some cricket on T.V.

I need to bathe and go to bed. I’m exhausted, and tomorrow is a brand new day.

Until then, be good!

P.S. Pictures/videos will come after the cameras are recharged.