Friday, September 3, 2010

Day Sixteen: Chennai

Thursday, August 26, 2010, Velachery, Chennai
10:31 a.m., India Time

For the third day in a row: no Internet. I’m going to call Sharanya in a bit to set up our meeting tonight.  Our schedule from now on is packed tight.  I obviously will have to come here again, as I have not done nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity about this city or India in general.

I am not feeling very well today,  and my throat still hurts. Raja is very nervous. He wants me to take antibiotics, but I don’t want to take them unless I absolutely have to. I can’t feel my lymph nodes and I don’t have a fever, so I don’t think it’s strep. My nose is clear so I don’t think it’s a cold.  My digestive system is doing all right. Anyway, I’m hoping it’s just an air-quality thing, made worse by all the shouting at the arcade yesterday.

I had weird dreams last night. Aunty, Uncle, the boys, Raja and I were flying somewhere. All passengers were required to wear these pink and gray uniforms, and were given trays containing their on-flight meal prior to boarding. The meal was unidentifiable. It looked weird, as if it were freeze-dried or something.  I saw my (real) aunt and cousins through the glass at the airport. They were wearing uniforms, too.

For some reason we were capturing reptiles, maybe for eating.  One of us caught a large, two-headed snake, maybe a cobra or a viper? It was poisonous. It was twisted into a pretzel shape, and it was frozen. We went to cook it in the microwave, and it melted and came alive. I had a little snake, but when I looked again, it had legs. It was a lizard! I decided to keep it as a pet. I put it in a jar with some water. I was going to put some rocks in for it to climb on. I put a plain round rock and a bigger, kind of pointy rock. When I looked again, the bottle had shrunk to just fit the rocks. I somehow got the rocks out, but it was too late: the lizard was squashed completely flat.

Raja came back a little after midnight and M.C. and I were still awake. Hence, we slept a little later today. We (the M.C. and I) were both coughing in the morning.

Tomorrow I’m going to go buy two new suitcases. Big Ones. I have to start packing my things, and I have a LOT of things. Then there’s shopping in Bangalore and Mysore. I have no idea what’s going on today, hopefully the Theosophical Society, and maybe one more temple on Tuesday. That’s all I want.  I’m going to try to get on Raja’s computer to try to check mail, etc. I’ll make a small post, explaining my absence.

Until then, egg dosas and coffee for me, and for you, be good.

1:56 p.m., India Time

Used Raja’s computer to respond to a few e-mails, update my private blog, and post a short note to y’all. At 3, Raja and I are going to go take some pictures at the Theosophical Society, the world’s largest Banyan tree, and maybe a few other spots.

So once again for lunch it’s amazing shrimp curry (I am going to have to get the recipe for my friend Liz. It blows biryani out of the water) and the first thing I do is drop it on my shirt. Of course it’s a new shirt, and the curry is tomato-based, and so there’s a red stain on the shirt. I rushed to wash it out and got most of it, but I think it’s color-safe bleach time. We’ll see.

We’re leaving at three, just Raja and me, and the kids are going with Aunty and Uncle back to the Arcade (thank every Hindu god there is that I don’t have to go again, but poor Aunty and Uncle!)

I treasure every minute that Raja and I get to spend alone. Not that parents (and step-parents, and the girlfriends or boyfriends of people who happen to be parents) don’t love their kids and like being with them, we do. However, just like kids want time with their friends without parents hanging around, sometimes adults feel the same way.

10:13 P.M., India Time

A long day, but one filled with pleasant things. After a long, roundabout drive in which we had to ask directions about 5 times, we finally found the correct entrance to the Theosophical Society’s International Headquarters.  The Theosophical Society was a group of folks in the 19th century who tried to take the best parts of all religions and strip them down into one whole Ultimate Truth: 

"The realization that life, and all its diverse forms, human and non-human, is indivisibly One."

The grounds of the Theosophical Society are expansive and beautiful, with tons of trees, birds, flowers, butterflies, old buildings, archways, little pathways, insects, chipmunks, dogs, cows, and snakes. Yes, cobras, vipers, and kraits live in the grass there, so it’s best not to stray off the path too far. In fact, when I was exploring a little, I heard a noise, turned and saw a snake slither off a tree and crash into the underbrush below. I couldn’t see the whole snake, only part of its body.  I looked from a distance, but didn’t see it, and I certainly wasn’t going to go poking around for a poisonous snake!

I did see a lot of huge, cool beetles though, and ants and millipedes (gross!) and cool butterflies, and I heard a strange bird cry. “What is that?” I asked Raja. “A cuckoo,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like the one in the clock,” I replied. It doesn’t. 

The sounds in that place are just amazing. Not very many people or traffic sounds, just layers and layers of nature. Caws and buzzes and slithers and moos; leaves whispering, and beetles clicking and grass rubbing. I could sit there in silence for hours unraveling all the sounds.

There are also good smells of beautiful flowers, and all the sights I mentioned before.  The society has an amazing library, but we were so late I only got to see the card catalog. They have hundreds of rare books from the 1800s: books on philosophy and religion and archeology and likely occult subjects, because they were interested in that stuff, too.  You have to take your shoes off to go into the library, or into the main hall, which is decorated with all kinds of holy figures and names. Jesus and Krishna, and Confucius and Buddha and Zarathushtra and Osiris …

On the grounds of the Theosophical Society resides the world’s largest living banyan tree. It’s really cool.

After the Theosophical Society we went to Santhome (St. Thomas) Basilica, which is a very famous Catholic church in Chennai. The story goes that St. Thomas, who was a disciple of Jesus, came to India to preach the word of God, and was martyred (killed) for his beliefs. The story goes that they built a church over his burial place. That was where we went. We bought some candles from a guy outside and entered the church. There was a mass going on, and we joined the other people for a while. We soon realized we had joined a wedding! It was really cool to hear a mass in Tamil, though. I couldn’t help but feel very moved. We exited the church, and looked through the side into the Shrine of Our Lady of Mylapore, an Indian expression of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

We lit our candles, and I said a kind of long prayer for everyone I thought might appreciate it, so if you’re one of those people, the prayer and the candle was for you.

We went into the next building over, which was the museum of old Catholic artifacts, including a cross containing  a relic of St. Thomas (which means a part of a bone, usually) In the basement, I saw the tomb (grave) of St Thomas.  There were pictures of Pope John Paul II (the last pope before the current one) visiting the church several years ago. Raja told me he was in 10th grade, and he actually saw the Pope in Chennai. That’s sort of a big deal.  There was also some sort of service going on in the room with St. Thomas’s tomb, so we couldn’t get too close. They were singing hymns in English, but I was amused, because they were Protestant hymns (Nearer, My God, to Thee, and What a Friend we Have in Jesus.) Likely, it's just another fine example of India's spiritual openness.

Outside, there were about a hundred boys and girls dressed in white. It looked as if they were getting ready either for First Communion, Confirmation, or both. I also took a photo of a nun texting, because it was sort of funny. There was a celebration going on celebrating Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday, so there were a lot of nuns from her order there. You could recognize them from their white habits with the blue stripes.

At Santhome, I really had to go to the bathroom.  I know that’s TMI, but I had to share, because it was my first experience with a true Indian public toilet. Not my favorite experience, but one I expected to have eventually. I want to experience The Real India, and this is it.

After the church, our driver took us for a drive along Marina Beach. It was really cool. We stopped to look at some statues, and a memorial for Indian politician M.G.R. Ramachandran. Raja told me that Ramachandran was buried, even though he was a Hindu, and Hindus are almost always cremated.  He collected watches, and would wear a different watch for every occasion. Urban Legend says that the watch he was buried wearing is full of James Bond-like secret codes, including the access numbers to all the bank accounts containing the money he stole from the government. If that’s true, I wonder why no one has tried to dig him up yet! I was also wondering if his ghost was haunting the people who didn’t cremate him, because now he can’t return to Earth to fulfill his karma (lessons of cause and effect) and achieve moshka (unity with God.)

Finally, after all of our wanderings, I was tired and hot and sweaty. (It was very sunny today, finally!) We drove to T. Nagar to a Malaysian restaurant to meet my poet friend Sharanya in person for the first time. She is an amazing woman. I love her poems, but she is also just a very interesting person.  We talked about poetry, India, spirituality, and lots of other stuff.

The food was good and the discussion stimulating. Raja was very charming and got into the conversation, but he himself admits that he doesn’t really “get” poetry. Speaking of getting poetry, I bought a couple copies of Sharanya's book, one for myself and one for a friend. Her poems make my heart race and my head spin. Her work is so amazing. The way she uses words is pure magic. 

For dessert we had this amazingly interesting and delicious thing. It was sort of like a sweet fruit snow cone with vanilla ice cream on top and corn and kidney beans underneath. It sounds gross at first, but in the end it’s really good. Lots of things in life are like that, I guess. I felt bad because the ice cream rolled off the top when I was taking a bite and fell on the table, but the rest was good, too.

I was so tired when I got home that I couldn’t even write. 
Oh, and Monkey won over 1800 tickets at the Arcade. More Loud Toys.

Be good.

No comments:

Post a Comment