To the south, Mr Driver

All this fascinating cultural adjusting and one of the biggest things for me is a rather mundane one…having a car and driver. I started driving pretty much the day I was legally allowed to (with a few thrilling practice runs in my dad’s old Toyota before that) and my first big purchase in life was a little Nissan 200SX. Perhaps it comes from having daughters or being the eldest in the family, I was indirectly tasked with following in my fathers’ car-loving footsteps. More than that even is an independent streak, which is facilitated by, amongst other things, the ability to drive myself wherever I may need (or want) to go. Still, as much as I love to drive, if you ask any of my non-driving friends, they will tell you I am, well…sensitive…about driving other people around to places I am not already going. Not surprisingly then, I feel rather uncomfortable having someone do just that for me. When the driver dropped me off at the train station, I thought perhaps I would feel a bit more myself on the next leg of my journey. As much as I enjoyed the luxuriousness of not worrying about directions or itineraries or gas or parking or (here specifically) successfully making it from point A to point B, it’s definitely not the kind of travel I am used to. Ram, who organized it all for me, said it wasn’t a big deal, a few of my other friends have drivers all the time at home, and I am paying him, but as I said, I am still adjusting culturally…

I was lucky and had only one lady and her remarkably well-behaved son in my little train berth. I had a bed all for myself and as much as I knew it wouldn’t be, I was still a little surprised that it was absolutely nothing like the Darjeeling Limited. (Side note: just so you know, I may continue to reference this movie for weeks to come. Judge accordingly.) No matter, I was tired and slept pretty well, considering I was moving and wearing cargo pants. In the morning I played tiny imaginary swords with the boy and he told me stories in Tamil out of a little book with an Avatar picture on it. His mom let me know where my stop was and I waved goodbye, careful to leave behind the dozens of swords he had given me.

My feet hit the ground in Tanjovare and I had that familiar ten seconds of ‘wait a minute…what the hell am I doing here?’ but as I had learned over the years, I kept moving towards what I thought might be an exit while I recalculated. I hadn’t fully planned what to do (damn…where’s that driver when you need him?) but I decided just to go to the temple. It would have been a safe bet to flag down a rickshaw and ask for the temple in any city I had been to so far. This time there were no touts and when I asked a driver how much he said forty at the same time I said fifty. Hehe. It was my first rickshaw and my only complaint is that I’m too tall and can’t see anything out the doors. Which is also kind of nice in a way, nobody can see me either.

This was an extra old monolithic temple, with a huuuuuuge nandi in the middle and a thousand of them atop the outer wall. I learned later that the nandi (bull) pulls Siva’s chariot and if you whisper prayers into his ear, he will tell them to Siva. Ummmm I knew I loved cows for a reason…They also pull carts filled with sticks and hay and wire and all sorts of other things to this day (at a remarkably slow pace that makes me say ‘beast of burden’ in my head each time I see one) everywhere I've been except the middle of the cities.

I had a bit of a hard time getting another rickshaw back into town (really missing that driver) but eventually a traffic policeman got me one. He thought I wanted to go to some town 85km away, but I assured him just into town would be fine….I intended to do a little shopping. And I mean a little – I just wanted to buy my dad a madras-print lungi that all the men not wearing slacks or long white dhoti had on. I also realized I hadn’t eaten yet (my appetite is not what it should be although the inevitable illness that everyone warned me of had not yet surfaced, so I’m not complaining) and I saw a First Class A/C Pure Veg Hotel across the street and down some. Problem was the across the street part. I had visions of being squashed between a rickshaw, a motorcycle, a cow and six bikes (being a country girl, sometimes I even struggle with crosswalks) but I waited and breathed and waited and breathed and eventually found a break in the traffic. I felt truly accomplished – and I even cut down the waiting time on the way back. Ahhh sweet success. And the restaurant you ask? Well, I had a great dosa, which is the important part. But there was no A/C, I don’t think it qualified as first class and apparently hotel means…cafeteria…I mean restaurant.

The shopping place recommended in my book didn’t sell lungis (they actually looked a little appalled when I asked, like you don’t want to buy embroidered sofa covers? You want to buy a loincloth?) so I decided to try a little test to fill up some time: taking the local bus rather than another rickshaw to the long distance bus station on the outskirts of town. Sort of working my way up to the real thing. I had heard a lot about them – sometimes people hang out the doorway, men sit on one side and women on the other, they are generally crazy. This seemed relatively tame though. My biggest concern was how to pay (that is the difficult part in every new transit system – ticket on the bus ticket off the bus you never know) and a guy just came to me and asked for money. How convenient. Although I sat next to a lady (following the rules) I have to say, sometimes I feel like a boy here. Indian women are so incredibly womanly, with their long elegant sarees and flowers in their braided hair. I was wearing green khakis and a mens button-up shirt and when combined with the fact that I was alone (I saw very few women alone), am fairly unwashed, taller than many of the men and have short hair…well, my femininity is suffering. I guess that is kind of the point though – I am attempting to minimize attention and I am often shocked that people still stare at me even in this rather plain and dirty state. I am quite pale I suppose. I made it to the bus station anyways, and I wandered a bit until I heard someone yelling ‘Madurai’ and I hopped on. Four hours. No A/C. No seat belts. No doors. Here we go.

Boredom sets in

Haha just joking. I can’t remember how I got on the subject, but it came to me that it is probably near impossible to get bored here. I might get tired of things like car horns, giggling school boys and very-near-curry-flavored breakfasts, but I certainly will not get bored. The level of (both social and economic) activity going on is mindboggling. People watching, always a favorite activity of mine (right up there with food in my travel motivations list) has taken on a whole new form here (and typically from inside some sort of vehicle or sitting on the ground – not a whole lot of quaint Euro-style cafes around). I think the vast number of people combined with a marketplace-oriented infrastructure create a highly-observable outdoor lifestyle.

There is something else though, something like a cultural multiplier (guess who just finished macroeconomics??). Whatever you get when you subtract out the place (natural and manmade) and the people (number, diversity, food, etc) to be left with a sort of mixed bag of sum-is-greater-than-the-parts attributes.  I’d credit these unknowables with the difference between, for example, Canada and the US, Chile and Argentina, or Switzerland and Germany. The latter of each pair has a somehow amplified culture from the former – more intensity that cannot be explained by the greater number of people (in Germany and the US) or different landscape (Argentina). I have my theories on this, but I will see if I can find something to read about it before I misinform you anymore…I think you have to be there to really get a feel for it and I haven’t spent enough time anywhere to exactly know.

But anyhow, I first wanted to come to India and Sri Lanka to see the place, or the tea actually. I grew up drinking tea with my mother and grandmother, and while living in Los Angeles, my sisters Hannah, Amara (when she visited) and I had taken to spending long afternoons in a tea shop. They have some 250 teas from all around the world and my favorite was a Darjeeling. Things started to fall into place after that…the Darjeeling Limited with three brothers on a train (although they are not in the right age order, they are us three girls to a T), the NY Times article about Sri Lanka, moving to Singapore…in parallel I was beginning to take an interest in the people as mentioned in an earlier post and rediscovering the religions I had dappled with via yoga over the years. The final push was the food. While I have always loved Indian food, a small stand in the canteen by my dorm took it to near-burrito status over the past few months. And when I’m not following my eyes, my stomach gets next pick.

Now, somehow, I am sitting in the middle of it all and the cultural part is more interesting than what I originally came for. Actually, I am more the south east of it all, but I would venture to say Tamil Nadu pulls the cultural center slightly in its direction. Vasanth took me on a local’s best-of tour through Chennai on Sunday and a driver arranged by Ram drove me outside the city to a few classic tourist sites. Many of the spots, like Marina beach, that we went to on Sunday were in my Lonely Planet, but not the brand new mall that just opened last week (they were still doing construction, while we were shopping, which was as interesting a sight as the miles of brightly colored cloth in the Saree and traditional clothing section of the department store). Nothing in the book could have facilitated me driving to dinner (I think I will come back some day when I can rent a car and drive around without worrying about Vasanth’s car – it was truly exhilarating). I would not have found a place to buy Indian whiskey (apparently no women have ever been in the bar behind the wine shop and I would be no exception). And I would have been far too shy to go through the Ashtalakshmi temple on my own, but we went through its winding, narrow maze-like corridors, praying to 8 different lady-gods. The walls were all made of stone, with years and years of brightly colored paint layered upon one another, making it look almost tie-dyed. The shrines are set into the walls and the small flames of ghee candles bounce around the otherwise dark boxes, illuminating flowers, silver trays holding colored kumkum powder or offerings and the shiny parts of statues millions of people have touched as they pass by. This is not the distant experience of a church or the silence of an ashram. It is loud – there are hundreds of people around and you can hear the city outside. It is hot – except for occasional curves in the corridors with openings for the wind to blow through. It is totally engrossing – you feel the stones on your bare feet, you smell what might be whole field of jasmine hiding somewhere in the walls, you see all walks of life worshiping as they have for thousands of years. Thousands of years! Unbelievable. Afterwards you sit outside for a few minutes, but I have been spending a lot of minutes to settle back down to the real world.

On Monday I went to a series of outdoor temples carved into huge granite rocks in the 7th century. I really wasn’t sure what to do at first, and I refused initially a man offering to be my tour guide. But he was persistent and I realized I would otherwise just be wandering around, somewhat aimlessly, and probably surrounded by touts, as my driver was not particularly interested in seeing the sights with me.

Turns out I made a fantastic choice, he told me about every little carving, answered my questions about this and that and helped me ward off the sales pitches for stone carvings, postcards and sea shells. He took me into the newer temple too, as I am still a bit nervous to go on my own. I am settling in though, first with friends to learn the ropes, then with a guide, next I will be off on my own before I meet Bjorn, Amara and Sam.

The last stop of the day I considered skipping, my book didn’t say much about it but that it was good for the kids. I went though, skeptical as I began to move through first an art gallery and into a garden. I found what seemed to be an empty house and when I peered in I realized this was one of those living history museums, a la Genesee Country Museum, which was my favorite destination when Grandma would take me out as a child.

The place was empty; free of hordes of school children (no children at all in fact) and all of the employees (who are the actual craftsmen and women) were just hanging out and chatting. It was just perfect for me (I needed some time without talking to strangers) and I went into all of the 16 houses, a few from each of the southern states. More of my questions about dress and eating and religion and environment and history were answered. All at my own pace. Actually, it was also about 100F/38C and in a long skirt and button up shirt I think it was a near religious experience brought on by the vast amount I sweated. Its like living in a fully landscaped, decorated and populated sauna.

Keepin it cool...

From anyone who wasn't either Indian or a huge hippie, speaking of this trip generally produced two comments: (1) it will be sooooo hot; (2) it will be sooooo crowded. Yah, yah, comes with the territory. The Indians and the hippies, however, gave much more elaborate advice. It was typically sprinkled with great stories and a few warnings that sloshed around in my head with visuals from The Darjeeling Limited and my parents' yoga books to create wild imaginations of what was to come.

Well, it has not been 48 hours, but I have yet to be disappointed. Except, perhaps, by the heat. By some amazing grace it has been raining at night, keeping it cool during the day. I'm sitting in my hotel room, at high noon, in pants and a long-sleeve shirt, without air con. Ok, that just sounds crazy. but I ain't lyin! To be fair, I should give credit to global warming rather than my ability to adjust to new climates (we all know temperatures other than 82F/28C are not my forte). Weather here is so predictable that people tell me the day I need to leave certain areas to avoid monsoon. The day! Actually, I read that the monsoon started a day late this year...see, the world is a changin my friends.

Anyways, I digress. I arrived on Friday night, it was a simple journey. None of the expected air transport surprises: delays, lines, friskings, removal of treasured beauty products from carry-ons, etc. I did come across a few new flying events though. Ever seen someone barefoot in an airport? Heard a stewardess yell at people for running off the plane? Have most of your fellow passengers carrying 5-10 bags as hand luggage? Best of all: kept your electronics on during takeoff AND landing? Yeah, I did all that.  Now, this is living. It was definitely one of the most pleasant transits I've had outside of business class.

I will say I was slightly overwhelmed when I stepped out of the airport. I had to go back in, make a phone call, then try again. But I made it, and all the way to my really nice little hotel. In that hour-long exposure to Chennai, I decided that anything can happen in India. That every story anybody had ever told me was probably true, that I might be able to do anything I want to while I am here and that I am constrained only by my own boundaries of discovery and energy and time. Lucky for me, none of these have been particularly limiting yet in my brief 25 year experience. I do have some acclimating to do, and I don't mean to the weather. Of anywhere I have been, India is by far the most different from home. I happen to have some help on this front, however.

In the past almost year (yes, I left almost a year ago...) I have met people from all over the world and a large minority of them have been from India. Ram, Nimesh, Sam, Rajeev, Sanju, Jay, Prasanna and Manik have been the sources of my inspiration, information, lodgings, transport, direction, cultural training and encouragement for this trip. I would probably be working in a cold and quiet office in Singapore if it wasn't for them...how's that for polarity? Actually, Corey gave me his Lonely Planet India, and Karen, Chris, Ted & Sherry suggested some stops for my itinerary, but nothing quite compares to the local experience. As a solo, Western female first-timer in India, I would have struggled a bit. But upon my arrival, Ram's friend Vasanth took me for a few beers and some Malai Kofta (hmm sounds like life in LA...oh wait the food cost $2.50 and there are goats on the street along the way).

The next morning we drove out to Puducherry with a few other friends of Ram's. Along with answering my deluge of questions about pretty much everything ever, whether they know it or not, they were showing me the ropes just by taking me around with them. Little things like honking the horn means 'I'm here' and is compulsory if there is another car/bike/rickshaw/bus/truck/person/cow/dog/etc on the same road. And let me tell you...that happens a LOT.

We walked around Auroville and went to an Ashram, which was a delightful retreat from the hussle bussle of this (comparatively tiny) town. In an attempt to get pizza, we ended up at this cool rooftop restaurant, where we had beers with our meal (which you can only do in hotels in Chennai) and sat next to the reserved local government table. It was a long drive back, past a salt farm (who knew!) and along the east coast of India, listening to A. R. Rahman (who did the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack and is from Chennai).

I ended up coming home and going to bed instead of going out on the town; the last six weeks plus wandering around outside all day had worn me out...and I had a big day of Chennai-touring to do in the morning.