A visitor’s view of Chennai and India

Chennai already has quite a few prominent expat blogs. I stumbled upon a Business Visitor’s blog recently. Mark was on a business trip for a short while and he has jotted down his observations about Chennai and India. Here are some excerpts from some of his blog posts. Luckily there are no elephants and snake charmers in their postings.

We saw our first cow on this trip waltzing lazily through the roads, and then we saw entire herds. The first stop we made was to Dakshina Chitra, which showed what a traditional Tamil Nadu village would have looked like for hundreds and hundreds of years before modern times. We watched two drummers and a pipe player show their playing talent while a man dressed as a peacock strutted for all of us to see. When he leaned down, picked up a necklace of flowers and then proceeded to drape them over my head, I learned the peacock had married me! (Marriage comes up again on a trip to India!)

On our way back to the city, we saw one family with two children all on one motorbike, then a family with five later! No helmets, no carseats, and no cares in the world. Today I felt I saw more of the rest of India, and how all of the towns and streets appear, at least in Southern India. I felt I was in an ancient land that had a vast, yet slow advancing history. It was also very surreal to look out on the very seas that were a part of the Sunami just last year. I don't believe we were in a heavily damaged area, but the scene was most likely very similar to thousands of other Sunday mornings on the Bay of Bengal last Dec. 26.

We then made it over to the Spencer's Plaza, another huge hulking concrete indoor structure holding hundreds of small stores on three floors. It really is a glorified flea market but in a mall setting. The amount of people was unbelievable, yet you got around right away to where you wanted to go without any trouble.

Geethapriya Tmu is dressed in the traditional Sari that women in India wear for more formal events. Today is her father in law's birthday and she chose to dress up to observe the special day. We learned from Anusha that Friday is a special day for many of the Indian citizens and a lot of times the women will dress up more and place flowers in their hair to set the day apart.

The obsession of our India adventure is fast becoming the status of the twist caps on the water bottles!!! We are still trying to stick to the directions we have been given to drink no tap water and only use bottled water even for brushing our teeth. The paranoia set in when we learned sometimes the bottles are just filled up again and the top replaced by the hotel staff. (ask Donna Slatkin more about that) Thelma has spent many moments scrutinizing the little plastic connections between the cap and ring to make sure they are brand new and not refills. So far we are all very healthy and sleeping through the night for the most part.