One of the major pilgrimage sights in South India was going under renovations while I was passing through. A real beauty:
My entrance to the temple amounted to walking to pick up another person's band-aid en-route to Ganesh; where I concluded "...ahh yes, I've walked to the end of the continent to see you."
I was in the temple under five minutes, more interested in the scafolding.
Madurai could more or less have been a vacuum. I made it my sole objective to eat only off banana leaves and photograph this neon rail-side concrete wall:
Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu)
Rameswaram is a right hand limb of India that reaches out to Sri Lanka; as per an island. I went with intentions of touching the said country, but instead should have set my sights on tight-roping the train tracks hovering above the water line like this fine kids.
Beyond the town lies a sandbar sprinkled with monumentally skeletal brick works, indicative of the village occupying the space before a cyclone came along for tea in the sixties. At the end of this is the fallen bridge to Sri Lanka. Wait, nahi, nahi - just fucking sand forever.
Conclusively: the feeling of empowerment you get after walking 10 km on a sandbar into an oasis to return to six thatched huts that purvey water; is like this.
I wanted to drink the water, despite the frivolous parade towards the waves. Water to buy; Aquafina, Bisleri, Paras; forever and ever, all of it; my desire for satiation was akin to the relentless leech.
It was satiated, oh yes. I choose Bisleri, for the teal caps.
Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
The fourth largest city in India, and decisively the least resplendent.
The main railway station, Chennai Central. Not as charming as Egmore, but it housed one of the Foriegn Tourist Bureaus that I may never pass off again. A room to cope with all our indecisive traveling itineraries. "Kolkata, day after tomorrow." Sorted.
I dealt with an array of bureaucracy, though thankfully not with this guy. Post, rail and plane flights, oh my.
I felt compassion for this disheartening mishap. For consumer comfort, it should be noted that the man did not gather the remnants quite as scrupoulously as the man in Varanasi fishing his peanuts out of the sewer. No yolks reassembled into cracked shells.
How long ago it was that I thought India was on top of its sexually transmitted disease clinics due to the ubiquitous STD (State Telephone Dialing) signs. But now, in Chennai, I realize they really are:
Terms colloquially referred to in the west as "premature ejaculation" and "wet dreams" were poorly translated for the Joy Clinic from Tamil as "shortly sperms come out" and "sleeping time sperms release." Perhaps there is a chance for me in India as a (copy) writer.
By my last day I deduced I had walked the city dry, closing off with its oh-so charismatic beach/landfill site.
The most charming wallah in Chennai, definitively.
I was a tad sad to depart my room; with a DESK; but it was for Kolkata, so in consideration of the greater picture; there was no room to be fussed.
I still don't know what to do with Christian Indians.
To hauling it back over the last leg.
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