A rooftop New Year in the pouring rain!

Trip Start Dec 05, 2004
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Trip End Jan 17, 2005


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Friday, December 31, 2004

Getting up to a cool room and hot showers was delicious! The travel desk man greeted me as I stepped out of the lift as if by magic knowing that I was wanting to book a driver/car for the following day - they are seriously telepathic in this hotel! We agreed on a deal for our bit of luxury for 4 days being chauffered around! Deal done, we went off to shop, however we didn't get past the corner of the road before a tailor kidnapped us to his fabric shop (quite a small one down a little alleyway) and we spent the next 4 hours getting measured up for rather a lot of outfits (mostly in raw silk plus a business suit for me). Then another guy carted us off (under the pretence of a rooftop view of the temple from his shop) and we oohed and aahed over the huge pieces of lovely furniture he had in his Kashmiri shop (all the emporiums are owned by Kashmiris across all of India and they are seriously exploitative)! We left to grab a late lunch in the Supreme, which falls into my top ten curries list (I had a kind of deep fried vegetable ball thing in a very spicy tomato sauce) Bedtime for the gods at the Sri Meenakshi temple
Bedtime for the gods at the Sri Meenakshi temple
 . We went up to the roof restaurant for a cup of tea and met an English couple who gave us some good tips about where to go in our next destinations as they were working in reverse. Then Tara and Julian, who we hadn't seen since the previous night, arrived, which was very fortuitous and we agreed to meet up later to spend New Year's Eve together.

After a little rest, we met them again in the evening and got rather precarious cycle rickshaws down to the famous Sri Meenakshi temple. The temple was all lit up and leaving our shoes at the gate, we walked 400 meters round the inner wall to the South gate and waited for an image of Sundareswarar (another name for Siva) to be carried in a rather bizare procession in a silver coach to be put to bed next to his wife, the god Meenakshi. It was absolutely fascinating! Worshippers milled around the carriage and touched the spot where oil had been poured by the priest. We then went back to our hotel and had dinner up on the rooftop. Most hotels had cancelled New Year celebrations - as was the case across many public places in Tamil Nadu in memory of the people who suffered the tsunami. So it was a toned down affair, which seemed just right. Unfortunately, in the intense heat, it started to pour down with rain, so we had to move under the covering and it became even more humid. At midnight, the chefs gathered round a huge 2005 cake they had concocted and the small group of Indian people and ourselves counted in midnight and the chefs insisted that I cut the cake. A very rich businessman (also very loud, uncouth and drunk) asked us to join him and he seemed to direct all his attentions to me, whilst his friend, a well known architect from the region, tried to calm him down! We made our excuses as quickly as possible and headed back our room, politely declining his invitation to lunch at his house the next day!
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