More of my life in India

Trip Start May 05, 2006

Trip End Sep 29, 2006

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Flag of India Chennai, India
Tuesday, August 29, 2006

I finally finished the course- it was really tiring but an excellent experience altogether. The people were lovely after all, and we had nice dinner together on Wednesday night. When the course finished on Saturday afternoon I left for Mapalapurum, a town by the sea, to spend Saturday night and Sunday. I had ayurvedic massage, visited many temples, walked along the Bay of Bengal and had dinner with an Australian (in every occasion, an Australian fits somehow!).
On the way back I visited a complex of traditional villages where I saw many people practicing arts and using things I thought they were lost for ever (like the old iron with charcoal!). I had my hands decorated with henna designs. I was a bit depressed to see that people working in the silk industry (many of them children and old people) are in a state close to slavery, working all day every day, and many organizations are fighting to liberate at least the children and send them to school

Dancer

. I did not feel like buying any silk after that.
Now I returned to my 'routine'; working at the Cochrane center and the Biostatistics department, going to my Indian dance classes (I really like that!), having spicy dinners with other westerners that stay in the same complex with me (the bungalow provides food, so we all have it together), reading in the evenings in a pretty garden sited between jasmine bushes (so romantic!). I wear my saris and salvars, I drink delicious lemon juices with mint and I wake up at 6 am for early yoga sessions. I feel so nice liberated from most of the characteristics of the western lifestyle. One night we had a 'party', local students and the foreigners mixed up, was really good fun.
The tricycle from the campus to the city costs only one Euro, but I prefer taking the bus. It is so entertaining! Very old big and colorful buses, bouncing up and down in each hole of the dusty roads. Most have loud music (usually terribly high female voices singing Tamil songs), pictures of Hindi Gods (my favorite is Ganesh, he looks like an elephant) decorated with little flashing lamps (like those we put on Christmas trees) and flowers. The ticket collector has a whistle and blows it loudly into your ear to collect the money. The buses (and all other vehicles) spend more time blowing the horn than not blowing it, and they try to go trough motorbikes with five passengers, fathers giving bikies to three children (I will not accept complaints ever again about simple dinkies!!), people walking in the middle of the streets, cows and donkeys. Who needs extreme sports for excitement? Of course I enjoy it cause I don't have to do it everyday and the trip lasts only 15 minutes.
In India I smelled the worst and the best smells. No need to describe the worst. One of my favorite smells comes from the flower of the Frangipani tree, very intensive in the evening. There is a pretty garden next to my bungalow and I go there every evening.
Women buy jasmines garland (can be bought everywhere on the streets) and put them in their hair spreading a fine aroma in the bus and at work. They also use perfumed oils for their hair, especially coconut oil, which makes them look unclean and oily but smells good.
Tonight I am invited for dinner by one person from the course, Saturday I will go to Pondicheri, and Sunday to Monday I will spend the day with Swati (my dance teacher, we have become good friends).