Divya and Arathi gave me my first taste of India. Their soft brown eyes and beautiful saris flashing through the halls of the ship and twisting in the ocean's breeze captivated many listless voyagers. My friends and I had the pleasure of extending our friendship to them, and the honor of receiving a warm smile in response. We sat around huge circular tables on the sixth deck, asking and wondering and listening, completely enthralled with their words, ideas, cultures, similarities, dreams, histories, families, music... We saw Monsoon Wedding and watched them dance and burned their cds and heard them laugh and argue. Who knows what they took away from us--I hope it was all lovely and peaceful.
When we docked in Chennai, Divya and Arathi took us to their sari shop, where we chose fabrics of cascading silk and sheer olive. Their driver drove us around to the skirt shop, the tailor, the sari accessories that were essential in this woman's world. We had curries and dosa and coconut chutney with naan, honeyed desserts and candied anise.
Vegetarians live like kings in India.
We met their parents, but their car found a flat tire in the streets of Chennai.
We saw so much... the beaches swept by tsunami waters, rickshaws stretching to infinity, pushy markets with groping darkness, the sun on a white bridge.
There was waste everywhere. I was speaking to Lang (my sociology professor) about it and he said that when western pre-packaged products, supplied by supermarkets and Wal-Marts and the fast food industry, etc... introduced themselves to India (and many other countries, as I would discover) the people accepted and loved and propagated the usage of plastics and papers and grocery bags, all these things which made life so much more 'convenient,' as they urbanized and industrialized and caught up to the us's of the world at lightning speed. Yet countries like India, which are the smartest and advancing the fastest, but yet still have ox-drawn carts on the roads with modern cars, are working to catch up on the things that go along with 'modernization.' So the people, who are used to very organic, biodegradable things, are used to eating a banana, and throwing the peel on the side of the road, to be chewed on by cows or just disappear into the grassy soil as compost. Now, with the introduction of things like tv dinners and applesauce in jars, someone will eat a Big Mac and throw it's 'peel' on the side of the road, to be joined by more trash and unwanted packaging and the cast-offs of a growing city.
But Chennai was a great place. I loved the fast streets, the British Boulevards and the bangles in the marketplaces. We had mochas with the girls and I smiled at the artwork on the walls and the photos we had taken, and the cool Chennai breeze led me back to the ship, the hub of this web of experience.
