Chennai, Our First Taste of India

Notwithstanding the lovely Indian visa already in my passport, the purser's office gave us an e-Landing card, we had to fill out an Arrival Card and take it all with us for the face-to-face immigration process.  Even though David and I didn't have an excursion until 2:30 pm, we had to get off the ship to go through immigration before 10:00 am.  It didn't turn out to be as bad as we expected and only took about 5 minutes.  On the way, we were serenaded with traditional music by this band.  

When we got on the bus in the afternoon, there were three policeman who wanted to look at our e-Landing Card again.  When we came back to the port at the end of the excursion, another uniformed man climbed onto the bus to ask how many passengers were aboard.  We saw brown-shirted police men and women in bands of 6-10 every few blocks around town.  In one of our lectures or port talks, someone joked that with a billion people, everyone has to have a job, so they just create levels of bureaucracy.  

Chennai is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and has a population of over 7 million.  It was formerly know as Madras--a name familiar to me from the plaid shirts popular when I was growing up.  The dyes used were vegetable dye which wasn't color fast and the colors bled a little more each time you washed it.  We saw that same kind of plaid today on a "lungi" (this was a knee-length sarong) worn by a man.

Our guide told us that when the British began their colonization of India it started in Chennai in 1640.  Three centuries later it was the birthplace of nationalism and the Indian National Congress.

 Part of our excursion included a ride in an auto-rickshaw, sometimes called a tuk-tuk, like the one in the picture.  There is room for two in the back and the driver in the front.  Our driver took us for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!  Traffic, even on a Sunday, was pretty crazy, and the motorbikes and rickshaw lane was jam packed.  Our driver kept trying to up-sell us and let him take us on a longer tour independent of the rest of the herd.  He kept looking at me in his rear-view mirror to make sure I understood him and to see if I would agree--consequently, when the rickshaw in front of us stopped, he didn't see it until there were just three inches left between us.
Our route took us along 13 km. Marina Beach--purportedly the second longest on earth.  Not only is the beach very long, it is much wider than most beaches I have seen.  In the 2004 tsunami, 206 people were swept off the beach.

 There are about 18 statues along the beach promenade.  This is Mahatma Gandhi in his "march to Dandi" stride.  (The Dandi March was an important act of civil disobedience by Gandhi and his followers involving a 240 mile march over 10 days to protest the British tax on making salt from the sea.  This act later influenced Martin Luther King in his campaign of non-violent resistance.)

 As we rode inland and away from the more developed part of town, we began to see more livestock on the neighborhood streets.  When some of our passengers asked about them, our guide explained that they all have owners who just let them out to "graze" in the morning and the cows find their way home at night. There is no proper feed for cattle so they graze on the piles of garbage.

 Our guide also told us that she had wanted to hire all women auto rickshaw drivers for our tour, but because of the Easter holiday, she had to hire some male drivers too.  These women were proud of their jobs.

It seemed to me that no matter how humble a woman's job, she was still dressed in a vibrantly colored sari.  I think our western uniform of jeans and a T-shirt looks pretty shabby in comparison.

I think this woman was either begging, or scrounging.  She let me take her picture, then wanted to see it.  

This woman was happily talking on her cell phone while seated behind her wares.

 Fortunately, the cattle were pretty docile and slow moving.

 While I was in the Hindu temple, our tuk-tuk driver took David on another ride to the beach, and a fishing colony.  On the way back, he stopped to kiss his favorite cow and suggested that David might want to do the same--he passed.

 This was our guide, Rebecca.  When asked about the caste system, she answered that if the caste system were done away with in India, the society as a whole would crumble.  She was college educated and seemed pretty forward thinking, but I guess that's how deeply engrained this system continues to be.  She has two teen-aged children from an arranged marriage that she says was just what was expected at the time.  Nowadays, the young people are less inclined to allow their parents to choose their partner.

Those of us who were willing took off our shoes to enter the Parthasarathy Hindu Temple.  It was quite small and we weren't allowed to enter the shrine because we weren't Hindu.  Photography was prohibited.  The temples are all closed from 12:30-4:00 pm because the heat of the afternoon sun makes the surface of the floors so hot they will burn your feet.  The three outer courtyard areas where we walked had very little ornamentation.  We saw some of the Brahmin high priests working and were told there were 70 who supported the activities of the temple.  This temple was dedicated to Vishnu, one of the three Hindu gods.  I had just gotten to understand a half dozen of the elements of the buddhist temples and now I'm back at square one in knowing anything about this religion.  This photo is of the gopuram or gateway.  I assume each one of these groups of figures tells a story, but I'm clueless about any of it.  It's intriguing, nonetheless.

After just a 3 hour first taste of India, I'm at a loss for a way to wrap my mind around what I saw.  I knew it would be overwhelming.  It was that and sad, and beautiful all at the same time.  And it was hot--did I mention?  It was 93 degrees F and 83% humidity.  As fascinating as the ports of call have been, it is such a relief to get back to the ship's air conditioning.  Call me a wimp, but I have a hard time when the sweat runs into my eyes and the stinging makes it so I can't see.  We have two sea days to reach the Indian city of Cochin.