Today we had a leisurely morning to sleep in and a huge breakfast buffet from which to choose. We decided to explore the hotel a bit, and ruled out the rooftop pool when we saw how many pigeons were wading along the edge. But the gym had some serviceable equipment, so we spent some time there.
We were on an elevator going down when it stopped at another floor and two men got on, one Western and one Indian. We did a double take when we saw the Indian man. It was Sujay, our tour leader from the northern India trip we did three years ago! We doubt he remembered us, but he faked it well. We only know one person out of a population of a billion in India, and we met him in an elevator in Chennai.
Late morning we had our first group meeting, and met the other 8 people who hadn’t been with us in Sri Lanka. Several of them had just finished the north India trip we had been on three years ago, and continued directly to this one. Others have just arrived from the U.S. All seem to be normal, middle class retirees. It should be a good group, although the OAT policy of not charging an extra fee for single travelers tends to make these groups a bit unbalanced: four couples and seven single women, or four men to eleven women.
After the meeting we all went to lunch at a restaurant operated by a non-profit organization that helps women who have fled domestic abuse. The women learn to cook Western-style food in order to be able to get jobs in the tourist industry. The food was very good, but it wasn’t Indian.
We returned to the hotel and our tour leader took us on a walk around the neighborhood. There is more around than what we saw on our own the previous evening, but one has to walk a bit farther than we ventured in the dark. It seems a typical neighborhood in a typical Asian city, with a mixture of street merchants and modern shopping centers.
We walked on into an area that was a bit less up and coming. People were living in rather cramped mud brick row houses with tin roofs. The business was disassembling wrecked cars to salvage the parts. This was being done, primarily, right out on the street. It was sort of like families living in an auto salvage yard.
There was then an afternoon break at the hotel. This part of the trip is designed for those still suffering jet lag, if they have just arrived. After nap time was over, we got back onto the bus for a trip down to the old center of Chennai. There’s not much left of the old, but a few buildings still date back to the colonial period of the late 19th or early 20th centuries.
We drove along a wide sand beach that extends for miles. Swimming isn’t good here — the water is rough most of the time — but many people use the beach as a giant park. It’s a place for families to go, friends to meet, people to go.
Farther down the beach things changed. The shore was lined with hundreds of tiny, long and narrow, brightly painted fishing boats that had been dragged up on land. The sand was littered trash, nets, tool shacks, and other stuff at least 50 yards back.
Along the road, women sat at low tables, selling fish, squid, prawns, and other catch of the day. As it was late afternoon, probably two-thirds of the tables had closed up shop already. Those still selling had the odor of fish that wasn’t quite so fresh anymore after sitting out in the afternoon sun.
Across the road were fairly new 5-story apartment buildings. These were not luxury suites, but simple concrete walls in which fishing families were obviously living close to the edge of destitution. These were tsunami projects — dwellings hastily erected by the government in 2005 for those left homeless by the Christmas tsunami of 2004.
As in Sri Lanka, here too, time is measured as before the tsunami or after. Thousands died here — or simply disappeared, buried in mud and rubble or washed out to sea and never seen again.
The bus drove us on just a few blocks to “Santhome” (pronounced “San Tom”), which is a large Roman Catholic church with a tall spire. Legend has it that the Apostle Thomas (“The Doubter”) had traveled from Israel all the way to India, spreading the Gospel and winning converts by performing healings and other miracles.
The claim is that after touring south along the entire west coast of the Indian sub-continent, he rounded the Cape and started north along the eastern coast until meeting martyrdom in what is now Chennai.
The church is pretty good sized — probably seating 600 or more — but rather simple in design and ornamentation. A unique feature is a statue of the Risen Christ over the altar, standing on a lotus blossom, just as the Buddha or a Hindu god would typically be depicted in this culture. St. Thomas’s tomb is supposedly here, and a reliquary supposedly holding a bone fragment is available for veneration.
At the time of our arrival, a wedding had just concluded. Photos were being taken, so the bride and groom and their family members were all still around, as we were taking our photos, too. A young man in a suit and tie came up behind us — the best man and groom’s younger brother — and he wanted all of us in the tour group to go up and congratulate the couple, and to have our picture taken with them. The more we declined, the more he insisted.
Only about five of us in the group were willing to do so. I figured that, since we crashed their wedding, the least we could do was go up, shake hands, and wish them well. Turns out they both live and work in the U.S. and came back home for this wedding, that had been arranged for them by their parents. Arranged marriages are still common here.
No evening meal was scheduled for tonight, but our tour director offered to take any of us who wished to go to a local restaurant for a typical vegetarian meal. The place was only a block down the street, but on the other side — crossing a street here is the tricky part! Six of us partook, and four were brave enough to order what the guide recommended: A wonderfully spicy masala dosa. Cost for each of us was less than $3 US.
The only silverware was the spoons in some of the sauce bowls, and several people seized those. But I decided to go native and eat as the locals do. The grease comes off your hand fairly well with a good napkin after eating with your fingers.
We were on an elevator going down when it stopped at another floor and two men got on, one Western and one Indian. We did a double take when we saw the Indian man. It was Sujay, our tour leader from the northern India trip we did three years ago! We doubt he remembered us, but he faked it well. We only know one person out of a population of a billion in India, and we met him in an elevator in Chennai.
Late morning we had our first group meeting, and met the other 8 people who hadn’t been with us in Sri Lanka. Several of them had just finished the north India trip we had been on three years ago, and continued directly to this one. Others have just arrived from the U.S. All seem to be normal, middle class retirees. It should be a good group, although the OAT policy of not charging an extra fee for single travelers tends to make these groups a bit unbalanced: four couples and seven single women, or four men to eleven women.
After the meeting we all went to lunch at a restaurant operated by a non-profit organization that helps women who have fled domestic abuse. The women learn to cook Western-style food in order to be able to get jobs in the tourist industry. The food was very good, but it wasn’t Indian.
We drove along a wide sand beach that extends for miles. Swimming isn’t good here — the water is rough most of the time — but many people use the beach as a giant park. It’s a place for families to go, friends to meet, people to go.
Farther down the beach things changed. The shore was lined with hundreds of tiny, long and narrow, brightly painted fishing boats that had been dragged up on land. The sand was littered trash, nets, tool shacks, and other stuff at least 50 yards back.
Across the road were fairly new 5-story apartment buildings. These were not luxury suites, but simple concrete walls in which fishing families were obviously living close to the edge of destitution. These were tsunami projects — dwellings hastily erected by the government in 2005 for those left homeless by the Christmas tsunami of 2004.
 |
| Fishermen playing cards near their boats |
The church is pretty good sized — probably seating 600 or more — but rather simple in design and ornamentation. A unique feature is a statue of the Risen Christ over the altar, standing on a lotus blossom, just as the Buddha or a Hindu god would typically be depicted in this culture. St. Thomas’s tomb is supposedly here, and a reliquary supposedly holding a bone fragment is available for veneration.
Only about five of us in the group were willing to do so. I figured that, since we crashed their wedding, the least we could do was go up, shake hands, and wish them well. Turns out they both live and work in the U.S. and came back home for this wedding, that had been arranged for them by their parents. Arranged marriages are still common here.
No evening meal was scheduled for tonight, but our tour director offered to take any of us who wished to go to a local restaurant for a typical vegetarian meal. The place was only a block down the street, but on the other side — crossing a street here is the tricky part! Six of us partook, and four were brave enough to order what the guide recommended: A wonderfully spicy masala dosa. Cost for each of us was less than $3 US.
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