India, Madras (now Channai).

The airport was a perfect introduction to India, a portent of things to come. Dirty toilets, people sleeping on everything, filthy floors, and no one to give correct information. Ask ten people the same question, then take the majority opinion for the wrong answer.

The city train from the airport was an old hulk of yellow metal with barred windows and full of quiet people who were gazing out into the beginning of a hazy day. Something felt inevitable. It was like a prison car except that there were no doors.

We found our way to the road that had a number of possible places to stay. Our presence elicited a lot of activity from the beggars and touts. We tried every place on the street and did not find a room, probably because a tout could not be ditched. We finally gave in to him, for sleep was that important at this point. The rooming house had an elevator, unusual, and as the most uninspired, dirty, hot, mosquito filled room that could be imagined, except for someplace one could imagine taking a lady of the evening to. We slept for a few hours, then checked out, bound for the place that feels right.

Two blocks away and a world away. Nothing extremely nice, except that it had the charm. The charm is always what a traveler should look for in a place to stay. The hotel was quaint with a large dusty front yard and a wall surrounding it. We were given one of the two nicest suites that were in the front and opened onto a common porch. It had a sitting room, a bedroom and bathroom. The bed was situated next to a window. I felt so energized there watching shadows of crows fly across the dust and hearing the foreign sounds of the city.

I find myself in a dream and like a wide-eyed child absorbing all that passes. The intensity of harsh conditions and the acceptance of them. Mouth agape, mind being constantly turned upside down as familiar aspects of life present themselves, but not in the usual context and what at times seems some parallel life. It's a very odd feeling to have your first cow pass by on the city sidewalk as nonchalantly as any commuter.

Dust, dust and horns (cow and bus) and piss and shit and red splotches. Beggars lying in piss and shit and red splotches. They are a living dead tonight and every night, moaning, mumbling skeletal shadows, nails plucking at the back of my arm. The smell of sewage leaks through heavy clouds of incense used like a Parisian whore's perfume.

Madras is harsh. There are no gentle songbirds to be seen in this city, only crows, brazen and black, flying away with ominous shadows and course caws...Alfred Hitchcock would have loved it here. Sidewalk garbage cans are grocery stores to these crows as well as cows, people, goats and rats.

This was my first impression. It has been slightly tempered.

An area of Madras called Georgetown was once an elite English section of town. It is now a teeming Indian market. The streets are very narrow and crowded with people and animals. Each alley is home to a certain kind of shop, ie. stationers, wedding supplies, saris, vegetables and fruits. Ox carts take up the entire street, squeezing people against the buildings in order to pass. The vegetable lanes are more abundantly filled with animals who feast on layers of outer cabbage leaves and other throwaway edibles.

It is difficult to see what sari fabric looks like from the fold only, as it sits on a shelf on top of, on the bottom of and surrounded by thousands more pieces of fabric similar to it, but not the same. A slightly different pattern, a slightly different color. This is, I think, the point. It takes many people to bring out the saris, unroll them and put them neatly back. Sometimes, thirty different rolls of fabric will be brought out for the sale of one.

On the way home every day we would eat at a place a few blocks from the hotel. It made incredibly good thali and was usually frequented only by the locals - one way to find great restaurants. The typical South Indian meal is served on a banana leaf - all you can eat rice surrounded by spicy dals, soups (rasam), vegetables and pickle for about 50 cents U.S. There is always at least one wash basin in a restaurant. In order to be both clean and polite before eating, the hands must be washed. The food is eaten with the right hand only and it is essential to wash up after eating. Luckily, no amount of cleaning takes the lingering scent of Indian food off the fingers. This restaurant was special because the seats were next to open windows and the very active street life could be watched from either the first or second floor. It occasionally became very active inside also. The punctual and attentive waters were dressed in white uniforms which could have been boiled for soup. One night, a few took it upon themselves to get into a brawl, Indian style. Nobody got hurt as fists just flew into space.

A young boy outside the restaurant had a paan stall. He wrapped betel nut, lime powder, spices and tobacco in a betel leaf, and sometimes, that special substance - opium, I think - he would pop into the leaf with a wide-eyed, sensuous roll of his eyes. So good we added red blotches to the pavement all the way home. In amongst the red blotches we saw a roll of bills that someone must have dropped after paying for the food or the paan. It came to about 100 rupees. We gave it away on the way home, a way filled with the skeletal living dead, women and children so thin that they almost floated down the dark road.

Traditional Indian dance seemed hard to find here. An arts school on the outer reaches of Madras was holding a late night dance performance. The Bharata Natyum is almost as difficult to describe as India itself. It’s heavy footed rhythm belays the graceful and intricate movements of the arms. The head at times moves independently from the still body and the eyes, circling in opposing direction to the head, creates an even different perspective, as the bodily pieces become more detached from each other they fit together in an exquisite whole. The anklet bells worn by dancers are part of the music and their rhythm seems as essential as the tabla and stringed instruments.

We had a difficult time finding a Bajaj after the show, as ours had left without us. There were some lights, blocks down the street, so we headed for them and found a vehicle. After a while, my companion asked if I knew where we were. I replied, “Yes, purgatory”. We were careening down narrow, curving streets that occasionally went through populated areas. I could feel the wind in my hair and also smelled the strong scent of alcohol coming from the drivers breath. An accident seemed eminent. I don’t know what made me not tell him to slow down, but somehow decided to pretend that I was on a roller-coaster ride. The only time he slowed down was when cow and vehicle almost became Beef ala Bajaj.

The next morning as we were visiting a good bookstore, a man came up to us and inquired about Chicago Zip Codes. He had in his hands an atlas opened to the city. He was in the data entry business and he had put out feelers to companies in Chicago, but possibly used the wrong zip codes on the letters. He had a crew of Indian workers able to work for much less than an American office space would cost. (Back in 1994, this guy was ahead of the times.) He was an ex-military officer who kept many of his perks. He invited us to his club for lunch. What an unusual invitation to accept from us. In the middle of Madras’ squaller there was lush, green foliage lining the driveway, then a large colonial structure appeared. Foliage in this dry, dusty place!!! How out of place, and to make it feel stranger, we had to walk blocks and blocks to get two Bajaj at a certain place because it was a few rupees cheaper. Inside the club, however, he was high class. We were shown the reading room and library, the tennis courts, the cricket field that doubled as an occasional outdoor movie theater, and the swimming pool before finally being seated in the main diningroom. There was a colonial formality of the members and a servility of the waiters that made us feel not only as if we had entered a place where time stood still, but also uncomfortable. Waiters hovered around the table while he tried to decide what to order. He kept telling us that the meat was very good here and that the food may be too spicy. We assured him that we did not need meat and that the spicing would be fine.

Slowly sipping on cold beer while waiting for lunch, I could not help feeling that I was in an old movie. A laziness crept in on me and an almost perverse sensuousness brought on by arched doorways open to the gardens and greens, gleaming tiled floor, and slow moving ceiling fans that cooled the room with a gentle breeze. This was so utterly different that the Madras outside of the club’s gates. All this luxury compared to all that misery. The haves and the have nots. Crows. Crows are not class conscious. They flew in under the arches, landed on the ceiling fans, took a few turns, then flew back out. “Caaw.”

The night breeze came to purify Madras’ dust laden air and on the patio we looked at wonder at a brass pendulum hanging low in the sky. Our neighbors, the elderly couple from Assam, were also gazing on the bright hole in the black night.

They were kind and gentle souls, and such the philosopher he was. He was a Senior Advocate and his English was remarkable in extent but his pronunciation was unintelligible. His robust and younger wife became translator and we had a long talk about finding the core, the contentment within oneself. The why and wherefore of our travels, and for what reason we could not be content with home and had to come here, to India. “Why are you not satisfied to stay in one place?” “Where did you go this evening?” “To the Bhrata Natyum.” “Why do you like Indian dance.” Why, why, why, why? Why questions are hard to answer when you are completely overwhelmed by a place.

Ma and Pa stood on the balcony the next day, waving and wishing us a good trip to Mahabalipuram. I felt like we were leaving home, moreso than when we left home a month ago with on one to send us off. At the bus station, we were immediately approached by a cheeky child who wished to carry both our packs. We tried to discourage him because it was so hard to imagine that this skinny youngster could carry the weight. He was bristling with overconfidence, so we let him. He struggled under the load, tittered, and one bag fell from atop his head. Embarrassed but undaunted, he proceeded to the correct bus, hired his own crew to find and save our seats, and introduced us to his many acquaintances who sold pens, flowers, and assorted trinkets. I wonder if this boy, years later, now owns his own company.

It was a dry, incredibly dusty trip. The bus did not take a main road, but went down the coast on dirt roads and took shortcuts through now dry swamps past algae covered swamps.

Mahabalipuram was actually a depressing place. Very touristy and nary a good thali to be had. We are getting paranoid that everyone who says something to us wants something from us. Probably not paranoid. I hate this place...except...the Shore Temples, the Five Rathas complex (so small and serious and straightforward, long shadows undulating across the sands), the stone carving town, and the view to the sea from enormous rocks that jut up from the flat, dry plain.

We rented bikes, the ubiquitous, black, one-speed workhorse, the lifesaver of India. On the ride to a small town further inland, our first illusion was that the terrain was flat and that the weather was not unbearable. As time went on, that illusion faded to hills and dust and hot, bright, white-hot heat.

People want things. People want everything. Hindu priests even want as much as they can get here. This was our first and worst experience of what could happen in a temple. Shoes are always left at the gates of the temple. We left ours for the same nominal sum that everyone else had. The price was agreed upon. We left our bicycles with a person to watch and the price was agreed upon. We walked into the temple. A priest came to greet us after a few minutes and asked if we wanted to go into the inner sanctum. I said no thank-you but my companion wanted to follow. I knew what would follow. The priest did all the blessings, anointed us with colored ash and gave us a flower. For this he wanted an outrageous sum. My companion gave him less than that, but more than seemed reasonable. The priest complained about getting enough for his family and the pens his children needed. This from a priest raising money for the temple? I felt an “Ugly American” situation arising. My companion took the bill from the plate and left a very small amount of money saying, “You talk of religion? This is religion. Here.” We left.

On the way back, school was getting out and children were everywhere on the country dirt roads. They tried to teach numbers in Tamil while running after my bike and attempting to jump on the back. One was dexterous enough to catch me and ride for a few minutes. When he got off, he asked for 5 rupees. I stopped and asked him for 10, for giving him a ride (just kidding, of course).

Chidambaram...back to India. Dirty and dusty, but alive, vibrant and rich in culture. It is a pilgrimage town and the dust flies until late at night. Streets were crowded with ox carts, bicycles, cows, pigs, dogs, people and the usual homicidal fleet of busses steered by men with dark, crazed looks in their eyes. When one of those careened down the dirt streets, everyone would scatter, running not just to escape sudden death, but the wake of dust that would coat a person top to bottom, as it has everything else in the town. The place was always in a state of becoming one color.

The lights go off every day and/or night at some point and for however long it takes to get things back on line. One night when this occurred, we were wandering in the back streets of a very lively market that was sheltered by high, thatched roofs spanning alley ways. Cushioned hoof steps in the dust, soft, sweet breath of a cow under the indigo sky. A few moments later the small generators started up, oil lamps were lit and under this warm light were the gold sellers and the rising smell of incense and shit. Back in the dream world smells after Mahabalipuram. Smoke, dirt, dung and good food again.

We visited the Nataraja Temple two times. Once in the day and once at night for the Puja ceremony. In the morning we walked around the outer temple complex, our shoes left with the keeper of shoes. The expansive courtyards were of stone, hot from the sun. In the center was a tank where pilgrims purified their bodies and fed the teeming fish. Barefoot...I used to love this sensation as a child and still do. The feeling of things underfoot, whether it be stones or manure was so entrancing. My feet, feeling. A coolness came from the thousand pillared hall. The heat from the sun and from countless numbers of dancing Siva carvings.

A priest asked if we would like to enter the temple but informed us that we could not bring cameras inside. My companion entered as I stayed outside, sitting on the stones and leaning against one of the pillars. A cow came up to me and exhaled its moist, fragrant breath. I scratched it between the horns for a while, in that special place I cow loves to be scratched. It looked quite forlorn as I got up to leave. Later in the evening when we came back to the temple, the stones were still comfortingly warm, similar to cow’s breath. A gold glow spread out of the temple entrance, vanishing with a Goyaesque elimination of color into the black night. Protective and womb like, the inside of the temple was bathed in florescent bulbs and warm lantern light, the thick stone walls silencing all but what was within the temple.

The Nataraja Temple was so massively built that it seemed capable of holding up the earth itself. Crowds of Hindus were surrounding and entering the inner sanctum where we were not permitted to go. Wildly colored streams of gauzy clothes flowed through gaudy neon lighting to the gilded room. People then began to gather on the right side of the sanctum. A bier carrying an imprint of Siva’s feet was suddenly carried in. A band followed, then the highly excited crowd joined in the procession that began around the outermost wall of the inner temple. Flames, smoke, incense, drums echoing off the walls as the sound of flutes flowed sinuously with the smoke around the pillars. I felt a part of something I did not understand the specifics of, but understood in pure feeling. While walking barefoot on stone through the darkness to the pound of the drums, following the light from the torches, feet touching the same stones as worshipers tread upon thousands of years ago, the feeling of history as a thread that we are all attached to, all a part of, was overwhelming.

At each turn, the procession would stop to allow the music and bier to move around the corners. Shrines lined the hallways, recessed in the wall or contained in their own small rooms; some lit with neon lights and all were covered in oil, flowers and brightly colored powders. Each person had a place special to them in this world within a world and they would leave the crowd to spend a few minutes paying homage to a deity. The procession ended at the room where Siva would be let off at Parvati’s bedroom. Hands raised and bodies swaying, the congregation gathered in the widened hallway in front of the room. The sacred objects were anointed, the torch waved in circles in front of the door, fire and water created spitting sounds as Siva and Parvarti were reunited. I left, drained and exhausted, as if every part of my being were left behind in the temple. Like waking up from a vivid dream.

The dreams that night were not necessarily of the temple but of the rhythms, the sounds, the patterns and paths of the temple. Waking up from this dream, I felt I had been walking the the temple all night.

Walking along the streets of India, there is a growing sense of consciousness of everything around you. Hearing sounds and knowing immediately which direction they are coming from or feeling that a vehicle is coming before it is near you, knowing to move over without even looking around.

The trip by train to Madurai took us to a plain reminiscent of the Australian outback. A worn away, dusty-red landscape, outcrops of rocks, and just before arriving the train passed a long, thin mountain range of stones.

The first step out of the train station presented a whole new look at how diligently touts operate. We knew what hotel we wanted to go to but a tout approached and stuck. On and on and on he went, talking about his hotel down the street. He used every cliché toutism in the world. We entered a hotel right before his and found it was full, called another and began to walk towards that one. Mr. Patience was still out there, waiting on the street, his territory. After screaming at him, he left.

He was just the mild introduction. A “tailor”, decided that we were his paycheck that day. He latched on like a fly on a dung pile and followed us for about four or five hours as we went to the train station, the post office, a bookstore and a restaurant. Networking....a trishaw driver picked us up to go to the bookstore. Mr. Patience 2 ran beside the trishaw and it became apparent that he knew the driver. We gave this tout no encouragement whatsoever, in fact, after many polite responses to his offer of taking us to his “shop”, we began to get very perturbed and showed it. We did want to stop at the tailor’s market that day because it would take a day or two to get something made. He tailed us there and showed us “his machine”. I doubt it, he would have been working it as everyone else was.

We had a few articles of clothing made at the tailor’s market as a result of our own inspection of the goods marketed. He saw us the next day and asked if we had something made yet. We said “yes”, and he asked where. We told him the place, which was not his shop and he became angry, spit in our direction and told us that we had wasted half his day yesterday. This kind of experience would occur almost every day of the entire stay in India, at least in the larger cities. Now I don’t feel good about this. I know people need money, but it just tends to be a very irritating to have a hustler on your ass all day. Back to feeling like the Ugly American.

Madurai is a vibrant city. Alive, moving and rhythmic. The hotel was one half block away from the temple complex. From the rooftop there is an incredible view of the temple, city and surrounding hills. In one direction there is a touch of Arabia from the more Mogul looking architecture, the flat plain beyond dotted with scarce vegetation, isolated hills and the pinkish-orange glow of the dusty air at sunset. In the other direction, the large Hindu temple. The temple gopurams were being renovated and were covered with bamboo scaffolding and palm thatch used to shade the workers. A disappointment in a way, but interestingly, it had become a large bird house.

Each morning the temple elephant is walked from his home to the inner courtyard of the temple complex. We saw him waiting for his keeper in the street outside a chai shop. His duty inside the temple is to take a rupee from people with his trunk, deposit it in a container, the touch the person on the head. The elephant gracefully patted the heads of the little girls in front of me. The 5’9” me was smacked on the side of the head.

The major temple cities are laid out with a temple in the center and four streets in a square surrounding it - usually called N. Car, W. Car, S. Car, and E Car Streets. Several times a day the priests parade around the temple on these streets. From afar, a distant sound of drums, bells, flutes and chants can be heard approaching then retreating. At first I thought that this was occurring more times than it actually did because a man who cooked on the sidewalk outside the hotel was rhythmically chopping food in a GIANT wok and was just as good as any temple drummer.

From Madurai, we first had to take a very early morning bus to a town 20k or so to the south to get to the train that went to Siva Nilayam. The more incense, flowers, and blinking lights around images of gods that the driver surrounds himself in, the more he proves to need them. On this particular bus, prior to departure, a man walked down the isle with a plateful of smoking coals and incense and would wave it in peoples faces for a small fee. We thought it wise to take this precaution.

Miraculously, the bus got to the train station, and not amazingly, quite early. Nothing in the town was open to eat breakfast in yet, so we ate at the Tiffan Room in the station. This was just opening up as we looked at the menu, a large blackboard posted with prices and at the top, a license and the proprietor's name. At that moment a man came out with offerings to the license and menu and to a prosperous life. He prayed in front of it and for a moment the menu was unreadable, blanked out by a brief cloud of smoke.

A locust’s metallic din. Chai, Chai, Chai, Chaiiiii, Chai, Chai coming from a skinny person selling tea in throwaway earthenware cups. Chug Chug Who Whoo Whooooooo Chai Chai Chaiiii Kachug Kachug Kachug Who Whooo Chai Chaiii Chaiiiiiii. Lazily a hand reaches out the window for a cup.

Trains. Train stations. India.....patience. I was at the train station trying to get a ticket in Trichy, only the local train window was open so I was directed to another section of the station that was supposed to open, according to the sign, at 7:30. The train was supposed to leave at 8:15. 7:45...8:00.passed. Nobody. A small crowd had begun to gather to get tickets. I began getting nervous about the time and so spoke to a man in front of me. “They were supposed to open at 7:30, the train leaves at 8:15. What am I supposed to do? Why aren’t they here, is there anyplace else to get the tickets? I am going to miss the train” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow and only said, “Madam, this is India.”

Onward to Quilon on the west coast. It is hot here, drippy hot, sticky hot, the kind of hot that without even moving, covers the body with clammy sweat. It don’t mind it, it’s just that it is hard to get used to after the dry hot. This is a backwater town, very bucolic. We arrived in the evening and stayed for a day or so. Nothing much to do except relax, sleep under a ceiling fan, take cold showers and eat.

Eating was peculiar. One place looked like some old converted church with yellowed walls. It was supposed to serve good, cheap thali and did. Brightly lit small rooms, all connected with large open doorways and furnished with long tables in a pattern that brought to mind college discussion groups or neighborhood meetings. The chairs were arranged only on the outside of a square made by the tables. People ate and stared at each other from a distance. Where the rooms did not allow for the large square option, narrow tables were arranged as if it were a lecture room with chairs, again, only along one side. In this arrangement people ate and stared at the backs of other people.

The backwater boat trip starts in Quilon and plies the waters for 8 or 9 hours to Alleppey. We got our place in the boat and were anxious to go. After the normal confusion, we did leave, but ended up on the tourist boat instead of the regular ferry. Oh well, same scenery, beautiful, intoxicatingly tropical scenery, just a few more rupees. Coconut palms and other jungle foliage overhung the waterway. People live and make their living on such tiny, elongated islands. From the looks of things, the occupations were fishing, copra, ship building and possibly farming on the mainland side of the waterway.

The boat passed by great piles of coconut shells and boats so overloaded with bolts of hay that they reminded us of the commonly seen overloaded bicycle, hay completely covering rider and bicycle, only wheels and the lowest pedal foot showing. Ships were being built on blocks, elevating them to the midpoint of the coconut trees that surrounded them. They brought to mind what would be seen after a tsunami wedged them between trees. And the fishing nets. Marvels from the arachnid family. Spider like arms constructed of thin, but supple wood were laced together at the joints. They held the ends of the net that was lowered and raised by a crank system.

Back inland to the dry forests near Mysore, a friend had recommended a place to stay. He spoke about it in loving terms and I now understand why. It was a grand old hotel that reminded me of the Indian version of a place my folks used to take me when I was a child called “The White Inn” in Fredonia, NY. Slightly run down with loads of now decaying class. Two stories with rooms facing front only a long verandah that was carpeted by a slightly bunched up, old straw carpet. The White Inn’s outstanding feature was the columns supporting the verandah, the Maurya Hoysala’s was many scalloped arabesque arches. Looking through these arches to the flowering trees on the grounds was romantically Mogul. Small clouds passed by, broken away from the white arches.

Udaipur, oodiipoorrr. Even the name is full of romance, the place out of a fairy tale. The hotel was right on the lake, and the room overlooking it, large bed right next to the window. At sunset, the view was from one of the best dreams ever imagined. Tiers of white stuccoed buildings reflect on the lake in elongated arches, rippling with Tales of the Arabian Nights. A white palace floats in the center of the lake like the wish to a jinn. Tranquil, round moon, Udaipur full in the curves of its sinuous, hilly streets.

It is the Hindu holiday of Holi that celebrates the end of winter and the beginning of spring fertility. The population is roaming the streets, rubbing colored powder on each other or spraying tinted water. With the first step out of the hotel we were yellow, then pink and green and blue. Colored powder was sold on every block today. Munitions suppliers. We bought some and contributed to the pandemonium, relishing in a much needed day of total abandon.

It took many days to erase the colors of Holi...scrubbing hard each day still left tinged body parts. I wanted to leave some anyway, for days later there were traces on cows, goats, dogs, buildings and streets as a reminder of that day of connection.

The citizenry stayed up all night, got drunk, and partied night and day, exhausting all their energy in a state of frenzy. They still didn’t use artificial energy unwisely. All drivers, including bus drivers, shut down their engines while coasting downhill. The record ride with no power was when we hired a motorized trishaw to take us to a deserted Majarasha’s summer palace on a high hill overlooking Udaipur. It was so hot that day the the driver had to stop on the way up a number of times to let his vehicle cool off. A tortured landscape lay below us. Trees that pointed to the setting sun, trunks fixed in history, were burned out by the dry season and almost bare. The remaining leaves crackled in the sun before they fell to be taken away by the oven-like breeze.

Udaipur’s cool, blue lake below us is so out of place in this scorched environment, that we now have an accurate picture of. For miles around the dust swirls over an endless stone wall constructed hundreds of years ago on the top of ridges surrounding the city.

To be continued...when I have a few more moments....