Well, this morning we woke up at 6am after a good night's sleep on our clean (ish) sheets with the fan going above us all night and the windows wide open... our washing drying around us and finally all the interesting sounds had stopped by midnight. No more horns honking on the road, no more TV blaring in the lounge outside somewhere (this guest house or the one next to us..?), no more talking in Tamil, no more doors banging, no more gaudy music.......was woken once by the Islam prayer music that broadcast at 4am... this beautiful unaccompanied voice floating through the air coming from somewhere outside... and another voice joining to create lilting harmonies...
... this is the view from our room's windows. This place with the blue and white and the courtyard you can glimpse is the neighbouring guesthouse called 'Broadlands' that we wanted to stay at, but the cricket is happening at the moment, so they were too full, and we are staying at a bigger less interesting-looking place (but with very friendly staff, and very clean) called 'Paradise Guesthouse'.
We then got up and wandered the streets looking for some breakfast. We had some kind of porridge splodge that is called 'pongal', and I had 'vadai', a savoury doughnut with yummy chutneys (tomato, spinach and coconut-chilli), and always, 'sambar' (the runny dahl-soup with chunks of vegetable, that they serve in a little bowl with almost all the meals we've ordered. I'm not quite sure if you are supposed to drink it directly from the bowl, pour it over your rice/main dish, or spoon it up straight into the mouth with the provided teaspoon...). It is all super-delicious! Even stuff that looks like it will be bland, is utterly yummy. In fact, it is making me hungry thinking about it now!
After eating, we walked around looking at things and people and cows lying around and a ritual/small festival (?) about to happen (we decided, maybe because it is a Sunday?); food being cooked, served or eaten by men in shirts tucked into dress pants; a group of women draped over a glass box wailing (it took me a moment to notice that there was a white sheet wrapped around a body inside); shrines, and these designs drawn in chalk on the pavement outside doors of dwellings, the women who live on the corner of our street and their little children (today the old woman smiled at me); and of course all modes of transport zooming everywhere around us, as we walked.
The internet cafes didn't look open then (9am still), so we headed back to read the papers for an hour and relax in the growing heat under the fan. (We have bought 3 newspapers in English to try and determine which is the best. They have an interesting mix of local politics, bollywood/fashion/movie star news, advertisements for gated communities from 150- 2,900 Rupees per square foot of land), and international news in brief.
Later, we ventured into this internet cafe on our street which is surprisingly air-conditioned. (This is our first taste of air-con here, as we have avoided any posh-looking places, and taken local transport or walked as much as possible). I took this photo about ten minutes ago while we were waiting to be guided to a computer...
An auto-rickshaw. We went on one yesterday to get to 'Pondy Bazar', which is a shopping area- or market area, which was packed with people and sellers. We got followed by this very friendly drum-seller who chatted with us and tried to persuade us that we needed a camel-skin drum. It sounded very good when he played it, but I'm sure we wouldn't have the skill to get those kinds of sounds out of it!!! He gave up eventually when we told him that if we needed him for buying a drum, we would hear his beautiful music and follow the sound!
Arrr... so many stories to tell.... more later !
XX M and J
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