A late night walk

June 8, 2010

I noticed in the local paper that a dance performance was being staged at a local hall.  I asked about finding the hall and the information seemed pretty straightforward; the hall stood not far from a bookstore I like here.  My brainstorm was to start out early, enjoy the unusually cool day, visit the bookshop and then walk to the hall, since it was so close.  Perfect.

All went well until I walked to where I thought the hall was located.  It wasn’t.  Or rather, I wasn’t…in the right place that is.  Darkness has descended and I was wandering about in a part of town I had not yet visited.  Frustration grew as I realized I had made an erroneous choice.  Grew, that is, until I let myself begin to enjoy the early evening events and sights of Chennai.  Maybe wandering a big city isn’t all that exciting, what with the cars still screaming by, large buses bullying their way along the street and motorcycles weaving through it all and nearly missing pedestrians.  But as I noticed local women doing their wash in little crevices in the sidewalk, men gathering near little shops (which describes almost ALL the shops here) and drinking coffee and tea, a few exhausted and possible destitute individuals sleeping on the side of the road and children giggling their way in and out of rickety thatched roof buildings crowded along the roadside, I gave myself over to the evening’s walk and took stock of yet another aspect of life in this big berg.

My mesmerizing adventure almost caused me to step into oxen pee as I passed a few unfettered oxen eating grassy bundles on the sidewalk.  Good thing I rarely use the sidewalk, given the amount of activity staged on them.  One older gentleman, clad in a dhoti and nothing else, sat under a jury-rigged light, intently fixing shoes.  Another young man chipped away at a stone pillar outside of a huge construction area.  I wondered if overtime is an issue here, or if he was just catching up on a little work.  A man loaded freshly made concrete piled in a half-shell metal plate onto the head of a waiting woman who wore a twisted cloth on her head to balance the load.  One of my favorites was the woman who piled brick after brick on her head, carefully bending to pick each one up so as not to topple the rest.  I swear she had 10 bricks up there.

When I finally turned back, it took me a good 5-7 minutes to cross the road.  There are never any breaks in traffic here!  I then took what I thought was a short cut, past a huge catholic church, but ended up under a maze of fly-over roads until I finally spotted a landmark I recognized.  Now, I thought, I am thinking like a local.  Find those landmarks because road signs are a too rare luxury.

I ended the evening stopping in a kind of upscale little grocery store, where I bought Ritz crackers.  Not an exciting little event, except when finding known commodities only happens once in a while.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the local food, but can’t one have a little of the familiar once and a while? (Except I am glad there is only one McDonald’s in this city that is far too far away from me.  I have no interest in partaking.)