I’m writing this sitting on the front porch of our hotel villa at the Hotel Sea Breeze. In front of me is a field, dotted with palms and fern trees. Beyond that, barely visible, is a beach sloping down to the Bay of Bengal. Local fishermen use the beach, their boats lining the shore and nets piled on the sand, ready for straightening and mending. The sea is blue and slightly agitated, with flecks of white out to the horizon. A waiter just came up and served me a pot of masala tea. The weather is hot but very breezy, and pleasant in the shade. It’s a lovely afternoon in Mamallapuram.
We got here the day before yesterday after our ship docked in Chennai. Our first location was the Ideal Beach Resort, a fine and expensive place about three kilometers up the road. Initially, I thought it was…ideal. The pool was lovely, and included a little kids’ portion with water descending from three cartoon faces, their pupils widened so that they looked like Indian monsters. There were hammocks spread from palm trees. Our beach was private, guarded from the locals. The bathroom was full of gadgets, from a bidet to a Jacuzzi with rapidly changing lights. But it didn’t take long for us to feel isolated.
We took a taxi into town. I immediately fell in love with Mamallapuram. Its unpaved, dusty streets and rows of little shops with hand-painted signs reminded me very much of West Africa. And when I thought about it, I remembered that the initial merchants in many parts of urban West Africa were…Indians, specifically South Indians. The town was ramshackle and chaotic, with motorcycles beeping and pedestrians dodging, and cows wandering the streets with decorated horns, eating people’s garbage. So we bid the Ideal Beach Resort farewell (prompting endless questions and pleas—we were going to stay for four nights) and found this room at the Sea Breeze. It’s still pretty upscale, considerably more than the Green Woods Resort up the street (where we could have found a room for about 1300 rupees, or about $28 a night), but undeniably cheaper than the Ideal. They served us breakfast—hard-boiled eggs, Indian pancakes and donuts, sambor (I still don’t know what’s in it…), and hot tea. Having tea here is a very pleasant shift from most of the rest of the world, and a full potful every few hours seems remarkably pleasant.
Shopping has also been a treat, if only because of the exchange rate (46 rupees to the dollar). The U.S. dollar may not be doing well against the Euro and the pound, but it is still mighty here. For example, I’m wearing a beautiful green cotton shirt I bought at a cultural center (Dakshina Chitra) on the way into town that cost about $6. Lunch for four people (tuna masala sandwiches, a plate of chicken for the little ones, pineapple slices, hot tea, 2 glasses of milk) went for under $9. Merchandisers are aggressive—especially the little girls who haunt the street selling necklaces for a dollar and hang by your elbow long after you’ve told them you’re not interested. We met a young fellow yesterday as we approached a park that held a number of the local temples (the big tourist attraction in Mamallapuram). He spoke English fluently and introduced himself as a student at a nearby college, where he studied sculpture. He followed us around and explained the nuances of all the sights—the peculiar history of the place (an ancient Hindu kingdom in the 7th century, defeated suddenly in the 9th, leaving a few places conspicuously unfinished), the names of the various deities (Vishnu, Krishna, Ganesha, Siva) and their notable characteristics (e.g., one spot showed the ten different incarnations of Vishnu—including the last one, which has yet to happen; when it does, “the world is finished”). As we were walking, we were shadowed at every step by two gentlemen with merchandise. One fellow had a granite ball, covered with deities and elephants, to be held in the hand to ease tension. (It also looks like a paperweight.) He offered it to me for 1200 rupees. I made a counter offer of 300 rupees. By the end of our walk, when he seemed fairly desperate, I bought it for 400 rupees—and assumed that he still got a decent profit. We then went to our friend’s studio, where he pressed us to buy a few items. The place, he said, was a studio for fifteen art students, normally closed to the public, with profits shared equally. He began pressuring me intensely. No, he wouldn’t be here tomorrow, because Sunday was when the students went eight kilometers away to pick up their stone. We asked for his phone number, but no, we couldn’t contact him; if I didn’t have enough money, we needed to go to the ATM now—he’d take us there. Nancy began to feel that the story was probably fiction—too much salesman, not enough artist. (She also didn’t like the Krishna statue I was interested in, and I trust her taste.) The more I tried to disengage, the more intent he became. We finally had to run, literally, away from him—which was too bad, because I would have liked to have given him a few hundred rupees for our unexpected guided tour.
Other places have been more pleasant, though. The cultural center, as I indicated, was one such place: we bought fabric, clothes, and wonderful kids’ toys for a few dollars. Last night, after I had had two Kingfisher beers (each 650 ml, or the equivalent of two beers each), we bought some T-shirts, figurines, and handbags. We’re not hard bargainers, at least not in this economic climate: $5 for a t-shirt sounds good to us. So after looking hard and finding nothing worthwhile (or affordable) in South Africa and Mauritius, we’re finally getting some serious shopping done. The food is good. No particular place stands out, but it’s generally well-spiced and plentiful.
Reflecting back on India: I now wonder why I had such trepidations coming in. I had expected it to be a nightmare—the kind of place that would be so congested and crowded that I would lose my twins in the mass. That’s partly why we immediately retreated to Mamallapuram; and to some extent, we’ve since heard from people who saw the Ganges, or the Taj Mahal, and feel that we’ve missed the opportunity for some real adventure. But it was a sensible place to stay, and there’s something to be said about getting to know one place well before moving on.
The obvious reason why I enjoyed India: I’ve been devoted to certain aspects of Indian culture for many years. I mean yoga, which I’ve been practicing daily (at least in theory) since my college years. It’s not the physical aspects of yoga, but its spiritual aspects, that count. I was dealing with a nation inured to its poverty, but inclined to view their world as something that can be overcome with spiritual discipline. “Simple life and high thoughts,” said a yoga export in a pre-port presentation on the ship. “Not high life and simple thoughts. That way lies too many problems.” True dat.
