Chennai revisited

I thought I was tired of India. Then I went to Mumbai. After Mumbai, thought I’d seen all of India that I wanted to. Then I was sent back to Chennai. I didn’t want to return – there’s a big wide world out there waiting to be explored. I done Chennai, surely?

I was wrong.

It’s always less daunting, but much safer and to my mind a bit boring, to return to a place one has already been. But I doused my itchy feet in a bucket of financial realism and off I went. It had been three years since my last trip to South India, and I wondered if Chennai would have changed. It has, in part. But then so have I. India has taken on a normality after spending a quarter of every year there since. No longer do I notice the noise, the hooting, the traffic, the stares, the haphazardness and lack of personal space. I barely even notice the smells.

So, what had changed? The metro line which had resulted in multiple road closures and traffic chaos had at least been slightly finished, and it could be that I’m a bit immune to Asian traffic but the melee on the roads didn’t seem quite as bad. The car:motorbike:tuc-tuc ratio had definitely increased. There were some shiny new pavements, the rubbish dump I used to clamber over on my way back from work, vanished. Starbucks had arrived. A couple of organic health-food stores had appeared. More cafes, with decent coffee easier to find. The Mall had even spawned a wine shop, with proper doors, not just an illicit-looking hatch.

One thing is for sure, though, I’d done the sights of Chennai on my last visit and they didn’t really tempt me again. One could unkindly say that one of the great things about Chennai is the ease by which one can escape it. Easter weekend was looming, and it seemed a fine idea to use those extra days off to discover the tea stations in the hills around Ooty. Properly called Ootacamund, the town was set up by the British as a respite from the sweltering summer in the city. At 7350 ft above sea level Ooty is about twice the height of the top of Mount Snowdon, and it certainly seemed that way as we wound our way up the twisty narrow road up, up and away, narrowly missing brightly painted lorries and buses which regularly performed standoffs at narrow junctions, forcing all other traffic to a standstill. It was good to get up into the clean mountain air.

Tea plantations and fabulous views aside, the highlight of the weekend had to be the ‘Toy Train’, a narrow gauge railway that puffs (or in our case toots – the steam loco in only used on the first train of the day, so ours was a diesel) up the mountain past utterly gorgeous scenery. As with everywhere else that Easter weekend, the train was immensely popular, and we were ever so grateful that we’d succeeded in bagging some first class tickets.

Ooty even boasts a chocolate museum – an exhibition of handmade artisan chocolate - and of course, tea producers. Sadly the visit to the tiger reserve, which was signposted as being 37km away, took rather longer than expected owing to a sneaky diversion taken by our driver, on a minimum km payment and keen to exceed it. The safari on offer once we had finally arrived rewarded us with the sight of a couple of slightly uninteresting deer but, obviously, no tigers…or anything really. We insisted our driver take the shorter route on the way back, which he wasn’t keen to do, and we soon found out why as the road became one hairpin bend after another with the hapless man unaware of the correct gear required. When he inevitably stalled with a sheer drop behind him, he was unable to execute a hill start and announced that the handbrake wasn’t working. Cue much frantic leaping out of the car.…

Another weekend offered up a jaunt to Pondicherry. I’d been before, but the affectionately-named Pondy is a place worth revisiting, if only for the lack of traffic in the peaceful French quarter and a plethora of lovely courtyard restaurants, not to mention the car-free promenade at night, best experienced with an Italian gelato. En route we stopped off at The Farm, an organic farm/restaurant where a tour introduces the free range chickens, the buffalo (for the mozzarella) and the organic gardens, growing palak (spinach), bitter gourd, chillies, beans and mangoes. A lovely place.

Just down the road from Pondy is Auroville, It’s difficult to describe what Auroville actually is, but it made for an intriguing morning. It’s a kind of commune, made up of folk of many different nationalities co-existing in a self-sustaining community. The entire place was reclaimed from barren scrubland, and now produces its own organic food, candles, incense (of course!), medicinal herbs and clothing, which are all sold in the rather flashy and faintly incongruous large shop near to the visitor’s centre. For a community that does not believe in trading with money it seems to be making rather a lot of it. The concept of Auroville was conceived - naturally - in the 1960’s, by a lady known as ‘Mother’ whose portrait, perched on a lotus flower, smiles beatifically down from every wall, much in the manner of the Pope in Rome. She took up with a fellow called Sri Aurobindo who is described as a spiritual visionary and she was the driving force behind Auroville. ‘Mother’ rather autocratically decided its principals and ideals. She was the author behind the creation of the Matromandir, a huge golden golf ball type globe which is used for meditation and rather resembles the spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so incongruous is its positioning. Aurovillians do not practise religion, stated the visitor’s guide, yet the God-like lifestyle prescriptions of ‘Mother’ made us wonder where this life philosophy ended and religion began. I did muse whether the huge golden dome rounded up any stray Aurovillians intent on escaping the place, little like the big round ball in ‘The Prisoner’. Food for thought indeed.

Further afield, a weekend trip out of the state of Tamil Nadu led to a few days in Calcutta, where Bengal and Hindi replace Tamil. The city boasts superb colonial architecture including some leafy wide roads reminiscent of New Delhi, the splendid marble Victoria memorial, dedicated to the memory of the late monarch; and the Park Street cemetery full of ornate tombs, largely commemorating British notables from the late 1870s, most of whom had perished very young. Calcutta itself is buzzing, restaurants serve alcohol, food and market stalls dominate and the traffic is crazy, from iconic yellow ambassador taxis to hand-pulled rickshaws, gaudy horse-carriages and even trams. On our first day we passed the shocking remains of the collapsed flyover where sixty-nine people had been killed just a couple of weeks previously, just a gaping hole remaining where a road – and many people’s lives – should have been.

The highlight of Calcutta for me was most definitely Mother Theresa’s house. A simple little, free, museum displayed her knick-knacks, from her leather sandals, grey sweater, walking frame and prayer books, along with an incongruous and amusing display for children involving Barbie Dolls (and even a Ken) dressed up to represent scenes from her life. Barbie dressed up as a nun is certainly a sight to behold, but the scenes depicting Mother Theresa’s early life, with the young religious Albanian girl dressed in a sparkly Barbie outfit sporting long golden hair, did make her subsequent life choices somewhat difficult to comprehend. Next to the museum was her tomb and her bare little bedroom, a very moving place even for an agnostic like me.

I’m glad I had a second chance to visit Chennai.