Southern Comfort

Southern Indian Comfort, that is... And by comfort I mean we've got air conditioning in our bedroom and have people waiting on my every whim. If I need a spoon, at least two people are right there to bring me one. It's weird to try and be my relaxed self in such a formal hospitable setting. I was resting in my room between lunch and dinner and first my host mother came in and asked if I needed a drink, asked if I wanted the AC on, and I kindly rejected both. Shortly thereafter her daughter came in my room and made the same offers. Again, I kindly rejected. At lunch I was basically forced by peer pressure to eat spicy lime pickle. My lips were burning so they gave me butter to soothe it. Surprised to say it actually worked. I actually liked the pickle, sort of. But the rest of the food. My god. The food is so so so delicious. I'm just waiting for traveler's diarrhea or some debilitating illness to hit me within the next couple days. Speaking of which, I may be getting a sore throat. Stupid sick people on airplanes.

The airline served spinach rothi for breakfast on the airplane, which was the best airplane food I've ever had. The dinner they served was better, which was paneer (Indian cheese), rice and dal. When we got home, I took my very first Indian shower. Good thing Kerry was here to tell me how to shower, or I would have been so confused. They had a Western shower head but I used the good old bucket method. It uses less water and I couldn't figure out how to get the shower to work. After I bathed (which was seriously refreshing after 2 days of flying), we had a marvelous lunch of chapatti (rothi), sabzi (vegetables), sambar (lime-ish cilantro soup) and mango juice. For dinner, we just had dosa (which is like an indian crepe) and some curried vegetables, finished off with a small glass of strawberry milk. I'm in curry heaven, seriously.

India is more India than I ever expected India to be. And this is only one city. As we descended into Delhi, I thought, "Why haven't we made it past the cloud layer yet? Why are we stuck in a giant brown cloud?" And then it hit me... Oh. Smog. Great. Chennai is much cleaner than Delhi, with about half the population. It's not all that hot today, probably 90 degrees or so.

There's musical horns going on outside. Fortunately, my host family lives quite far from the main road, so the sound of fan and AC totally covers the musical horns. The drivers here are amazingly agile with their tiny little vehicles, and people on bikes are clearly suicidal. I think horn communication here is a language of its own. Trucks have the words "SOUND HORN" in Tamil and English hand-painted on the back. I haven't learned any Tamil quite yet, but I'm learning the musical language of honking. There's a special friendly "meep meep!" that every driver must do to alert cars in front of them that they are approaching. Then there's an angry "meepmeepmeepmeeeep!" if the person in front of you did something stupid, like slammed their brakes. Then, I realized when the cab driver needed to tell a bus that he was going to pass, he gave a "meepmeep" to alert the bus driver, and then the whole time he was coming up on the side of the bus, he honked a long "meeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!" and then a thank you "meep meep!"

Driving here is like a really intense game of Tetris. When there's a red light, everybody squeezes in to the gaps. Women in saris ride side-saddled on bikes and their male drivers jam themselves through the smallest gaps between buses. There are lines painted on the road, but I have no clue why.

Alas, my fingers and brain are completely exhausted and I need sleep. Talk to you all soon :) Keep leaving me messages!