My next stop was Chennai. Chennai is on the southeast coast of India. It has a population of 7 million, just slightly smaller than New York City. I flew there from Mumbai on an Indian airline called IndiGo. Boarding the flights is much easier there. They use the front and rear doors to load passengers. If you sit in the first half of the plane, you board from the front, and vice versa if you are in the rear. It is much quicker. Airlines in the U.S. should take note.
After I landed in Chennai, I was going to get an Uber to take me to my hotel, but Indian cab drivers are very aggressive, especially to tourists. I was holding on hard to my bag, but the driver insisted that he take me by grabbing on to my bag and walking anyway. I didn’t fight him. Off we went. One thing about Indian cab drivers is that they aren’t shy about their job. On the way to the hotel, he said that he had to get gas. I assumed that he would have the money, but he asked if I could pay him the fare right then. It was strange, but it was fine. Different cultures I guess. I reached the hotel fine.
Also, in India the hotel staff like to treat their guests. They take your bags and everything. You are treated like royalty, and I wasn’t even staying in an expensive hotel. This particular hotel cost about $40 a night. It wasn’t a five-star hotel or anything, but it was really nice.
After lounging at the hotel for a little bit, I got dressed in my Indian wedding clothes. Men wear a long, dress-like shirt called a kurta. It’s long and reaches to your knees. For pants, you wear a light, baggy pair of pants. They’re very comfortable. I felt a little strange wearing these clothes because they are so different, but I’m sure I got more looks because I was American. After getting dressed, I walked over to the wedding venue.
Indian weddings are a multi-day event. They are much bigger, more festive, more energetic, and more colorful than American weddings. Several hundred people come to each wedding, and breakfast, lunch and dinner are served to everyone who comes. People come and go all day. Indian parents save up for their children’s weddings much like American parents save up for their kids’ college educations.
When I first got there, I saw my friend who was getting married. Her name is Shruti. She was talking to her Austrian friend and her boyfriend who came. I had competition now. I had to show those Austrians that I came much further than they did to see MY friend get married. All jokes aside, they were very nice. Their names were Lisa and Michael. I would spend the weekend with them. More on that in a bit.
Shruti told me that they were serving food inside. I hadn’t had anything since breakfast, so I was hungry. I sat down next to one of the groom’s cousins who was 12, and beside her was the groom’s sister. When you sit down, the waiters bring you a plate, which, at least at this wedding, was a banana leaf. Other waiters come around in a big circle and drop off the various foods. There was rice, but that was about all that I could recognize. Another thing is that in India, except for restaurants, you eat the food with your bare hands or you use the pieces of bread to pick the food up. I was confused, and the waiters quickly noticed and brought me wooden utensils.
Some of the food is supposed to be mixed together, which I didn’t know, and because I didn’t really know what was what on my plate, I apparently mixed the wrong things because the young cousin just started dying laughing. I guess the wooden fork didn’t help either. The food was good, but I couldn’t tell you what I ate.
The second day is when my friends got married. Unlike American weddings, which are very sequential and orderly, where the guests sit and stand and pray and sing and sit again in concert, Indian weddings are somewhat chaotic. They officially get married at a very particular time too, in this case 10:17 a.m. Usually, these line up with some astronomical constellation that can be seen at that time. I was with another Indian friend, and I was concerned with being there exactly on time, but she assured me that that wasn’t important. People come and go, talk, eat, and dance as they please. I’m not sure if it’s Indians who are weird, or if it’s Americans. There are more Indians after all, about one billion more in fact. After they get married, everyone, and I mean everyone, takes pictures with the bride and groom. And the rest of the day there is singing, dancing, eating, more dancing, more eating, and even more dancing. My god, Indians can dance.
My friends who were married (front), the priest (right), my Austrian friends (back left), me and another friend (back right).
My other Indian friend, named Sruty (same pronunciation as my married friend), brought her mom and her driver with her. Her mom was very sweet, and the driver was very funny. He didn’t speak English, but he always wanted to show me something. After the first day, they took me to the Anjaneya Temple in Chennai. Each temple is typically dedicated to a particular Hindu god. That temple is dedicated to the monkey god, Hanuman. We went inside and walked around the god that was inside. You are supposed to walk around in multiples of seven. There was a cow outside roaming free, as they do in India, and we fed it some vegetables. We also went to the Indian Ocean. That was the second ocean I’ve touched. It was dark when we went, but even on the beach there were cows roaming. Someone should tell the cows that they can’t get tanned at night.
The next day, the two Austrians and I went sightseeing around Chennai. Lisa and Michael beat me downstairs in the morning. They got a tuk-tuk taxi for us. Tuk-tuks, or auto-rickshaws, are small taxis that are sort of like motorcycles with three wheels and a partially enclosed top. Really, they are meant for two people, but we fit three in there. The driver would take us anywhere we pleased.
We went to a famous temple first. It was very colorful with lots of statues of gods and people built into it. You had to take your shoes off to walk inside. They wouldn’t let non-Hindus go inside to look directly at the god though. We then went to an old lighthouse on the beach. Afterwards we went to an aquarium. And after that we got lunch.
On the way back, our driver, who stayed with us the whole day, took us to a souvenir shop. I think a lot of the drivers have deals with the shops to bring tourists. I got an ornament of the elephant god, Ganesha, and a few other neat items. He then took us back to our hotel. When we got back, we asked how much we owed him. Strangely, he just said that we could pay him whatever we thought was fair. We paid him good.
View of the Indian Ocean from a lighthouse.
Afterwards, the Austrians told me something funny. I was leaving for the Himalayas the next day, and they were going to another place by themselves, and they asked me how I could talk to the Indian taxi drivers so well. Many of the taxi drivers only know a little bit of English, so it can be hard to communicate, and the Austrians’ main language was German. Apparently, they thought I was a communicator de force. But really, the secret was that I just nodded and agreed with the drivers. The Austrians must’ve thought I had some gift. We got around fine.
The next day I would fly out to New Delhi and catch a ride to the Himalayas.
(This is part two of three. Read part one here.)
Alex Auman is a Richmond Country native. He currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. He writes about politics, ideas and current events.
