Whatdidyoudothisweekend?
Kiran, from Delhi, has appointed herself India's goodwill ambassador. She picked up Elizabeth and me in her car (with driver!) to take us shopping Saturday. We went to an enormous silk emporium that was so overwhelming it made my head spin. There were about five floors, each packed floor to ceiling with scrumptious textiles. I walked out empty-handed, but only because I couldn't see straight.
They dropped me off at Spencer Plaza, the closest thing Chennai has to a mall. Walking through the halls was a chorus of "Madam, madam" and urgings to come inside shops for pashminas, jewelry, saris...Whew. I bought some supersoft pashminas for mom and sis and a few embroidered kurtas.
I was content to spend the afternoon alone, but every time I looked up, several faces were staring back at me. I didn't feel unsafe, just awkward. Noel said her teacher told her before she left for KYM, "When you meditate, imagine several people are looking at you." I haven't tried that yet, but I thought about it as I was falling asleep last night; it just creeped me out.
I spent an hour or so in Landmark, a huge department store that anchors one end of the mall. The stationery department was great, but the real reason I stuck around was that they were blasting "It's like that" by RUN-DMC, one of my all-time favorite songs.
Sunday, KYM took us on a little jaunt to Mahabalipuram, a beach town with tons of carved stone temples and ruins. So many of the sites were amazing, but being out in the heat was trying; I got a nice burn on a few spots I missed with the sunscreen. A huge rock balancing on a ridge is called Krishna's Butter Ball. We wondered if Krishna's Toast was nearby. At Dhakshinchitra, a cultural center devoted to the arts and ways of life of South India, I got a beautiful henna design on my foot. It looks like a paisley and matches a bracelet I've bought.
On our way home, Anna and Rebecca and I stopped at another hotel to see the rooms. They seemed nicer, and we were able to negotiate a lower price than what we'd been paying, so we ended up packing up again to move to the new place Sunday night. I took a real shower, with real water pressure, and cranked the air con; no one knocked on my door in the middle of the night, no one was speaking loudly over an intercom at 3am, and I think the room was cleaned at some point in the last year, as opposed to the last decade. It's the little things.
They dropped me off at Spencer Plaza, the closest thing Chennai has to a mall. Walking through the halls was a chorus of "Madam, madam" and urgings to come inside shops for pashminas, jewelry, saris...Whew. I bought some supersoft pashminas for mom and sis and a few embroidered kurtas.
I was content to spend the afternoon alone, but every time I looked up, several faces were staring back at me. I didn't feel unsafe, just awkward. Noel said her teacher told her before she left for KYM, "When you meditate, imagine several people are looking at you." I haven't tried that yet, but I thought about it as I was falling asleep last night; it just creeped me out.
I spent an hour or so in Landmark, a huge department store that anchors one end of the mall. The stationery department was great, but the real reason I stuck around was that they were blasting "It's like that" by RUN-DMC, one of my all-time favorite songs.
Sunday, KYM took us on a little jaunt to Mahabalipuram, a beach town with tons of carved stone temples and ruins. So many of the sites were amazing, but being out in the heat was trying; I got a nice burn on a few spots I missed with the sunscreen. A huge rock balancing on a ridge is called Krishna's Butter Ball. We wondered if Krishna's Toast was nearby. At Dhakshinchitra, a cultural center devoted to the arts and ways of life of South India, I got a beautiful henna design on my foot. It looks like a paisley and matches a bracelet I've bought.
On our way home, Anna and Rebecca and I stopped at another hotel to see the rooms. They seemed nicer, and we were able to negotiate a lower price than what we'd been paying, so we ended up packing up again to move to the new place Sunday night. I took a real shower, with real water pressure, and cranked the air con; no one knocked on my door in the middle of the night, no one was speaking loudly over an intercom at 3am, and I think the room was cleaned at some point in the last year, as opposed to the last decade. It's the little things.
posted by Rebecca at 2:04 AM
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