Chennai

Jan 3 (Sat)

We saw the various sights: the Shore Temple, Arjuna’s penance, etc. Then we took the bus to Madras. When we got to the hotel (New Woodlands in Mylapore) around 2:30, Ramu (Echi’s son) was waiting for us. As we found out later, the reception staff at the hotel kept denying our existence to everyone who asked for us, but he persisted. He spent a couple of hours with us, helping us do some errands. One of the errands was a visit to a clothing store and the streets around the stores were simply a mob scene. You couldn’t even walk and people kept bumping into you (seems to be a common way of pedestrian movement in India). Then he said goodbye telling us that he would come next morning to take us to his home for breakfast.

We were expecting Jayanthi that evening around 9:30. This was difficult because we were in the habit of going to sleep by 9. Kalyani did go to sleep while I stayed awake with the help of crossword puzzles. Jayanthi showed up around 9:45. The reception desk told her that no one by the name of Madhu was staying at the hotel even though she tried different versions of our name. She finally called Thulasi in Trichy and Thulasi called Ramu in Madras to get our room number and then called Jayanthi back.

It was really nice seeing her after all these years even though it was a short visit. She is on the faculty at the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Hyderabad and her husband (Prajit) is at the University of Hyderabad. She is doing very well and has a bunch of graduate students working under her guidance. She has grayed a lot (she is 52). We did talk her into staying an extra night.

Jan 4 (Sun)

Ramu came and all four of us went to his house in an “auto”. It is possible to have four passengers in an auto if one of them shares the driver’s seat in the front. Later in Delhi, I saw an auto carrying five passengers, with two passengers in the front, one on either side of the driver! Ramu lives on a quiet cul-de-sac not too far from Mylapore. It is a very nice house (the upstairs portion of a duplex). His wife Rama (the first “a” pronounced short and the second pronounced long, like “rum-aa”) is very nice; very happy to see us. Her mother lives with them temporarily; the mother has four sons and three daughters, almost all of them living in the Madras area. She became a widow when she was in her late thirties (she is now 82) and brought up the seven children on her own. She is very pleasant and gets along well with Rama and Ramu. We had an excellent breakfast. We sat around and chatted. We visited the Kapaleeswara Temple in Mylapore.

Around 2 p.m. Madhu’s niece Lalitha’s husband Sankar came and took us to his house. (Jayanthi went off to visit a cousin – Sivaswamy’s sister’s daughter.) Lalitha’s house is only a short distance from the Bay of Bengal. When the Tsunami occurred in 2001, they thought that it was an earthquake. The tide rose and came up to a house not too far from their own but then receded. We had a very nice lunch. Lalitha does a kind of artwork: the kind you see a lot at Indian homes showing a god or goddess with a great deal of ornate work involving inlays of gold foil and semi-precious stones. It takes her a couple of months to finish one piece. She also has conducted classes. Sankar is “retired”. He was on the Board of Directors of Indian Railways. Now he is more busy than ever teaching courses at a local center on information audit.

Sankar and Lalitha took us back to the hotel and on the way showed us a store that sold Carnatic Music CDs and DVDs. Jayanthi, Kalyani and I returned to the store a little later. I was like a kid in a candy store (except that I did not have a limit on how much I could spend). It had the most fantastic collection of complete concerts. I bought about 35 CDs. They cost about a hundred rupees ($2.50) each. Then we went to have dinner at Hotel Savera (which was right next to our hotel). This is the same hotel where Madhu took us in 1980 for a dinner.

Jan 5 (Mon)

Jayanthi left for Hyderabad in the morning. Kalyani and I went to the Government Museum (right next to the Egmore station). It was an interesting place and the portion we visited had a lot of archaeological exhibits. Then we went to Higginbotham’s bookstore.

That evening we went to a Carnatic Music concert with Ramu, Rama and her mother. It was at a place very near our hotel. It was free and the artiste was one of the leading vocalists: Sanjay Subrahmanyan. Ramu and his wife go to a lot of concerts and Ramu seemed to know a person of some influence; so we got excellent seats. The concert was simply fantastic. He was so good; you can actually sense the audience totally enthralled in the music. At one point there was a collective involuntary audible sigh from the audience. I have not attended a concert like that in a very long time. He elaborated the raga Kalyani, no doubt because he recognized her presence in the audience.

After the concert we went to the restaurant in our hotel for dinner. It is one of the best South Indian restaurants, probably even the best.