from Chennai IX, X

Swaminathan Madhu snmeee@rit.edu to me

show details 22:48 (9 hours ago)

Janice:
This message is in two parts: one which I tried to send last night but the mail server did not connect and the other from right now (Wed, a.m.)

(January 3, 10 p.m.)
We left M'puram and reached Madras around noon. We are staying at the same hotel you did.
Not much to report. For dinner, we went to the original Saravana Bhavan restaurant, which is in Vadapalani an area of Madras about 20 minutes from here. It is a huge place sectioned off into smaller halls. The food was totally awesome! The weather is quite warm but not unbearable. I walked to the bank (half a mile) with no discomfort and Chandran and Chiara walked to Higginbothams.
Venkat came around 8 and, since he had not eaten, we took him to one of the restaurants in this hotel. It was nice seeing him again and he will come by tomorrow or day after. We are hoping to see Lalitha and Sankar on Thursday.
This hotel charges $8 per day for using the internet. So, is Leslie gone forever?
Love
ELH
Jan 4 (9 a.m.)
My room in this hotel smells like a sewer. (Only our room; Chandran's room next to us is fine. I think the carpet in our room is the problem.) We did not notice it during the day because we did not spend much time in it. Last night, I just couldn't get to sleep because of the smell. This morning I informed the front desk and they are shifting me to a different room. The hotel is very nice and the staff very courteous and helpful.
Sara, Chiara and I are going shopping today (Poompuhar and the Cottage Industries). Jayanthi's friend Kamala is stopping by this afternoon. She is the one who arranged the van rental and I have asked her to come so that we can make the payment for the van. She sounds very nice on the phone.
We are seeing Lalitha tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.
Higginbothams will be fine for certain kinds of books. I am planning to buy a couple of Tamil novels. Chandran bought a 3-volume set (beautifully bound and boxed) of The Mahabharatha (comic-book type version). It is really very good.

Love
ELH