India Trip

Came back Sunday after a way-too-short, completely-packed 2-week trip to India. While the lengths of previous India trips were usually decided by the amount of vacation my wife and I had, the short trip this time was because of Kavya since she can't take more than 10 days of vacation in her school. But we did try and make the most of the short trip. Here are a few notes from the trip...

- At Chennai airport, by the time we made it to the immigration counters, the line for visitors had about 75 people while the line for citizens had just 3 people. I'm not sure if this is the case every day, but it was definitely a telling sign of the impact of outsourcing and the growth of businesses in Chennai/India.

- The increase in traffic since my last trip was immediately evident once we got out of the airport. On the drive back home, I kept wondering how I ever rode a bike in this traffic. But once I actually sat on my bike a couple of days later, the doubts vanished and in no time at all, I was weaving in and out of traffic. Pure exhilaration! I think the key difference between driving in the US and in India is who you trust. In the US, you trust yourself. You check for other vehicles and you make sure that you are driving correctly. In India, you trust others! You go however you want to go knowing that others will see you coming and do the needful to get out of the way. And that works too!

- Made a day-trip to Pondicherry. Visited the ashram there and on the way back(via ECR), stopped at Crocodile Park and Dakshin Chitra. The sheer number of crocodiles they have at the Crocodile Park is pretty amazing and they also have a cool show where they show how they extract venom from snakes. Dakshin Chitra has models of houses from the old times and offers an interesting look at life in those times. Have to walk a lot though!

- Visited Bangalore over the weekend. Made the trip mainly to see friends and relatives and so made only 1 sight-seeing stop at the Shiva temple. The giant statues of Pillaiyaar and Shiva were wonderful and the temple also had a neat walk through a tunnel whose walls are lined with small models of different incidents in Lord Shiva's life.

- Saw only 1 movie - Pokkiri - in the theater, which is probably the best indication of how busy the trip was! It was fun watching the movie in Udhayam and since it was just the 2nd week, the there was a lot of screaming and whistling from Vijay fans. Really wanted to visit Sathyam or the new INOX multiplexes since I've read so much about them but never got the chance.

- Saw a cricket match on TV after a very long time. The icing on the cake was that India won the match I saw (the 2nd ODI with West Indies). Caught only snatches of the Indian innings in the 3rd ODI since I was busy packing. But did manage to see Rajni (with his family) in the stands.

- The only TV program I watched regularly was Yaar Manasula Yaaru on Vijay TV. It was the popular '20 questions' game, which used to be a staple of the school and college cultural programs. The 'grandmaster' tried to figure out the personality that a guest was thinking about by asking 21 questions with yes/no answers. Very interesting and the grandmaster's knowledge of trivia was very impressive. The show was compered by actress Maheswari and had a couple of celebrity guests like Naren and Vijay Yesudas. Also caught the first couple of episodes of the SRK-hosted Kaun Banega Crorepati?. Seemed like he was being a lot less formal than Amitabh.

- Attended two functions - my wife's dad's sashtiabtapoorthi (completion of 60 years) and my wife's grandparents' sadhabishekam (completion of 80 years). It was a get-together of sorts for my wife's relatives and so it was nice meeting many of them after so many years. Kavya and Karthik had fun dressing up for the functions.