October 2010
28 posts
Chidambaram
When we arrived in Chidambaram it was already 3.30pm. After eating at an odd fast-food place, we went to the famous temple.
Sabhanayaka Nataraja Temple is essentially a dedication to Shiva’s incarnation as Nataraja, the Lord of the Cosmic Dance. On the first gopura as you walk in are carvings of Shiva in all the different positions he adopted during his dance-off competition with the...
Thanjavur
The weekend after the concert, Florence, Rob, Clemence and I went to Thanjavur, south of Pondi and deep into Tamil Nadu, which was the royal capital of the Cholas for 250 years, and formerly known as Tanjore.
Bus timetables or information not being available anywhere, we just turned up at the bus station at 7.15am and waited for ten minutes for a bus that had to stop in Chidambaram, another...
8th & 9th October: the beginning of a festival and...
On Friday 8th October I was feeling really rough so I left work at around lunchtime. I had a rotten cold, headache and just felt exhausted. But by the evening I felt like having a walk and something to eat, so went for dinner at Salt and Pepper with Florence, Lisa and Rob.
Florence and Rob had been told that today was the start of a Hindu harvest festival, so after dinner we wandered down Mahatma...
New kids on the block
Helene left Sharana because her visa expired, but is coming back in December. Meanwhile, there is a new volunteer at Sharana with Florence, called Rob.
We met Rob a few days before Lisa left; he came out for dinner with us. He’s 26, Welsh and a trained accountant at Deloitte, but has taken four months off to volunteer through AFID (Accounting for International Development). I’d never...
DiA assessments, Gandhi's birthday, IVC Lisa's...
On the Wednesday of the third week into my placement, IVC Lisa came to visit and see how we’re getting on. The first night we went for a delicious meal (including “special tea”…) at Aristo Restaurant, and heard all about what she’s been up to since Orientation week.
After putting the Udaipur people on the bus from Mumbai (which they narrowly missed!), she stayed...
The weather
Winter monsoon is supposed to hit Pondicherry in November and last just over a month; I’m told that the build-up means October is interrupted with short but heavy episodes of rainfall. Throughout my time here the sagging grey skies have appeared ready to burst with remedy for the stifling humidity. But it has, on average, only rained about once a week.
This is enough to already have a few...
Introduction to the Chollywood legacy
According to my Rough Guide, Chennai produces more films per year than any other place in the world, and is fast overtaking Bollywood on the Indian film scale. We decided to check out a Tamil film with Helene, the weekend after we went to Kanchipuram.
We were the only white people there and were thus stared at by the others. We paid Rs.50 to have First Class seating - towards the back, in full...
An introduction to Pondi nightlife
After Bollywood dancing on the Friday of the second week, I went with a French girl I met there, Faustine, to a bar, Qualite. It was pretty surreal, being one of a kind in Pondi and the only bar I’d been to in what felt like ages.
We went up to a roof garden where there was a mixture of both young Indians and several groups of westerners. I found that odd; I don’t think I’d seen...
Overcoming hurdles at work
The second week at work was pretty hard because many people didn’t turn up for their English tuition. For example, on the Tuesday, I was supposed to tutor five members of staff but not one of them showed up. This really frustrated me, obviously because I’ve come all the way over here to contribute and couldn’t feel like I was doing that successfully when nothing was happening....
The creche in my second week
From the second week, I already began to have a favourite in the creche: a boy named Vishnu, who has an amazing dimply smile and huge brown eyes that light up as soon as I walk into the room. He also always gets porridge all over his face!
I noticed how when the power turns off for a few minutes every now and then, the kids get really excited, pausing and looking at each other for a split second...
Kanchipuram
Helene, a French volunteer at Sharana with Florence, invited the two of us on a day trip with her to Kanchipuram, a temple town inland and between Pondicherry and Chennai. On Sunday 19th September we went with her.
We met at 7am to get a rickshaw together to the bus station, from where we embarked on a 3.5 hour bus journey costing just 38 rupees. The bust was extremely crammed but Pondi was the...
Child Androgyny
In the first week at Volontariat I got a bit of a shock when I undressed what I had presumed all week to be a little girl with bunches, wide eyes, feminine features and a group of girl friends, and, as I pulled down her shorts, a willy popped out. I literally screamed and jumped back, but nobody noticed. I found this pretty disturbing; other than the t-shirt and shorts, he looked exactly like a...
Making a home
As well as settling into work, the first week offered a variety of domestic challenges in terms of settling into the flat. As well as the electricity going out due to stormy weather, for three mornings running I couldn’t have a proper shower due to a water shortage and instead had to pour about a glass worth of water over myself (not enough to wash my hair though). This also meant that...
First week at Volontariat: everything else
Aside from the creche, it was difficult settling into a routine at Volontariat, largely because many of the adult students didn’t turn up. On the tuesday, for example, I was supposed to have tuition with three students but none of them came; when I later asked them why not they said they’d forgotten or simply, “next week”. Admittedly it gave me time to plan lessons, but...
First Week at Volontariat: the creche
From the tuesday of the first week I arrived at Shakti Vihar site to work in the creche at 9am. I found the little ones eating porridge - one day at least, other days the stuff is more like condensed milk, often with a noodle-like substance floating around in it - and many of them were crying, having just left their parents. At first I found this pretty distressing; some of them looked like their...
The first "proper" day...
I started work on Monday 13th September. Having no instruction from my boss, Mr Sendhil, about what time to arrive, I got there for 9.30am on IVC Lisa’s reccommendation. Having not yet rented or bought a bike, I endured the 45 minute walk in blaring heat which was pretty stressful. Though you just have to basically walk down Ambour Salai, past a water tank, across the railway tracks and...
Settling into Pondi
After our tearful goodbyes to everyone on that Saturday, Florence and I installed ourselves into the flat. It’s in a quiet, residential area, where many families live and are hanging around outside, along with the standard dogs, cats and cows.
You walk into a living room and kitchen area where there are two beds that basically serve as sofas and are easy to sit on and read, chat etc. Next...
