The Latest Hair-Brained Adventure

What do you do when you need a short haircut in a culture where all the women have long hair? For me, do nothing just hang tight till I’m back in Bangkok again. Janet decided she couldn’t wait so we have been searching for a place to get her a haircut from someone other than an Indian barber. We thought Chennai would be a good place since it is a big city and hopefully more cosmopolitan. We actually found a beauty parlor and the low and behold it had a copy of Cosmo!

I got the better end of the bargain when I got a facial while Janet got her hair cut. I never should have left her alone with all those excited Indian girls. One cut while 5 other chattering girls stood watch around Janet. I came out refreshed only to find Janet looking like Poindexter, she only needed the round glasses to complete the look. Her hair was parted down the middle and neatly slicked to each side; they would have had better success putting a bowl over her head and cutting blindly. The young Indian stylists were all beaming with pride over their first western woman’s haircut.

We held it together till we got back to the hotel and both agreed that I couldn’t do any worse. So I went at her hair with our 2 inch collapsible travel scissors. I think this last sentence probably says it all in terms of how desperate the situation was. Where do you start cutting hair? I had no idea.

I tried channeling my Maui hair guru, Donald. Do I start at the top, front, sides or back? Better start at the back where I could warm up and if I messed up it would be in the back. Good idea but no, the back was already too hacked to do too much more so I moved to the side. I remember the first time I was faced with shoveling a huge mound of snow. I had no idea whether to start at the top of the hill or the base or work around the sides. Janet’s head of hair presented the same problem, so I just kept moving to a different area of her head trying to match the other side. A little here, a little there and the sound of the scissors was sounding so professional, all 2” of them. "Snip, snip, snip". I am happy to report it was a success and her hair looks very cute and very short. So for now I am her stylist and she is my colorist.

The channeling was a success!

Which County?

Everywhere we go in India we are asked many times a day “which country?” America we answer. This is often greeted with a big smile and “Obama good man.” Yes, Obama is a good man and I have hope for my country again. It has been hard these last eight years to claim to be an American, especially when we are traveling aboard. I’m so glad the Bush error is over and that we now have a president who sees that violence is not the way to peace, that global warming is a serious issue and that gay men and lesbians deserve the same rights as our straight friends. I whole heartily support Barack and wish him well over the next eight years. What an immense relief!

Music to My Ear Plugs

Pongal is the Tamil New Year and the Harvest Festival and is best experienced in a small rural town, or so we’ve been told. Thanjavur is considered the rice bowl of southeast India and has many small villages so we came here in search of the festivities. Once again first world expectations and 3rd world reality don’t often meet at the same junction if ever.

We arrived to find most of the hotels totally booked and the shops and restaurants closed because Pongal is a ‘family’ holiday and while the town is flooded with Indians from far and near they are all with family behind their closed doors. Fortunately we did discover that the Indian government offered a free cultural tour for foreigners and a series of evening music and dance concerts in their effort to enhance tourism, boost India's image and of lesser consequence to celebrate Pongal. So we headed out for the evening performance and decided to join the tour the following morning.

Indians love noise and love it at full volume hence the evening Music and Dance performance was no different. It started at a full crescendo which couldn’t possibly go louder but did manage to increase in speed and the frenetic glee of the performers and Indian audience. Meanwhile the western audience was pop-eyed in shock and made desperate attempts to politely shield their ears. Ear piercing can not even begin to describe the sound that was penetrating every molecule of our flinching ear canals. Thankfully being the consummate travelers we were well prepared and quickly donned our OSHA safety earplugs. Being polite in India is not one of our worries but coming home deaf is! The concert continued and as most of us westerners crept away the Indians happily filled our VIP front row seats.

Janet and I planned for an early pre-tour breakfast the next morning and were assured by our hotel that the restaurant would be open at 6:30. Great! Come morning we were greeted and seated only to be informed that the restaurant is open but no food is available until 7:30. What were we thinking! No worries, the tour got a prompt Indian start 1 ½ hours later than schedule so we did get to eat after all.

The tour proved to be a huge photo op for the Counsel on India Tourism and yet another opportunity for us to observe the wonders of total Indian mayhem first hand. It followed the usual path of late buses only to be enhanced by a downpour and huge crowds of local Indian tourist also attending the free concert. We were ushered into the special ‘VIP white foreign tourist zone’ and listened to maybe 20 minutes (thank god) of the all day concert, photographed and ushered out to the next event…the bullock cart ride.

It’s lightly raining and we are loaded onto several oxcarts to be driven to the nearby small village for the next cultural performance. The beauty of the surrounding rice paddies escape us in the now pouring rain and the traffic which is being creating by the Indian tour organizers trying to pass and photograph us from their cars and our empty dry bus.

Drenched we are next ushered into the empty concrete bunker concert hall. The dancers are delayed, due to the rain and traffic but the more important photographers are there to continue the shoot. The French tourist laugh and burst into song, the Indian drummers arrive and join in the fest followed by the dancers and the Indian diplomats. The Indian camera crew goes wild as stage and audience merge into one mass of noise and flashing cameras. The line of camera crew then assume center stage completely upstaging and pushing back the performers as they face the audience and flash away at the ‘holy white tourist’ in attendance. Truely theater of the absurd, India style.

Once again, we are the real focal point of the show. Photos completed the camera crew exits followed by the front row of Indian diplomats and next our entire front foreign tourist section is once again whisked out as the performance continues behind us. We follow like sheep through the mud and downpour to the rice making demonstration photo shoot and back again through the rain and mud to the final lunch photo shoot. All in all it was a grand success for everyone concerned. We tourists had a hysterical time laughing our way through the mayhem and the India Counsel on Tourism got hundreds of photos of smiling tourists.

Full Moon in Madurai

I did my research, I read it on the internet, Teppam , the annual float festival was supposed to happen on the full moon in January in Madurai. We arrived after the 8 hour overnight train from Chennai, where we slept in a berth with 4 other snoring, coughing, and throat clearing Indians. That’s 2 triple bunk beds in an area the size of a very small Costco garden shed. It wasn’t a refreshing sleep.

The Teppam festival?

‘No madame, February full moon, not now’; so much for the accuracy of the internet and a good night’s sleep. We did manage to score a great room with an incredible view of the temples after arriving at the hotel looking like death warmed over at 6am. Foiled again, the temple gopuras (towers) are all being repainted (once every 12 years lucky us) and are completely covered. It’s a great view of bamboo scaffolding covered with palm fronds. Another opportunity to surrender to the moment and catch up on some needed sleep. Fortunately we are accustomed to India by now and the melodious cacophony of honking horns, roaring trains, temple music and people yelling in the streets has become almost a lullaby. If the bed is soft we are out like a light.

Madurai: Take 2. We arrive at dawn the next morning to join the pilgrims and view the majestic Sri Meenakshi-Sundareeshwara Temple complex. Everywhere we look there are views of the spectacularly huge covered towers, just Google Sri Meenakshi and I’m sure there are some great photos of the 12 towers uncovered. Wandering the inner labyrinth of the dimly lit complex surrounded by throngs of bare-chested and black clad ashen browed men felt a bit intimidating first thing in the morning. Sitting by the large inner pond of Golden Lotuses to watch the men seemed like a great way to lay low and get our bearings. Right, the only two westerners in the entire complex and two white women to boot, were we daft? It only took seconds before ‘Coming from? Which country? Ah, Amereeca! Verhi nice country! Obama! Yes!’ Only to be followed by snapping cell phones, huge grins and a compaction of bodies that only the Indians have mastered so well. Once again we are stars in their show and are probably screen savers all over India by now.
The temple? Oh well, hard to follow that act. We did manage to take some photos but viewing of the actual inner shrines is ‘forbidden to non-hindus’ gee, what a surprise and sneaking in unnoticed… never mind.