The trip over was long but uneventful. We left Newark around 8:30pm on the 16th, arrived in Mumbai on the 17th close to midnight, transferred to the domestic terminal and sat there waiting for the 6:25am flight on the 18th to Chennai. In truth, the whole thing took about 30 hours, rather than 72 but with the time changes it was quite impressive.
We were very impressed with:
- the Indian food on Continental
- the airports. 6 years ago the Mumbai airport was awful and now it was modern and clean and with friendly staff.
We all converged in the hotel around 10am, and Prahladh, our friend arrived as well.
Prahladh will travel with us in the next 5 days. His parents are from Madurai and Trichi, temple cities in the south that we'll eventually get to.
He made many plans already, so Edna and the kids had no time to rest, just quick showers.
Here are the highlights of this full day.
Kuchipudi dance school.
Kuchipudi is one of 6 Indian dance forms, which Prahladh is very seriously into. We went to his old school, where he studied during his undergrad days in IIT Chennai. We sat hypnotized (Yuval and Na'ama dozing at the same time) during a regular lesson. Hopefully the pictures and short video reveal some of this sense - here is a more professional clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEUFNSlxpKk
Then to lunch at K.V.'s. KV is a friend who is at CMI (Chnnai Math Institute) who helped organized our stay here.
On a short notice he cooked a delicious lunch for us at home. His wife, a poet, was at work, teaching poetry at IIT Chennai, but we got one of her books of poems as gift (this seems to be a trend - we are accumulating books as you'll see).
Then, to pick up the tix for the evening performances we were going to see. They were purchased by Prahlad's great aunt, a lady of about 85, and the visit to her house was an event on its own. She is a famous music scholar, as was her father- both taught and have written many books (we got one of each). She is also a famous veena player and teacher, and has a beautiful music room in the basement which is full of them. It was really interesting talking to her, and get a glimpse of Prahladh's illustrious family. One of her brothers, and another cousin, are both Nobel laurates in Physics!
Finally Edna and the kids got to rest a bit in the hotel, while Prahladh and I strolled the streets.
We left the hotel again at 6pm and went to a music concert - a woman singer, a drummer and a violonisit. It was a bi monotone so we kept dozing off. We spent the 1/2 hour until the dance performance in a sari shop - it was huge and full of customers (locals, not tourists) - Indian consumerism seems to be definitely on the rise!
It was funny to look at the 2 Santas the store had - they wore rather scary masks, but did the Santa thing of giving out candy, and the children did not seem scared. We were of course followed by a salesgirl who must have been disappointed with our meager purchases - a pair of leggings for Na'ama.
The dance performance was very interesting - and the most amazing part was the involvement of the dancer's face and in particular her eyes in the dance - they were most expressive. The dances had some mythological themes and there was a short explanation to each dance which was helpful.
We ended the evening at a nice buffet in a nearby hotel - lots of food and very tasty. Nobody had any trouble falling asleep after this long day.
We are now waiting for our driver who is late and stuck in traffic, then will pick Praladh up and start our trip south.
No comments:
Post a Comment