Madras

On the 26th, my husband, Ragsy and I headed for Madras. One thing you'll notice on any flight within India (or at least on Jet Airways within India) is that you get full meal service with real china, napkins and silverware, even if it's considered a "snack." And the food is really good, too. Meals include an entree served with rice and often chapatis, too, plus yogurt, dessert, and fruit or salad, along with After Mint, candy, water, juice and coffee or tea. Snacks contain everything but the yogurt and I still haven't figured out why they're considered snacks.

But I digress.

So, we got to Madras the afternoon of the 26th, found my husband's grandfather's driver and headed to my grandfather-in-law's (we'll call him Tata now - it's what we all call him and it's a heck of a lot easier) flat. The weather was much hotter than Bombay - probably low to mid 90's and very humid. Most people in Madras are shorter and much darker than in the middle of the country. Many descend from the Dravidians, whose origin is unknown.

When we arrived at Tata's, Ragsy was starting to get uncomfortable in the heat. My husband's Tata rarely uses air conditioning and it's only available in the bedrooms anyway, so we were all sweating a lot. Which was no big deal for me and my husband, but for Ragsy that was apparently a problem. From the moment we arrived at Tata's to the moment he went to sleep there was more or less non-stop screaming. Not only was he hot, my husband's Tata is deaf so everyone in the house more or less yells when they speak. It's actually quite funny in retrospect. All these people so excited to see my son, getting into his face, yelling their hellos and him shrieking, "Mommy!" Then they'd try to take him away to distract him, which didn't go over well.

Anyway, things settled down, though Ragsy refused to eat anything unless it was dried fruit or biscuits that I had brought as snacks with us, eaten in the air-conditioned comfort of the bedroom.

That first day was tough - very tough - on all of us. Mostly on Ragsy, but kids can manage to make their bad day into everyone else's, too. Still, once Ragsy managed to go to sleep and we settled down a little, we had a wonderful meal of sambhar, poppard, rice and dahi (yogurt) with sweets.

The second day was even better. We didn't do a whole lot - mostly sat around and talked - but Ragsy at least stopped screaming quite as much (though not entirely) and got to run around a bit on the roof of Tata's building.

The third day was even better still. We went to the ruins of this beautiful old Hindu temple, Mahabalipuram. The place was fantastic. It was right next to the sea and covered in elaborate carvings of the gods. It also had a beautiful museum and shop next door. We had a great time visiting, then went to a restaurant called Woodlands that has some sister restaurants in the States and other locations in India. We went back and relaxed for a while and ate another metric ton of food for dinner, then passed out in a gluttonous stupor.

The next day, Tata insisted on buying me jewelry. Not that I hate jewelry, but it was pretty weird nonetheless. He was pretty fixated on the idea. So we went out and got jewelry. Then he bought me, my husband and Ragsy some clothes and we went out to lunch to Woodlands and came back.

We spent about three days in Madras. It was wonderful, but Ragsy continued to be pretty upset and clingy throughout the visit. He only made friends with Tata's caregiver at the end of the visit. She was absolutely delighted and so was I.

In Madras, he learned to say water in both Hindi and English. He also had his first sip of coffee (apparently kids are can have coffee as soon as they start drinking anything other than breastmilk; we were not too happy with that) and absolutely loved it, much to my chagrin. He also learned to say coffee, elevator, Tata and a few other words. He also learned that he loved to spin round and round in the middle of the elaborate symbols painted on Tata's living room and kitchen floors. He then used that knowledge to make offerings of gold chrysanthemums to the gods at the little shrine in the kitchen.

I wish I could do justice to our visit to India. I'm not and I hate it. Bombay was wonderful and chaotic; Madras was tropical and sweaty and beautiful and green. Our last morning there, before we got on our flight to Delhi, we went to an old temple site with a pond in front of it. The pond was full of catfish that flipped and flopped and slipped on top of each other to get the puffed sweet rice we threw them. Ragsy absolutely loved it.

What I learned in Madras (okay, this isn't everything I learned in Madras):

Ragsy doesn't like to sweat.

Caste is still alive and well, despite the fact that it's illegal.

Bedbug bites look similar to mosquito bites, but not exactly like them (yes, there's a whole other story behind that one).