take your first step out of the uber crowded chennai airport, and a gust of hot, polluted wind hits your face. try to leave the airport (in a handy-dandy ambassador car) and the lane-less-traffic chaos blows your mind away. if i don't go blind with the constant battering of my corneas with globules of particulate pollution, i'll go deaf with the incessant honking of honks right into my damn ears.



point to note - the autos have upgraded their horn system. no more squeeze-squeeze horns. proper, LOUD ones are making their presence known. i also feel that the increased pollution (my last proper visit was 2004) and heat (progressive global warming) makes it very un-enjoyable to try and get a whiff of the auto's diesel (aka. fumes sniffing). what a loss. ><



but i have to say, this chaos is an unbelievable change. unbelievable good, or unbelivable bad? can't say yet. while the ride to my cousin's (twice removed i think) poonnal was a scene out of a horror film (the auto travelled at speeds unmatched making blind turns at every corner and grazing the sides of huge trucks with an inch to spare), the food was FANTASTIC. hahahaha. love being south indian for the yelai sappadu. the kid was so cute. once the main moohoortam thing was done. he went "yeah. i'm a brahmachari". then he got loads of cash from everyone, and was then super happy. but a good one-hour later, he still had stuff to do while everyone else started, and some finished, eating. by this time, he was pissed. +1 to the number of eligible brahmin boys in moscow. (;



another point to note, it was a challenge for my father and i to walk around pretending to remember everyone, and worse, their names. my father resorted to messaging my mother in s'pore to find out the name of her cousin he'd been talking to for the last hour.



so we're back in nandhanam. stuffed. and happy. will be going salwar-shopping-and-stitching. can't wait for the train ride to trichy tmrw. although i'll be kissing goodbye to the computer for a good 4 days. maybe i'll survive.



ps. dp, think i've met your long-lost sister. the woman on SQ (or the voice on the recording at least) was mad. her tamil was soo crazy! she said this big long word for "seat belts". and then said "adhaavadhu, seat belts", realising normal tamilians wouldn't have understood that kind of a nutty word anyway. and similar stuff for the tray and the window shade-screen. we had a good laugh.



pps. aiyah. singapore airlines no good looking guys. the girls were more eyecandy! i still rank my jet airways trip in 07 no.1 for eyecandy, followed by emirates, on the departure leg, this year. (: