Sunday 23d November 2008

We’ve come to Chennai to catch the train back up north, and in the meantime to experience something of one of India’s biggest cities. Eva asks the Chennai hotel travel desk what we should do here. The man behind the counter frowns and replies, “Mamallapuram.”

We arrive in a monsoon downpour, brown rain leaking through the rattling window frames as we pass the scattered random dwellings of the city. Dogs who have given up on trying to swim their way across the road lie limply on corrugated iron roofs, while men take shelter below them, hanging around tea stalls, elbows leaning on the counter. Even my camera gives up the ghost in this town – hence the lack of photos on this post – sighing its last muggy breath.

All work and no pay makes Chennai a dull town. Chennai’s financial district, one of the largest in India, looms tall across the horizon, its office highrises topped with the banners of Standard Chartered, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and HSBC. Traffic labours down the main streets, mired in the small lakes that spread apace where basic drainage lacks.

The search for entertainment is disappointingly fruitless. The city’s small multiplex cinema, our only real hope, is sold out. We visit the ‘government museum’, enthusiastically recommended in the Rough Guide as the city’s best attractions. Of the four ornate buildings that make up the museums and galleries, three are barred by rusty padlocks. The woman behind the ticket desk sighs, rips a couple of chits in half, and throws them at us, as she gabbles on her mobile phone and nods in the direction of the one building that seems to still be open. Inside, there are two floors of ‘art’ and ‘Indian heritage’. The former, on the upper level, consists largely of art shop prints of Van Gogh and Renoir in gold-ish frames. The latter resembles nothing more than some of the pots, drums and incense holders culled from the markets outside and placed in glass cases with labels. The security guard nods in our direction and then settles back down to his lethargy. Having used up ten minutes of the eight hours left to waste until dinner, we stare at each other vacantly.

It seems there are two things to do in Chennai: work, and nothing.

This is not entirely true, of course: alternative entertainment of the less cultured, more alcoholic kind is aplenty for the blue-collar workers coming down from their ivory towers. Where bars and nightclubs seem to be lacking, their potential customers crippled by the 58% tax imposed upon them, hotels make a roaring trade on clientele who pick up the drinks tab on the company credit card. In the evening, flashing neon signs indicate these ‘permit rooms’, small lounges with black walls and sports screens. They normally play some form of seventies disco, which thumps from behind smoked-out windows. In front of them, the men who have only just been able to loosen their ties and undo their top buttons are smoking cigars.

Chennai is the fourth biggest town in India, and brings in a large chunk of its revenue. After finance, Chennai is Kollywood, the largest Indian film-producing area outside Bombay.

Sitting on the local bus to our hotel, passengers are squeezed in tight around us. With my backpack on one side, and an old lady’s protruding stomach on the other, I couldn’t stand up to offer my seat, even if such a gallant sentiment should overtake me. But twenty minutes into our journey, there is a loud elephant call, and two policemen leap on board from the centre of the market, and haul off four boys, holding by the ears like a bunch of naughty Victorian chimney sweeps. They are dragged off, half-grinning, into a nearby police station. This whole incident leaves the bus in a state of chaos as a virtual stampede begins and everyone jostles and gabbles madly, people holding on to the passenger handles for dear life. Instead of an incident of teenage light-fingered behaviour, it seems an act of terrorism has been committed. Stories are swapped, ‘did you see that?’ ‘perhaps it is the beginning of the end for our city.’ After all, in every town, there are always those who’ll make their own entertainment.