We did go visit the beach once during this trip and managed to spend a little under two hours. The added bonus was the presence of the cousins.
Previous beach post from same beach here and another beach here..
This trip in pictures and video..
It was a good place to practice panning shots of the kids on the "raatnams"!
What is a beach post without a video?
We had good fun the first few days in Chennai and this beach trip was a big part of it. We were also strongly discouraged by family from going to the Marina beach. Apparently it is in bad shape compared to our last trip in 2008. We will check it out on our next trip..
Talking of trips, my MIL told the girls
"daddy is thinking of selling everything here and going to Chennai. I am going to go live in Seattle.. You girls can come visit me for summer vacation here"
Jr. : So where will we be when daddy goes to Chennai?
MIL : he will take you all with him. he is not planning to go alone
Jr. : No way! I am not going..
LO : Jumps up and runs to me and says "I WILL GO!".. then gives me a hug and says "I will go with you but first you should make sure you kill all the mosquitoes in Madras and then I will come!"
All of us laughed out loud. So my going and living in Chennai is in the hands of the Madras Corporation who are incharge of eradicating mosquitoes and the rest of Chennaivasis who have to get rid of stagnant water!
Who knows? Maybe someone will invent an eradicator and I get to convince the little one?
Top ten items that are needed to convince <10 year old girls to relocate :
1- dry bathroom floors 2- western toilets 3- toilet paper 4- central air conditioning 5- inverters that keep fan running during powercuts 6- AC cars 7- no insects (ants, flies, mosquitoes, roaches etc.) 8- clean public restrooms 9- no stench (from roadside dumps, garbage trucks stuck in traffic etc.) 10-no street dogs
There are more items on the list but this is their priority list..
In middle school we were taught that the three colors in the Indian flag stood for courage, peace and prosperity...
Recently watched "Chak De India" on DVD and maybe I misinterpreted a song or misread the subtitles but there I was thinking that somehow the green had to do with the green so favoured by Muslims and the mind wandered..the Saffron for the Kar Sevaks and the Sangh Parivar? and the white for the Christian brotherhood?
A sign of religious unity perhaps put together by the wise men of the late 1940's to sow a subconscious sense of secularism?
Have been sick and the meds could be playing tricks on my mind, but then again, it is no coincidence no?
Finally got to a mirror site to read some Wikileaks. For some reason the links would not work on the sites or Firefox would scare me. Tonight the stars aligned and this site let me in..
This was nice reading. Was hoping to have a laugh at what came out of Delhi but found this one from Islamabad and it was interesting..
These two paragraphs really made it interesting..
Pakistan/India -------------- ¶8. (C) Petraeus said the most important threat to Pakistan was on the western border and internally. Terrorists were an existential threat to Pakistan. Kayani agreed. However, Kayani observed that he had postponed a missile test. The Indians, he said, in contrast, had conducted one just a few hours before. Kayani said he had no intention to resume missile testing as long as the current tensions persisted. He promised to be transparent with allies about his plans and had briefed us about his move of 6000 troops to the Indian border. Kayani said he was determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India. He recounted that he had taken no ISLAMABAD 00000155 003 OF 003 action the evening that Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had supposedly called President Zardari and threatened to declare war. Kayani asked to be alerted if the U.S. had any warning of another attack - he understood that the Indians had been warned about the Mumbai attack. He mentioned that discussion of the consequences of a follow-on attack made both India and Pakistan hostage to extremists and increased the likelihood of an attack. “If there is any clue about another attack,” he said, “please share it with us.”
and
Swat Valley ----------- ¶5. (C) Kayani was clear that the GOP had lost control of the Swat valley. He said the police had no ability to come in after the army to “hold” territory. He recounted that half of the 600 police officers, supposedly from the NWFP’s elite police units, destined for Swat had deserted, largely because there was no command structure. Petraeus replied that the U.S. had confronted this same issue in Iraq, describing it as a “clear and leave” strategy, requiring the retaking of the same ground multiple times. Petraeus observed that the police are the most vulnerable, since they are exposed in communities. Petraeus noted that increased measures to control population movements would probably have to be put in place throughout the country, which would require considerable manpower.
Pakistan has similar issues like Iraq when it comes to controlling extremists.
The military leadership is patient enough to not go for war. That is great. Maybe, maybe there will be a lasting peace when India and Pakistan jointly fight extremists.
The USA for its part is playing both sides. Well, that is to be expected!
India could have hastily gone to war and would be in the same boat as the USA. Thankfully there was no war. Looks like India was warned by the US about the attacks and the Pakistanis could not do anything about it either.
Just go through this stuff.. you might even find out who in India was warned about the attacks and what they did when they were warned!
This is one treasure trove of information which shows you that inspite of all that press and google and facebook being ubiquitous and in our face.. the hows and whys are always wrong!
Educated folks react to information thrown at them by the "in your face" media. We assume so many things, sway to popular opinion or in cases where we think we are better than the person who gets their news from facebook friends because we read and read a lot.. well, we read garbage!
If the press did what Wikileaks exposed on a daily basis, a lot of war, bloodshed would have been averted! A lot of politicians would have been exposed and their true colors come to light. People, countries might be more civil towards each other...
We spent the last 7 days of our trip in Mumbai. That meant all last minute shopping for clothes, food, books, videos, you name it.. and the usual evening outings to show the kids some outdoor fun.
The only thing about showing outdoor Mumbai fun to kids in August is you never know when it will rain. When it rains it almost always pours!
Here is a sample of the monsoon. We did not have any umbrellas on day 1 because we were still getting used to the concept. This video was taken outside Basu tailor.
All our Mumbai trips start with a visit to Basu tailor on day 1. Why? He stitches custom fit jeans for 400-500 rupees a Jeans (be it for the adults or kids) including any embroidery. Perfect fit jeans measured and stitched within 5 days!
We still have the 2003 batch, the 2007 batch and now the 2010 batch of Jeans. They are still in good condition, were it not for the expanding waistline. There is an entire street in Kings Circle, Mumbai where there are shops like Basu where you walk in, get your measurement taken, then proceed to pick the fabric from the 150 or so samples and walk out with a card. 4-5 days later, voila... you have jeans that fit you perfectly!
The next few days were spent in Mumbai malls as we switched to indoor fun. Have already mentioned the quality of the malls. They are fantastic!
The K-stars mall in local Chembur has a movie theater complex, a food court, a grocery store, a dozen apparel stores, sporting goods, etc. etc. The movie theater was state of the art!
Once we got through this mall three four times in a couple of days, the FIL decided to take us through the new Worli sea link to go to Washi.
The sea link is great. The drive alone with the water on either side is very nice. Reminded me of the umpteen trips we took on the golden gate bridge.
A long ride with a skyline view on one side.
This is the first mall that you see in Washi. Great shops, great ambiance.
Then we went to another bigger mall further down the same road as you exit the sea link. This one was HUGE! It had a food court that had a sampler of every favorite Indian joint as well as the International sampling. The Pizza hut in this mall was really classy. Have not seen any pizza hut like this in the US. Think Olive Garden interior, Pizza hut menu!
There are speciality stores that sell "only Parathas" and those parathas were downright yummy..
This mall has a t-shirt vending machine in the food court. In case you need to hide those marinara stains ?!
We also made it to the Gateway of India area one afternoon.
and went on yet another horsie ride. The kids were obsessed with horsies on this trip!
Just as we were about to get our hands on this "butta" it started drizzling. We made a mad dash to our parked car and by the time we got to our car, everyone was thoroughly drenched!
A couple of shots taken from the moving horse cart..
We also did the usual trips to Mahalakshmi temple (and ate those delicious pakoras after visiting the temple) and Siddhi Vinayak and drove through the Marine drive area a few times.
Mumbai has an ever changing skyline, a constant reduction in available open spaces, and screams "development" from every street corner.
The Taj hotel was ready to be reopened and that was heart warming..
At the end of the trip I told FIL that either Mumbai is going to be a shining example to the world or go into military rule pretty soon! Had good reasons to make that statement because there are big big holes in law enforcement and the society is truly pocketed and segregated.
It is true that when you go to SFO you see Chinatown, Little Japan, Little Saigon etc. etc. and there is a desi pocket. But there are no issues between these pockets or within the pockets (or they do not come out in the news!). Mumbai is different. It is like a reaction waiting to happen. You sense it in the air.. from small things like the Butta vendor requesting we delete his photograph because "things are very difficult for them in the Gateway area" where "them" implied "muslims" to the auto rickshaw drivers choosing select routes to be on the safe side.
This is tricky business for a city that is "going viral" like a hit youtube video!
Now we get to look forward to our next India trip....
We spent one day in Delhi and saw a lot of places, from an evening drive through Old Delhi trying to catch glimpses of the Red Fort in peak traffic,
Moving through Delhi-6 in pouring rain,
sharing the roads with nice horsies which pulled loads
then visiting the Samadhi Complex and a Namaskaram to Gandhi Thatha at Raj Ghat,
It was raining, and within minutes the sun comes up and it is hot .. very hot.
This doggy guarded our van and cooled off at the same time
We had a short ice cream break..
or a chai and lassi break..
driving through the endless series of government buildings and landmarks that grace all currency notes,
a view point only trip of Akshardham temple,
the Bahai Lotus temple,
ISKON temple,
Birla Mandir,
some fast paced shopping at a place called Lajpat Nagar ending with another drive late in the night through the well lit government buildings...
One thing that was really interesting was the "New Delhi welcomes all Kavadi Pilgrims" banners flying everywhere.. There was a heavy congregation of them around this Carol Bagh area with the Giant Hanuman statue..
Did do my best to discourage the group from going to old Delhi, but.. they all wanted to see Delhi-6.
Thought the whole Kavadi thing was a south Indian Murugan temple concept. Did not know that it was prevalent in the north w.r.t. Haridhwar temple. There were guys walking all around Delhi with orange underwear carrying decorated Kavadis. We also saw people blaring religious songs in big trucks with a bunk bed on top of each truck, a motorcycle in each truck and 7-8 guys. The truck also looked like kitchen/living quarters for the 7-8 dudes. One guy runs 2 kilometers with the Kavadi, then he gets on the truck and another guy takes his place.
Apparently it is a Kavadi relay where they keep it going without the thing ever touching the ground all the way from Delhi to Haridhwar. . . It was interesting to watch to say the least.
We picked "the worlds slowest and most careful driver". He had no sense of urgency whatsoever. He stopped for every other car to cross us, slowed down at every yellow light and kept telling us the same diaglogue:
"sir, laal baththi ho gaya naa Sir. Ise liye traffic bad gaya!".. Many a time I was just tempted to clobber him over the head and take over the steering wheel. Still we made it to the Taj Mahal and back in one day.
We were told it is a 5 hour journey from Delhi and it took him a good 8 hours to go and a nice 7 hours to come back.
Spending 15 hours between 6AM and 11PM in a van with two little kids is an experience in itself. With the itch to clobber Mr. Laal Baththi every 30 minutes, it was definitely an interesting experience!
He was a nice guy and a family man.. so he kept giving me a lecture on safe driving. My point was "the risk between going 15 mph to 25 mph is not different"
Next time we will need to have the driver do a little 8 outside the hotel lobby before we get inside the vehicle.
Until then...
ps. on a funny note..
We went to Raj Ghat and Jr.'s sandals (Chappals) tore. So she had to stay put in the parking lot with grandma. Told her we were going to see the place where Gandhi's ashes were stored.
Jr. asked me "Ghandhi is like Martin Luther King for India right? He also had a dream?"
Me : Martin Luther King is like Gandhi for the USA. He had the dream first.. MLK was inspired by Gandhi. Did you know that?
Jr.: ?! (finally Jr. realized what she had learnt in her history class).
Saw this inscription on the way ..
Did not have the mind to post the picture I took of the paan that was spit on the side of this inscription just as you enter the grounds of Gandhiji's resting place.
My heart could not bear it. Who spits paan at Mahatmaji's memorial?
Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 3:19PM 
