Pulicat week 2
Last weekend we left Pulicat and came back to feral for the weekend. it was uneventful. Sunday we drove back by way of Chennai. Chennai is one of the biggest cities in India. We’ve been on the outskirts, at the airport and at a college, but not in the city before. It was not what I expected.
We were told Pondicherry was a small town, but it’s easily bigger than Syracuse. There are busy streets, tons of shops, tons of people, etc. I figured a city would be the same but bigger. What I’ve learned is that city vs town vs village isn’t really about population here. It’s about infrastructure and modernization.
Pulicat is a rural village. There are a lot of people, a lot more than I expected to be in a rural village, but they live fairly simply. many people fish for a living. buildings are not very big. there is not much shopping besides food and a few odds and ends. Cows and goats and dogs are around everywhere. There are not too many vehicles, but especially not cars. Pondicherry is bigger and more modern. There is lots of traffic. Still very few cars, but tons of motorcycles and scooters and buses and trucks. The buildings are bigger - 3-4 stories, and you can buy almost anything there. I was able to get glasses. There are restaurants and clothing stores and electronics stores and most everything else. There are still dogs and cats around, and the occasional cow, especially on the edges of town.
Chennai was very different. There was still a lot of traffic, but there were cars, and not nearly so many motorcycles. I didn’t see any animals around. The only place we went was an actual shopping mall. We ate dinner at the food court. Nicole and I went to Subway. I ordered the roasted turkey breast sub off the international favorites menu. It was exactly like home. The rest of the menu was very Indian (tandoori chicken sandwich and stuff). I kept a copy of a little one to bring home. The mall reminded me of penn station and port authority - with lots of stuff crammed in and fairly low ceilings and lots of people around. Stuff was pretty cheap and they had all sorts of stuff.
The clothing being sold and the clothing we saw people wearing was much more western. In Pulicat and even in Pondy, most women wear saris. The younger women, especially ones who are from the cities wear tunics with pants. Most men wear more western things - lots of short sleeved button up shirts and khakis. Some, especially the older and lower class ones wear skirt like things that I don’t remember the name of. They are basically pieces of cloth that are worn wrapped around like a towel. They are either floor length or folded in half to about knee length. In Chennai, we saw a lot more jeans and t-shirts, for both genders. Very few saris. Stores sold a lot of ordinary looking western clothing. Stores in Pondy sell some, but you don’t see people wearing it. It’s mostly a tourist market.
Pulicat was the same as it was before. There were tons and tons of mosquitoes. Lectures were long and rather boring. Powerpoint is still new to most professors, so they haven’t really got the hang of using it to give lectures, so they are not very good.
On one day we went to a shrimp farm. They have giant ponds where they raise shrimp to export. It was interesting. I had never seen anything like it.
One day we went on a walk around town and I took a bunch of pictures. I haven’t looked at them yet. I hope they came out well. It was nice to be able to walk into town. There were a few good bakeries and an ice cream stand.
Thursday we went on a tour of a nearby island. It felt like a safari because we were riding in a van on really rough roads and the professor was telling us about stuff as we went along, but we were looking at people and towns, not animals. The island used to be very isolated, and the tribes there had lived there in their own way for generations. Most people fished. Even now, many people try to. The caste system there is very prominent. The lowest people have their own little settlement away from the others. Their job is to go clean out the toilet pits in the other town by hand and carry the waste away. They only get paid 2 rupees a month, but they are given food and clothing. They are basically slaves. At a local temple, there were human sacrifices going on until the 1990s, usually virgin girls. It’s scary to think that this kind of thing still goes on in the world.
People used to live all over the island, but recently industries have moved into the southern end of it. There are desalination and petrochemical plants all dumping sludge into the ocean. This has driven away most of the fish. People work in the factories, but the factory provided housing looked really bad, and there is no education. People have moved north, but there is still not sufficient fishing for everyone. Some resort to illegal distilleries. It seemed that there was a lot of alcoholism on the island. I can see why. I guess the island is what is below villages on the scale here. They are still back a couple of centuries with only the bad parts of modernization coming in.
Thursday afternoon we left Pulicat for good. We stopped at MCC on the way back to have tea with the professors again, and we all got certificates and free MCC mugs to take home. It was very cute. They tried to make everything very official seeming. It’s a very old school kind of place.
Now we are back at feral. Today we had off and we went into Pondy. We had lunch out and I bought a few things to take to Goa with me for break.
We leave on the train for Goa tomorrow night. We have an overnight ride to Bangalore, a day in Bangalore, and then an overnight train to Goa. I hope I can sleep. We each get a bunk, so hopefully it will be ok. I’m excited to see Bangalore. It’s another big city, and it is where Tara, one of our main teachers, is from. I need to find a used book store. I’m also excited for spring break in Goa. There should be a lot to see!
