Chennai - Mahabalipuram - Pondicherry - Chidambaram - Tiruchirappalli - Dindigul – Madurai – Virudhunagar – Tirunelveli – Kanyakumari
A Sense of Things
Naivety dies a quick death in Tamil Nadu.
My conceit had been to imagine I had any idea of what was coming.
I
had anticipated colour: the explosive red of drying chilies, the
alabaster white of ancient temples, the rust-mottled carriages of
skyblue trains in front of swollen green foliage.
Academically, I knew there’d be noise and bustle too, but all I could see in my mind was a succession of frozen, vibrant images.
Then Chennai--our first stop--and my conceit was dead by the side of the road before my feet hit the pedals.
India
rests on no-one’s laurels. Home to a Babel-load of languages, even more
gods and the most crowded example of democracy going, it’s a
schizophrenic, spice-breathed leviathan held together by 1.2 billion
people working to secure India’s place or at least their next meal. It
doesn’t have time to coddle your senses.
Too
bad if you arrive, as I did, with comfort-dulled senses used to orderly
stimuli. India doesn't wait as a Jungle Book photomontage.
India reaches out, grabs all five of your senses and stretch them to limits you couldn’t have believed: sound like it’s aimed at you, taste from more than meals, smells so thick they have texture, touch a constant thudding assault, views crowded with life in its many messy forms. All jostling and striking simultaneously, churning together and almost never letting up.
It was full sensory overload and we were on the roads.
From
the first nerve-flaying metre of asphalt outside Chennai International
Airport, where aged and overburdened scooters, motorbikes and
autorickshaws buzzed past in the noise-for-noise’s-sake cacophony of a
million cheerfully bashed horns; south past the dry plains by the Bay of Bengal on roads that went from smooth highway to washboard; then towards the interior, where vegetation thickened and clay-coloured fisherman cast nets in ancient rivers; and
south again, alongside green fields rustling west to the chalk-soft
bulk of the Ghats and through the otherworldly sounds of one of the
world’s largest wind farms, to the very tip of South India.
Over
two weeks, cycling five or more hours a day through humidity like
warmed molasses, the acrid taste of burnt rubbish at the back of our throats
and dust everywhere else, passing a few cities that boasted grand Hindu
temples and many more road-skirting villages that didn’t, where
tin-roofed huts offered thimble-sized cups of chai tea, sacred cows
chewed on rubbish and it was no-one’s biggest worry that three wealthy westerners were a bit overwhelmed by all the crowded noise.
People
talk of going to India to find themselves. We limited ourselves to a
bikeride and it was probably best: I found everyone else and nearly lost
the ability to tell up from down.
And the colours?
Our photos look good from a calm, detangled distance.
*
Cyclo-Celebrities
We were never going to blend in.
We had spaceage bikes. Our route took us through non-starter towns too small to offer many other distractions. And even if they had, we were in a state where everyone else had the same Tamil features, a conspicuously foreign trio that included Dheiu, who, 6’ 4” and coal-black, clad in a high-visibility shirt, khaki snowboarding helmet and red bandana-turned-dustmask, looked something like a landscaping Bloods gansta with a fondness for Nazi memorabilia.
We caught some glances.
At the side of the road there were mustachioed men whose heads rotated with our passing, unblinking appraisal warming into smiles and loose-necked head wobbles.
There were children who would call out breathless greetings and wave excitedly.
There were the women – few that we saw, Tamil Nadu being a man’s world in public at least – walking by, more likely to stare or giggle amongst themselves than to call out or smile.
There were the reactions of those on the roads with us, the drive-by conversations with teenage boys and young men who would arrive next to us with a scratch of brakes, packed two or three to a motorbike, oblivious to oncoming traffic or any other concern less important than greeting us and satisfying their curiosity with English that seemed like it had been learnt from a customs’ declaration form printed before television: What is your occupation? From what country are you? For what purpose is your visit?
And, in restaurants and shops at the end of the day, a rotating cast of hypereducated university students, wry physicists and bombastic magistrates, crestfallen cricket anoraks and countless others.
Like, truly, literally countless.
Before India, overpopulation was an abstraction that evoked vague images of pestilence and held no connection to me. Within a few days of cycling it was as simple and physical as crowd after crowd of people wanting to say hi.
In restaurants, hotels, riding the roads and walking the streets, we gave as much friendliness as we could. We feigned ignorance of surreptitious photos and posed in many more. We returned waves and head wobbles. We high-fived rows of just-dismissed schoolkids in shining clean uniforms.
At other times it was harder to respond, at least with sincerity. We had our excuses: heat, exhaustion, senses burning close to the wire and the emotional drain of close-up poverty and suffering.
Still, the slow rub of celebrity tested our generosity and revealed its limits.
We didn't throw any phones at receptions but we sometimes surrendered to madness and low humour. We sang as loudly as we could when passing small villages, winked at shy women and responded to pleasantries with unmodulated yells.
More often we withdrew into ourselves, seeking to rebuild some small personal bubble. It could be as simple as keeping your eyes on the road in front of you or plugging your ears with a favoured playlist and noise-cancelling headphones.
We worked collaboratively too, rotating positions to share the burden of interaction. In the middle was the sweet spot; riding point got you a dignitary's job of waving, while coming up the rear left you exposed to drive-by conversations.
These were the people who had literally offered me the robes from off their backs and we, at our most worn-down, drowned them out with music, avoided their gaze and rostered positions to minimise contact.
I left Tamil Nadu awed by the warmth and friendliness I had found there and a little humbled by my own limits.
We had spaceage bikes. Our route took us through non-starter towns too small to offer many other distractions. And even if they had, we were in a state where everyone else had the same Tamil features, a conspicuously foreign trio that included Dheiu, who, 6’ 4” and coal-black, clad in a high-visibility shirt, khaki snowboarding helmet and red bandana-turned-dustmask, looked something like a landscaping Bloods gansta with a fondness for Nazi memorabilia.
We caught some glances.
At the side of the road there were mustachioed men whose heads rotated with our passing, unblinking appraisal warming into smiles and loose-necked head wobbles.
There were children who would call out breathless greetings and wave excitedly.
There were the women – few that we saw, Tamil Nadu being a man’s world in public at least – walking by, more likely to stare or giggle amongst themselves than to call out or smile.
There were the reactions of those on the roads with us, the drive-by conversations with teenage boys and young men who would arrive next to us with a scratch of brakes, packed two or three to a motorbike, oblivious to oncoming traffic or any other concern less important than greeting us and satisfying their curiosity with English that seemed like it had been learnt from a customs’ declaration form printed before television: What is your occupation? From what country are you? For what purpose is your visit?
And, in restaurants and shops at the end of the day, a rotating cast of hypereducated university students, wry physicists and bombastic magistrates, crestfallen cricket anoraks and countless others.
Like, truly, literally countless.
Before India, overpopulation was an abstraction that evoked vague images of pestilence and held no connection to me. Within a few days of cycling it was as simple and physical as crowd after crowd of people wanting to say hi.
In restaurants, hotels, riding the roads and walking the streets, we gave as much friendliness as we could. We feigned ignorance of surreptitious photos and posed in many more. We returned waves and head wobbles. We high-fived rows of just-dismissed schoolkids in shining clean uniforms.
At other times it was harder to respond, at least with sincerity. We had our excuses: heat, exhaustion, senses burning close to the wire and the emotional drain of close-up poverty and suffering.
Still, the slow rub of celebrity tested our generosity and revealed its limits.
We didn't throw any phones at receptions but we sometimes surrendered to madness and low humour. We sang as loudly as we could when passing small villages, winked at shy women and responded to pleasantries with unmodulated yells.
More often we withdrew into ourselves, seeking to rebuild some small personal bubble. It could be as simple as keeping your eyes on the road in front of you or plugging your ears with a favoured playlist and noise-cancelling headphones.
We worked collaboratively too, rotating positions to share the burden of interaction. In the middle was the sweet spot; riding point got you a dignitary's job of waving, while coming up the rear left you exposed to drive-by conversations.
These were the people who had literally offered me the robes from off their backs and we, at our most worn-down, drowned them out with music, avoided their gaze and rostered positions to minimise contact.
I left Tamil Nadu awed by the warmth and friendliness I had found there and a little humbled by my own limits.
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