Pondicherry: the only time I had heard of the coastal town before coming to India was in a literary context. Yann Martel’s masterpiece Life of Pi briefly takes place in Pondicherry, as the titular protagonist of the story is born there. To be honest, even up until a couple of weeks ago, I doubt that […]
Gents Only, Ladies Not Allowed
Chennai Entry: Gents Only, No Ladies Allowed For this entry, I want to write about a specific difficult incident that happened while in Chennai. This post does not represent my experience in Chennai as a whole, just one experience I had about a week ago. There was one night during my three weeks in Chennai […]
The Juice Stand (Chennai, India)
I can’t believe that the second portion of our trip is already ending! With just over a month left in India, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on Chennai, as well as hope to get as much as I can out of the trip from now until December 6th, when I depart. During […]
Reading My Way Through Chennai
India has been an overwhelming experience for even the most prepared of us. Every day we go out, our senses are bombarded by the variety that is city street life. It is wonderful, exciting, but sometimes really draining. One of my hidden pleasures of being in Chennai has been choosing times to find the quiet […]
Classical Dance: Bharatanatyam
For the last week in Chennai, we had two dance instructors from Kerala come and teach us Bharatanatyam (a traditional dance that originated in southern India). Before we would begin dancing, we would dedicate a large portion of our time into relaxing our mind and body by doing yoga. For one of my assignments, I […]