You CAN retrieve your manners!

I am living proof! My knitting homies and fellow middle-aged "women who spill food down their front " will be agog! Since we've arrived in India I have spilled not one drop of soup, not one morsel of food, not one crumb of anything anywhere upon my person! Wearing a dupatta gives a little incentive as it is in the first line of dripcatching defense and many of them need to be hand-washed only. At first, I thought I could succeed somehow by doing a little time and motion study, but as this involved math, I went with the intuitive. My secret? Lift the eating implement in question in slow-mo and then covertly freeze it part way up to assess - too much on the fork? Parts already starting to make a getaway? Dreaded drippiness imminent? You can actually put the fork back down and reload - it's amazing! Bring it up again - everything going well? Proceed - but slowly! Slowness and eyeballing the whole time works! Unlike running out of gas, driving faster will not get you there before you run out and spill the works. I knew this once in my youth, and my mother definitely raised me right in this area, but somehow it became more important to give my attention to anything but actual eating at the table. This does not mean that I will give up all work on the "Attractively-Disguised Bib for Middle-aged Food Spillers" design that I have toyed with for years. Let's face it, some times you just wanna eat and not act like you're out in public.

Perhaps you wondered at the very short haircuts on the grandmother and granddaughter in the last post? The most likely reason is that they sacrificed their hair at a particular temple. Hindus in South India are very devout and traditional and comprise the largest segment of Hindus per capita in India as a whole (guidebooks will tell you this - not just making it up). Sacrificing your hair by having your head shaved in the temples that do this is an act of devotion and great humility - as well as a thank you for prayers answered about an important area. Men do this too but it's more significant for the women who all wear their hair long and where it's considered such an important part of their attractiveness. For a poor person, this may be all they have to sacrifice to the temple, but it's done across all financial levels. On the day we drove down to Pondi we were chatting with our driver Bala about the yearly fire festival at the Shiva temple south of town. In Hinduism people will branch off and worship Vishnu or Shiva or other Gods in particular and go to temples dedicated to that deity. Shaivites (Shiva worshipers) have one to three lines in white painted across the space just above and between the eyebrows in addition to a red or orange dot. Vaishnavites (Vishnu worshipers) will have two vertical lines with a dot in the same location. These are applied at the temple which the more devout visit every morning before or on the way to work.

So for this Shiva festival, one million (not an exaggeration!) people come from all over for 1 to 3 days by car, bus, plane and just by walking. It always coincides with the full moon. They walk around a large hill located next to the temple on the first night and it's a 30k walk! It often takes them all night as they stop to rest, take turns carrying the children, and helping the elderly. Bala and his parents, uncle, very pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter all made this walk and then went home to breakfast and bed after working a full day. On the top of the hill the sacred fire is lit in a special ceremony and kept burning for 3 days and nights. The vat where it burns contains 3 tons of ghee. Hard to imagine isn't it? Actually thousands of pilgrims walk around the hill every full moon, but this yearly festival is when a million people show up. Bala said sometimes it's a five-mile walk into the city and temple from the closest place you can park with all the visitors there.

Shiori asked if I'd found that yarn store in Chennai. The kind Mr. Chirpgoogle had searched the net for me before we left and he spoke as though he'd found a store. When he actually sent me a link, it turns out to be a store called Raja threads that carries actual wool instead of the few bits of synthetic in the few places that have it. Apparently no one in South India has heard of a circular needle because many have searched with no success. I plan to visit Raja Threads as soon as we have our next trip to Chennai and see exactly what's available. North India, Pakistan and Kashmir is where all the sheep and goats live and where wool and knitting are much more popular. I DO seem to get much conversational mileage out of knitting, which I do everywhere we go here - especially in restaurants. Those most interested are males from the age of 20 to 40ish because it brings back fond memories of their mother or more likely their grandmother ("you mean someone old like me, right?" I say to them) knitting something for them and they were vary touched by these handmade gifts. When I was here two years ago I brought a hand spindle and spun everywhere I went. Both men and women were interested but completely mystified by what I was doing. No one even guessed what it was. This not more than 100 yards from the Ghandi statue! However, spinning is done all on charka these days and much of it on bigger charkas with 4 bobbins that are just short of mechanized. Apparently the town of Coimbatore has a lot of charka spinning and we may be able to go there due to a business interview the dear husband needs to do. The trick in India is to keep asking questions of everyone, over and over - even if you are told it doesn't exist - and eventually you find out what you need.

Here are some scenes from Chennai before we left. The first two are out of the window of the Executive Lounge at the Marriott hotel in Chennai. What a lovely place to knit and drink coffee while enjoying the view or using the wireless connection. Seems I mostly did ripping, not knitting, but I seem to have settled down to finishing a few things.

College girls going shopping after classes:

Was I ever this young?

Everyone wants a catchy name for their shop:

Inside Spencer's Plaza - a large enclosed mall fairly famous for shopping in Chennai. Did I mention that Chennai is the fourth largest city in India and the population is around six million? That means one million could go down to the Shiva festival for three days and you'd barely notice a difference!

An entrance to one of the Fabindia branches. There are sidewalks in cities only along major roads and thoroughfares. Most of the neighborhoods make do with cinder blocks, bricks or flat rocks to jump the gap between the street and the (often) flooded area of the gutters. The gutters can be very deep and in many places there will be a board over several rocks to span the gap. You do NOT want to step in the gutter, dry or wet. Water is considered the chief purifying element in Hinduism so everyone is constantly sluicing things down to clean them - particularly the gutters, but it's a heck of a task.

A typical neighborhood intersection.

Quittin' time! Everybody goin' home.

Lady Biker in traffic. The white things hanging down on either side of her hair are strands of jasmine. Lots more people wearing helmets than there used to be but still way too many without. The guys tie a Madras-patterned handkerchief around their head under their helmets - for rivulet control I assume.

Temple seen through the car window. Pondi has over 360 temples. Chennai has thousands. Most are carefully kept up, even if it's a tiny roadside shrine - with offerings of flowers and food.

Senior citizen.

Decorations on older building through tinted car window. Don't know what to call them.