Shore Temple at Mahaballipuram and Brunch at Fisherman's Cove

If you click here, you'll see some photos from today's excursion to a shore temple - built 1300 years ago along the coast and still standing - and a long, decadent brunch within earshot of the lazy waves rolling onto the beach at the Taj Resort, Fisherman's Cove, less than an hour's drive south of Chennai, where the beaches are cleaner and less crowded, especially on a Sunday afternoon.

I am not a social worker

I have a friend who has been working with kids in Glasgow for years, and these kids have lots of problems. I have never envied her job - talking with teenagers was hard enough when I was one myself. But she's a social worker, and I can't help talking with her about the big problems people get themselves into. Since I see around 1500 Indians per month and spend about 1-3 minutes getting into their most fundamental life issues every day, I've got plenty to vent about.

I adjudicate plenty of immediately qualified cases all the time - parents visiting adult children, software engineers going for training or temporary work projects - and also clearly bad cases - students with atrocious grades and no funding for college in the U.S.

But of the 70-90 cases I handle each day, there's usually at least one or two where I have to remind myself that I'm not a social worker/police officer/lawyer, and that a visa to the U.S. does not solve their problems - mental illness, domestic strife or violence, or non-traditional family situations that just aren't accepted in a country where you get married at 25 and widowhood signals the end of a woman's public life. And of the 70-90, it's those few that stick out in my mind.

Like the woman with mental illness whose medicines don't always work and whose husband was suing her parents (parents do the arranging in arranged marriages) while the parents want her to go to the U.S. for treatment (or an escape, I couldn't tell). Or the unemployed high school dropout whose mom got re-married to a man in the U.S. and left him back here to fend for himself.

There are a few good ones, too, and try to remember those. The best one lately was a young couple, both very good-looking, but both with a physical handicap - a polio limp or a missing finger/arm - and they had a very happy baby, but the baby had delayed development that wasn't going to catch up. But the husband was working for some giant software company, and was going to the U.S. to earn fistfulls of cash. When I sounded concerned about the child, he told me how he'd already started networking online with parents' groups in their new region, had special schools lined up, the works - that whole family was improving their chances in life over and over again, and were going to a place where their handicaps weren't going to put them at risk of destitution.

It's just a lot of humanity every day, right there, asking for something I can't always give them. But the management all the way up to the Ambassdor actively insist that we treat each person with respect and that they leave feeling like people who've had a dignified experience. And I don't need to be a social worker to do that.

Pongo - Kitsch - Chatchki

My friend, Elle, is having a Pongo Party, "pongo" being Spanish for Kitsch (which is German, are you following this?), or something a bit tacky and perfect as a white elephant gift or gathering dust on a shelf at a fleamarket. And after the guilt of having received it as a gift from a co-worker at a Secret Santa party has worn off, you sneak it in the bag for the Goodwill, and in 10 years someone will inevitably sell it on e-bay for several thousand dollars (insert Homer Simpson forehead-slapping sound here).



Since I can't attend her exchange, I've included an example here in my favorite genre of Indian Kitsch: the dashboard idol, frequently Ganesh, but also Mary, Jesus, and local retired-movie-star-turned-politician. Dashboards in India are heavily decorated, no matter what the religion - stickers, mini-banners, sayings, scripture, and a wide variety of statuettes - from traditional wooden or stone carvings to, well, plastic temples with flashing neon lights powered by batteries. This one was in my cab back to the airport as I was leaving New Delhi in November.