Spiritual experiences

The beach, the sand, was not nice. It was dirty and gross and littered. I may have caught a few diseases, actually. There were so many people on the beach, everywhere. So many dirty, dirty people and dirty homeless animals. And to make it worse, it was terribly dreary out. After the monkey and kids incident, I quickly went back to the car. We went to the temple, and I felt awed by it. First, I had to take off my sandals and feel the dirtiness; the bare dirt and grit on the bottom of my feet. Half of that was probably full of contaminants from cow shit and piss from the cows running wild through the stone ground of the temple. It was cool, it was spiritual, it was moving for sure. I walked around one of the small temples with everyone else, four or five times, and found a smile when one of the little girls continuously looked back at me, expressionless, just staring as much as possible. I wanted to know what she was thinking. It’s amazing that in the 21st century so many of these people still live under a rock. They’ve only seen blond hair and light skin on television. Anyways, there were people on their hands and knees, kissing the dirty ground at the foot of the statues, lighting candles and giving flowers and other offerings including food to the gods. Dressed in their best saris and intricate Indian gowns. I want one! Too bad I would look terribly strange if I ever wanted to wear one.

So I ended up at another shop after, where the man talked a lot to me. He still tried to pry as much money as possible out of me, but he also told me some pretty interesting stories. Like, how they treat people who come into the stores differently depending on what they look like. The lighter the skin the better the treatment, is what I understood. For example, apparently there was some guy from Boston (though he is Indian) who came into the shop with his barefoot mother. Asked to see the largest carpet they had, and then bought it immediately. He said they didn’t give him any special treatment until they realized he was ready to pay. And then I spent $55 on 4 scarves. At least they are really very lovely. While in the store, my old driver from Delhi called me. I heard the phone ring but thought it would have been one of the annoying Indian men I regrettably shared my phone number with. It warmed my heart to see that Deepak would be calling to wish me a Happy Diwali 

Got back in the car and oops, went 2 hours over my free 4 hours of sightseeing. Of course they didn’t want to warn me, cause then the richest hotel in the city wouldn’t have made an extra 1200 rupees ($25) off of me. Not only that, but not too long before the driver had told me I had a ton of time left, we were going through everything too quickly. Thanks man.

Back at the hotel, I got some dinner. Decided to skip out on the Indian and went for the Italian, which was absurdly expensive. A glass of wine in this freaking hotel is $13, for the cheapest one. Unbelievable. At least the food was good and the salad didn’t make me sick. Now that I think of it, it’s also very strange I even got a glass of wine. Restaurants in Chennai are not allowed to serve after 11 pm (can you imagine?), and it was definitely after that time. (Liquor and alcohol is extremely limited in sales in Chennai and critically overseen by the government. So strange). The manager personally took me down to the Italian restaurant. He had heard about my allergic reaction and told me he would make extra, extra care to make sure every restaurant in the hotel serving little miss Lauren from room 431 leave out the nuts and any Indian spices since I have no idea what made me sick. Now that’s service! It even had it printed out at the top of my hotel bill, along with all the other package details of my stay, my nuts allergy boldly displayed itself to everyone who opened my profile.