MENTAL IMAGES OF INDIA…

…tiny streets, so tiny that one would wonder how anything bigger than a bicycle could pass on these streets and yet, cars, buffaloes, motorcycles, and everything that moves under the sun shares this street…

…muddy, slushy roads with stagnant pools of water everywhere that makes the area become a popular maternity meeting place for mosquitoes, which are so many in number, they look like an aerial tapestry and sound like a dull power drill…

…small shops, big shops, even smaller shops selling anything that you can imagine, all packed together so tightly that sardines in a tin can would rejoice thinking they had more breathing space…

…street vendors hawking products they now claim are the best in the world, who then tie a tarp over their goods to prevent it from the rain and leave the whole thing overnight, right there on the street, so that they can return the next morning and have the same spot to work in…

…coffee shops that are open all night, hotels that couldn’t be larger than an average bathroom that serve all kinds of food at all hours of the day and night. (sorry to compare a food place to a bathroom, but it would not be a stretch of the imagination in some parts of this country.)…

…decorated cows and buffaloes which decorated themselves with mud claim their part of the road and contribute to the foot traffic…

…mini-temples and shrines to deities interspersed with daily life, with garbage strewn along the sides of it, beetle nut juice stains on the temple itself, cow dung piles along the road, and people worshipping in the street since the temple is 5ft by 5 ft…

…open sewers that lend that unforgettable “aroma” to the city, that permeates your skin and hangs in the air…

…marriage halls or kalyana mandapams as they are called here, which are always richly decorated and almost always in business except for the months that are considered inauspicious by the Hindus. These are reception halls where it looks like a walking showroom for gold jewelery-the women find it difficult to stand up straight due the weight of the adornments…

…helpful public who were telling us to turn around while we were stuck in a traffic jam that was caused because they were building a makeshift stage in the middle of the road in front of one of those miniature temples to celebrate a temple festival…

…banana leaves that substitute for a plate in South India especially in Chennai and a staple at every marriage. It eliminates the budgeting need for china and cutlery at a wedding since banana leaves and fingers are the only utensils needed to eat with….

…open, heaping piles of garbage that provide colorful distractors for one to look at while stuck in traffic, add to the “perfumed” streets, invite all forms of insects to have their own Discovery Channel on every street corner….

…a raging bonfire in the middle of the street where the makeshift stage I had talked about earlier was being built, the law cannot prevent this as it will enrage and upset the balance of life and religion….

… carts being pulled by cows or bullocks (male cows) sharing the traffic madness and sometimes being the cause of the traffic madness, lending a new meaning to the term, “mad cow disease”…

…stopped at an intersection only to find a woman drenched in gold jewelry and riding a moped stopped right next to me, on her cell phone and wearing a sari…

…mobile phones in the hands of those who have no real homes to live in or food to eat, flower vendors to your own office boys have better cell phones than you do; stores selling mobile phones and accessories competing for space to set up shop in Chennai…

…stray dogs that roam the street at all hours of the day and night, the causes of several life-threatening accidents, one of the reasons why garbage does not only get piled up on the corners of the streets but get distributed along the entire street, and this might also be the reason why the stray dogs are fatter than the people themselves…

…driving down a street that is lined with jewelry stores that cannot be more than 300-500 sq. ft. with the title that belies the size – LMV Mansion of Jewelry…

…whizzing past the the shops, ok, I lied, crawling past the stores, I suddenly spot a BASKIN ROBBINS…

…tons of sweet shops and bakeries that contribute to the high rate of diabetes in this country…

…lush green parks smack dead in the middle of the city, where people just hang out in groups or pairs and listen to the sounds of traffic around them…

…walls, electricity poles, cement bus terminal seats, lamp posts, anything that had a smooth surface would be pasted with posters of all kinds – movie posters, posters of grinning politicians who promise the world and give them nothing, advertisements for everything you can imagine within reason…

…an occasional cow chewing these posters off the walls…they probably find the politicians more delicious than the movie stars…

..old fashioned way of weighing things with the scales and weights when you go to a local shop or vendor to buy groceries…

…billboards…

…open construction sites that get more complicated to maneuver around after the rains for fear of falling into subsequent open ditches…

sitting in an auto rickshaw sandwiched between a bus that is leaning too far in one direction due the it being overcrowded and an SUV with the passenger hanging out of the window trying hard to look into your autorickshaw…

…lorries (trucks in India) packed with workers in a sort of coyote style…more people than can actually fit in the back…

…makeshift aluminum fences that are sunken into the saturated mud after the rains and solely supported by the tons of garbage heaped up around them…

…cooking gas delivered to your house in red cylinders that are transported by the delivery guy in open rickshaws…

( more to come…) hope you enjoyed visualizing these…