After a grueling twenty-eight hour door to door journey – including a not-so-exciting midnight to 8am layover in the closed Singapore airport –, I arrived at my hotel in Chennai (formerly known as Madras).
For the past few weeks, in all honesty, I have not been looking forward to my arrival in India. It is not so much that I do not want to be in India, rather the transition of going from Japan – a country that has the highest quality of life in world, is extremely safe, and amazingly easy to travel throughout – to India – the antithesis of all of those characteristics, has caused some personal anxiety as of late. Nonetheless, here I am to take on any adventure that may come my way.
I must admit I feel so thankful that I have spent a semester in India before; albeit, that it was in the north, which, for all intensive purposes (read: language, religion, and food), is an entirely different country. South India has a reputation of being far less intense than North India: while this speculation has yet to be tried and tested, I think it is almost an irrelevant point. India is India: it is a crazy place no matter how you slice it.
Lady Luck once again appears to be in my corner, at least for research purposes, that is: throughout the next few weeks in Chennai, there is a citywide music festival. I had read about this festival, called the Margazhi Festival, before, as it is apparently the largest Carnatic festival in the world. The festival has performances predominately of Carnatic (South Indian) music, but also, much less frequently, Hindustani (North Indian) music is played. The festival is held at many different venues, and there are daily performances from 9am until the evening (about 9:30pm). To make it even better, all of the shows until 4pm are always free!
If that weren’t enough, from January 3rd until January 9th, there is a dance festival that will have a ton of music performances as a well. I am thrilled to have arrived in Chennai during the “music” season.
Ganesha plays the tabla.
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