Goodbye Madras!

So much for good intentions... I'm leaving the Madras University guest house whereat I've been staying for the last two weeks en route to the Aeroport, and still not a blog post on this new city! Well, I have about 45 minutes until the taxi arrives, so I thought I'd write some quick observations while my laptop's recharging.

People say Chennai is like a series of large-ish towns glommed together to make up a metropolis only in terms of scale, rather than the new urban culture that characterises Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, and perhaps Calcutta once upon a time. I don't think that's wrong. It's ironic that the most urban Indian state demographically seems to have the culture of the provincial town.

Provincial usually has derogatory connotations, but in this case, it's descriptive and politically meaningful. The Dravidian movement, on which my colleague Matt is writing his dissertation, first created itself against the cultural hegemony of the North represented by the Congress and other 'national' movements. This cultural resurgence of Tamil identity turned political in the post-Independence years, with Congress being beaten in Tamil Nadu by the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (sp?). DMK and its splinter, the All-India (Anna) DMK, have been in power ever since. There's also a deep connection between politics and Tamil film: ever since MG Ramaswamy -- the great movie star MGR -- became Chief Minister. Film 'heroes' can portray the ideal Tamil, and this symbolism leads to leadership. It's certainly more powerful in that sense than Bollywood.

There are darker sides to this identity, including vicious anti-Brahmin sentiment where Brahminical privilege isn't nearly as powerful as it is up North. It's also led to the greatest level of 'reservations' (affirmative action) in any state in India. Far from removing caste, Tamil politics has solidified it.

To get back to the city and my experiences, though, I haven't felt as much an outsider anywhere else I've been in India... which admittedly comprises of mostly metro - urban experience. A friend living here said that he found this initially annoying but has come to appreciate how culturally unified the city and state are. I don't think this was possible in two and a half weeks.

And yet, I've had some fantastic interviews here, just fantastic... I lost my audio recorder and have really wished that I had it back, which is not the case for most of my interviews. I find the upper classes wonderfully reflective, and that contributes to it. For all I know, the lower classes might be more reflective -- certainly there are high levels of literacy here -- but I don't speak Tamil and have gotten more angry at rickshaw drivers than anywhere else.

The city itself is sort of enclosed and polluted, but with some lovely spots. I find that I'm not much of a beach person, although these are some of the nicest beaches I've seen in India. The country around is very green but doesn't have a deeply tropical look to it, except for the odd clump of palm trees. On the other hand, there is not much to do here. And less connected -- I couldn't find a simple Olympus DS-2... though that might just be India in general.

Most of my stay has been coloured by the fact that I don't know many people here. Most evenings have been spent inside the guesthouse, on the internet. It's the worst part of fieldwork, this isolation, and it's been staved off in Delhi by friends and acquaintances, and a pretty exciting vibe, with all of its problems. It's going to be more of a feature in the Spring, based in Bombay but taking many more of these trips, so we'll see how that is.

One big exception was an overnight trip I took with Faisal to Mahaballipuram and Pondicherry, which was fantastic. Both are laid-back seaside towns with a lot to see. It was just great to have long discussions on epistemology (what else?) while staring out at the Bay of Bengal.

This part of the country seems to me, a non-Tamil, as a place to lose yourself. There certainly is that vibe here: many of the great spiritual reformist movements and figures ended up here: the Theosophical Society, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekenanda. I guess I hold on to myself pretty tightly, and that's why I'm more affirmed by places with materialist coherence like Bombay and Delhi. But who knows? Perhaps you'll find me in ten years living in a hut on the beach somewhere off the East Coast highway, watching the sun rise over the Bay of Bengal and pondering the mysteries of the infinite. Right now, though, I've got industry to study.

So, New Delhi at midnight, home and asleep by two am, I hope... and then just two weeks until Christmas break!

More soon.