Tis the season for puffed rice (Wednesday, 10/8)

So the next morning I get a call from Anthony apologizing for last night and asking what time I would like him to pick me up. I do need to check my email, so I tell him 1:00. He shows up at the hotel with a bag of food prepared by his wife. He brought some fish and squid in little plastic bags tied shut with string. We drive along eating in the rickshaw on the way to the internet café. At one point they pull over and quickly buy us some water because they are concerned that it is too spicy. OK, whatever. They then insist on waiting for us to finish eating before we continue on our way. Again, whatever. We finally get to the internet café to check our email, and then back to the hotel. He tells me that there is a festival going on in the evening and that he will be by to pick me up later. Sounds interesting enough. I tell him that I am supposed to meet a friend for dinner at 8:00 and ask him what time the other event is. He tells me that he will pick me up at about 6:00 and that he will give me a call before hand.

6:00pm and I get a call letting me know that he is in front of the hotel. I grab my bag, head downstairs, and hop in the rickshaw. At this point I just along for the ride and really have no idea what to expect. First thing he does is head to a wine shop. One beer for me, one bottle of liquor for him, and we are on our way. We drive to a little hole in the wall shop with Indian music playing on some loudspeakers sitting on the sidewalk outside. He runs inside for a minute and then comes back out to tell me that it has not yet started and that we will have to wait. I am instructed to stay in the rickshaw and then he runs off down the street. A few minutes later and he shows up with some curried crabs for me to eat. It’s quite nice of him, but eating crabs in the back of a rickshaw is a little more than tricky. I have to crack open the shells with my teeth and then pick out what little meat is there with my fingers, all while balancing the plate on my legs and leaning outside the rickshaw so I don’t get curried crab juice everywhere. Even so, my pants still end up well marked by the meal.

After waiting in the rickshaw for close to an hour, I am informed that the festival is about to start, and I am rushed inside the building to take part in the festivities. It turns out that this place is a bottling plant, and that the festival is a celebration for the people that work there. I am presented with a Pepsi and about ten other people greet me to shake my hand. Then I am told that I should try the “apple juice” and presented with a bottle of some sort of strange apple soda. I am then told to come to the back of the room for a demonstration of the bottling equipment. The equipment is pretty basic, looks like it was made in the 1940’s, and for all I know it probably was. They start the machine up for the demonstration and start filling and capping a few bottles of lime soda. The guy has to load each bottle individually, place a bottle cap in the machine, hold down a lever to fill the bottle (the level the bottles get filled to varies wildly), and then stomp on a lever to cap it. After seeing the less than sanitary conditions and the rusty machines covered in lead paint (most paints in India are still lead based), it makes me think twice about the soda I am busy consuming. They then lead me back over to the entrance where the manager of the plant is busy giving out gifts to all his employees. Each employee receives a sari (presumably for his wife), fifty rupees, and a bag of puffed rice with slices of fruit and some leaves dropped in it. After receiving their gifts, they are told to pose for a picture and then they go to the next person. The whole ceremony only lasts about thirty minutes and then I’m told that it’s time to leave.

I tell Anthony that I need to meet my friend, and that I need to go soon. I call up my friend and get him to give Anthony directions. I am then told that we much first celebrate, which I correctly assume means to get drunk. I keep tell him that I need to go soon, but he seems unimpressed. We then drive around, picking up several other people, and as I suspected, head to another wine shop. I tell them that I don’t want another beer, but apparently I don’t have much of a choice, and I am presented with a bottle. They also bring out some curried mutton liver in what appears to be a cupcake wrapper and presented with that as well. I ask what the macaroni looking things in it are, and I am told that they are “liver tubes”, which I would assume means arteries and ducts. Yum. Being pretty hungry at this point, and also being an adventurous person, I decide to give it a try. To my surprise, it’s actually pretty good, although not something I would necessarily order if I saw it on a menu.

A good thirty minutes later and I am about done waiting around for my driver to be ready, so I tell him that he can drive me or I can walk, but either way I am leaving. He tries to convince me to stay, but it is now close to an hour after I was supposed to meet up with my friend, and I am just not having it. He agrees to take me and we hop back in the rickshaw. I call up my friend again and give the phone to the driver so my friend can explain the directions again. We jump back in the rickshaw and take off. After going less than a kilometer, the driver tells me to call my friend again so he can explain the directions, because apparently he did not get it the first two times. I tell him that I am not going to call again and that he should just take me there and stop being incompetent (ok, so I don’t actually say the last part). We drive for another couple kilometers and he pulls to the side. He starts giving me a hard time about pulling him away from his “celebration,” and I remind him that I told him about this before hand, and that I am still paying him to drive me around. He clearly does not care what I have to say and continues harassing me about wanting to leave. He says that he does not know where he is going and that I should call my friend again. This clearly is getting no where, so I give my friend a call. He tells me to just stay where I am and he will come find me. About this time the driver starts the rickshaw again, swings a U-turn, and starts driving back towards the wine shop. I tell him to stop, but he just ignores me, so I jump out while it is still moving and walk back to the intersection we were parked at. After waiting around for a few minutes, I see my friend come speeding up. He gets out to greet me, and about this time the rickshaw pulls up. The driver gets out and starts yelling at my friend in Tamil, to which my friend starts yelling back at him in Tamil. My friend tells him to get lost, we both jump in the car and we speed off towards the restaurant.

In the car I meet two other Couchsurfers, one from the UK, and another from Belgium. On our ride to the restaurant, we all laugh our asses off talking about what a clusterfuck India is, and telling stories of our experiences in Chennai. Naturally this discussion is long and in-depth, so the conversation continues for the rest of the evening. We end up going to a pretty nice outdoor restaurant where we stuff ourselves until we can no longer move. After that we decide that it would be cool to go to the beach, so we drive south to a beach just outside the city. After chilling out on the beach for an hour or so, everyone is getting tired so we decide to head back. On the way, we see plenty of dogs and cows hanging out in the middle of the road. At one point we pull over to try and touch one of the cows, which we do without any difficulty. Plenty more laughter and a little bit of misdirection later, and I get dropped of at my hotel. It’s always refreshing to have people to commiserate with when you are staying in a place as bizarre as Chennai. Good night and good luck; I’m out.