First Friday Evening Outing in Chennai

At the institute currently there is a visiting grad student from Brandeis. I had little trouble convincing him that we should go check out Chennai's central district on friday evening. It was surely an experience, as is everything to me right now. I had three objectives in last night's activitis.

1) GET BEER
2) Get a dosa
3) Get a good map of Chennai

1) SUCCESS! 2) failed 3) failed.

I'm terribly sad to say that the only available beer in chennai is kingfisher. This will be a rough rough year.
So here's how last night went:

I bought a quarterly railway pass for 295 Rs. In case you're playing along at home that's just over $6. So I can ride the train in the southern half of the city for the next three months. We found a station called chepauk where we decided we'd launch on our adventure. First though we were at Indira Nagar (where the institute is) then we went to Greenways Road (where I "live") to grab a few things. I sort of see why the train pass is only 295 Rs... Currently my favorite thing in India is riding the train and standing on the edge with the doors open. You can see everything. Like I'd mentioned before, the slums basically exist where there are big buildings, and all the railway stations count as big buildings. The stench hovering from just below is horrible. There is a river full of black polluted water with its banks consisting of a land fill that looked as if it exploded and landed all over poor people. The huts are usually made of brick with sheet metal and dried palm leaves as roofs. It was an amazing site to see as the sun went down. Until you can sense it pictures just won't do. The thing that really gets to me is that the people seem content. I saw a boy with a balloon and he was happy. Just further along a hut had been mostly knocked over and the residents were sitting outside and doing some activity which resembled playing cards while others were washing clothes. I can't imagine how terrible it would be for ME to live in those slums, but I haven't grown up around it. In a way I was glad to see them. It made this whole place seem real and authentic. There is starvation, misery, poverty, happiness, laughter, garbage, and beautiful clothing on worn out people. Most of humanity was captured for me in those fleeting moments of hovering directly above the world's most wretched.

After the train experience (which I truly did enjoy, and my traveling buddy did not so much) we jumped off right next to the Madras cricket club. I got giddy like a little kid. I know for sure when IPL (Indian Premier League) starts back up again I'm going to go watch my favorite team (The Chennai SuperKings) kick ass and take names. We found a major road and the traffic was crazy. I've been to Beirut, Damascus, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, and NONE OF THEM have traffic anything like this. Danger Danger! Probably the riskiest thing here is walking along the roads. I'm no longer worried about malaria! I almost got taken out by a rogue scooter going to wrong way down a narrow alley. While we were walking along the main road, I saw said alley and decided it would be a good idea to walk down through there. If it weren't for the fact that we look SO DAMN FOREIGN it wouldn't have been a problem. I was quite excited to be there. Fresh food smells everywhere, fine clothing stores, cell phone stores, etc. Busy busy busy! It was a bit overwhelming for my friend and me so we got back onto the main road looking for the Taj Hotel on Mount Road. We saw a sign saying

BAR
"Beer Drop

ALL A MEN NEEDS"

At that moment I was pissed off that I forgot my camera. Stupid me! In any case we thought that deserved a stop in. We somehow ended up in a different bar around the corner called the Submarine Bar. I wondered if they were trying to make a reference to a "dive bar" but clearly they weren't. I'm learning very quickly that my American sense of humor is not understood here, not even a little bit. We went down there and found a strange type of bar. No women anywhere. Not a single one. Not a bar maid, not a bar wench, not a customer at all. Also, it's a dance club. But not a gay one. Homosexuality by the way is not even heard of here. It is extremely hush hush and that basically come from the old school conservative Tamil values of southern India.
So, we're at a bar, no women, and a DJ. We order two King Fishers (super strong) for 150Rs each. They were 650 ml. I think it's an 8% beer (so they say, but it didn't feel like 8%). Not a terrible price. Then we ordered some pagodas just to take the edge of hunger off. We were the only non Indians in there so the bar staff was quite hostile towards us. However, once I said a couple of key phrases in Tamil, we got super stupendous service! I also learned another nifty trick...
No one here speaks any arabic, none, nadda, nothing. They all have preconceived notions of Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canadians, but know NOTHING ABOUT LEBANESE. So I just tell them I'm from Beirut. They have no idea, and they don't act quite so hostile to me then. Anyway, our bill came to 349Rs. We left 400Rs. They thought that was awesome. $4 each for some big "strong" beers and pretty good fried food and a couple of laughs at the foreigners trying to speak Tamil...

We left and eventually found our way to the Taj Hotel by asking about 30 different people with conflicting info. I discovered if I asked in this way "Eenga irrukuh Taj hoteel" with a funny accent, I got better responses. That literally is "where is taj hotel." We went there as it's supposed to be an expat bar. WRONG! When we got there there were two aussies finishing their beverages and then leaving. Then the wave of Indians started coming. All Indians, no women again, another DJ. Actually this time there were about 6 women or so all on the arms of their very protective looking boyfriends. The most interesting thing we saw was our pair of waitrons. One from Nepal, one from Tibet. That was all that was interesting about them...

So We left about $6 lighter. Much more expensive beers. Then we took an autorickshaw down to the Park Hotel. This is supposed to be THE expat bar in Chennai. This was getting CLOSE to an acceptable place except the terrible DJ, the WAY overpriced shit beer, and the bartender who tried to steal my credit card. I ordered a couple beers, closed the tab and I got back the receipts without the card. I said "where's the card?" The bartender said "oops" and reached to his back pocket hand me my card... What the hell was that. I should punched him in the junk for that maneuver. We decided to step outside onto the patio to get away from the loud crappy music. While drinking our overpriced Kingfishers we decided to practice our bobble head motions and watch the people there. I finally saw a few things I'd been waiting to see in India.
a) a person taller than me (just by a hair, but still counts)
b) good looking women (not stupendous, not up to par with anywhere in the states, but nice enough looking)
c) a bar open past midnight. Technically everything in Chennai closes at 12, but we staed until 12:30 just to see how long the party would go. Also we thought we might have a shot at getting invited to the after parties. WRONG! The male:female ratio was still about 2:1 even at the happening place. Also, there were not so many expats hanging out there. It was a completely packed bar, and probably only 20 expats showed up the whole time we were there. Anyway, as the trains stop running at 9:50 PM we had to take another autorickshaw. For now we have to deal with paying double. Eventually I'll be able to work that down to 1.25 actual cost by learning some Tamil. The auto drivers hate foreigners. Rather, they love foreigners, because we have money...

So that was my first friday experience. I think I'm going to Pondicherry on the weekends from now on...