Free Medical Clinic - Day 1

Waking up on the wrong side of the road...

I was only in Chennai for a day. Stayed up almost all night catching up on a lifetime with my cousin. We'd only met once or twice previously, most recently in 2004(?) when a mutual cousin of ours got married in Norcal. We are third cousins depending on how you define that. Our paternal grandmothers were first cousins; their mothers were sisters. After we sorted out how we were related with the help of her father, we spent the rest of the night filling each other in on our love lives with the help of Facebook.


As per usual, I had a busy day scheduled for my one day in Chennai before joining up with my Ayurveda group: the tailor's to get measured, the OFERR headquarters to sort out my mobile internet situation, the farm to see how they make spirulina, and at breakfast, my cousin got a call about a movie premiere that evening to which she invited me. I was to meet the rest of my group at the Chennai airport when they came out of customs or I'd be left behind. Their flight from Newark was landing at 12:05 am.


All of those things happened. The tailor was unhappy that I slept in and arrived late. She was waiting to measure me before she took her daughter to nursery school. Oops! Good thing it's just nursery school. The farm was awesome and I got to see how they made ghee from raw milk as well as spirulina. I also had a glass of fresh spirulina with lime and sugar. It was delicious and nutritious! I went to the Tamil movie premiere with my cousin and her friends. It was not subtitled, so my cousin translated the entire movie for me while we watched. I don't think she realized it, but she even described what they were doing. ("He told him to go look in his trunk. Now he is going down to his car to look in his trunk.") On the way home from the theatre, we rescued a dying kitten from the street.


I met my group at the airport (under construction, extremely crowded and chaotic) just as they were exiting the building. Before I could even look for them, I turned a corner and heard my name. "Neha!" It was my good friend, Monica, from my Ayurveda program, the only person in the group I knew. She had decided that they were going to find me within 10 seconds and there I was!


We had a 15 person van with no interior luggage space for 12 adults, 2 kids and a driver. In addition, Dr. Shekhar (our slightly neurotic but very sweet leader) had about 10 extra suitcases filled with donated medicine, clothing and toys. After strapping more than we should have to the roof, we piled into the van filling the aisles and our laps with the rest of the bags.


Turns out that whole "be there or you'll be left behind" thing was for real. One member of our group was arriving on a later flight. We gave her two hours to clear customs and then...we left without her at about 2:30 am.


The first stop on this Ayurvedic journey was to Dr. Shekhar's hometown, Tangutur. He built on clinic on the site of his childhood home and we were holding a four day free medical clinic "for the poor". He had doctors of all kinds coming in from all over to donate supplies and their services.


Tangutur is 310 km north of Chennai. The journey took about six hours with pitstops and toll lines. I was able to sleep for most of it thanks to a window seat and my airplane pillow and blanket. I woke up at sunrise, driving on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic.

Arriving in Chennai

Upon arrival in Chennai, bumped by a luggage cart re-opening the blister created by ill-fitting fins that was just starting to heal.

People are pushy here. I started to notice the difference boarding my flight. The people look the same, but the attitude is totally different. Everyone was up before the seatbelt sign went off. I had to force my way into the aisle to get my bag and get off the plane. Getting from the plane to the immigration lines was like a freakin' foot race with luggage where the old ladies were obstacles. I was completely annoyed with people by the time this happened. I had just picked up my bags and spotted my cousin in the crowd of people waiting for arrivals when I got rammed in my nearly open wound. I hopped up and down and screamed silently mouthing curse words in front of the throngs of people waiting for their loved ones.

Maldives - Days 3 & 4

My Over Water Bungalow and Dives 1 & 2

Cinnamon Grand & Diving in Colombo

My mom took off very early Thursday morning. I've had three very full days since she left. I guess that's not really different from when she was here. The difference is, I'm no longer staying at a five star hotel and my agenda isn't dominated by lunches and dinners with her friends. That's not to say she dictated my agenda. She has a lot of great friends and I enjoy spending time with them which is why I accepted their invitations. However, there are a lot of them and they love to entertain.

I'm now staying with some of the aforementioned friends, and they are taking great care of me. I do, however, miss a few things about the hotel, Cinnamon Grand.

I miss the amazing breakfast buffet - the egg station, the waffle station, the McDonald's style hash brown discs, the fresh fruit juice bar, the Canadian Cricket team, the hot chocolate, and the great service.

I miss the powerful, hot showers. Boy, do I miss the showers. Especially now that I'm diving everyday. The shower I had when I arrived in Colombo after 26+ hours of traveling was easily one of the best showers I've ever had.

I miss the mall next door with it's grocery store, food court, Dialog store (where I get my phone and internet cards), ayurvedic product shops, foot massage place, and the Dilmah store.

I miss Chagall and the people that work there who did my hair, makeup and dressed me for the wedding and homecoming.

I miss the lobby which is like Grand Central Station. If you sit there long enough, you'll see everyone you know in Colombo. It has great food and live music and it was just downstairs.

I miss the really cute shoe shine boy that my mom tried to feed everyday who always had a huge smile and would call the elevator for me.

I miss being next door to friends that live in the neighboring apartment buildings and running into them in the lobby.

Mostly, I've been diving since she left. I decided to get re-certified while I was packing to come here. I did some research online and found a diving school in Colombo. To make myself feel better about spending the time and money to do something I already did, I decided to get my advanced diver certification at the same time. I did nine dives in four days.

Tuesday was my first day of diving and it was one-on-one with my instructor Paris. Paris is Greek and has a dive shop in Greece. He spends his winters working some place warm. This year it's Colombo. It was a good day of diving. I did peak buoyancy and underwater navigation exercises. The latter required me to do some arithmetic at the bottom of the ocean in my head because the pencil broke which proved to be more challenging than one would think. I saw some pretty fish, but I also saw a lot of plastic bags and a very large adult diaper.

Thursday was the crappy day. Literally. My mom left at 4am and I had my last Cinnamon Grand breakfast (sigh) with the Canadian Cricket team and rushed off to go diving. There were four of us diving, two of whom had never dived before. Things were off to a bit of a slow start, but we finally got in the water and were getting ready to go down when we noticed that we were floating in swirls of brown foam and particles. Paris urged us to go down, so we could get out of the shit. Yes, shit. My dive buddy was having issues with her equipment, so I had to wait with her at the surface until it was sorted. We finally started our descent and then she had problems equalizing. So, we had to come back up to the surface -- the last place on earth I wanted to be. I was avoiding the swirls as best I could and trying to unsee the particles sticking to peoples hair and suits. I can be a bit of a germophobe. I'm not at the can't-use-a-public-toilet level (ahem - Dilini) or I would have imploded here, but I can be a little unreasonable about what touches my pillow. What I learned from this experience is that I have the ability to shut it off in extreme conditions. I am very grateful for that. One of the other divers couldn't handle it. She got so nauseated and grossed out that she couldn't do our second dive, which thankfully was in cleaner waters. At the end of the day, I took a cold, low pressure shower at my new home. Oh, how I missed the abundance of hot water and the Grohe shower head at the Cinnamon Grand.

On Friday, I did three dives including underwater photography. That was a blast. It was just me, Paris and Jehan, one of the guys that works at the dive shop. At the end of our second dive, we came up to a solar eclipse. The clear blue sky was dark in the middle of the day. The solar eclipse creates strong currents and visibility wasn't that great.

Today was my last day of diving in Colombo. Our first dive was a deep wreck dive. We went far out to sea and the seas were rough. I got seasick when we stopped the boat. I was fine when we went under and the dive was great. It was my first wreck dive and my first time diving to 30m. But, I just wanted to go home and we had one more dive and needed to spend an hour at the surface on the boat before we could start our second dive. That was a rough hour let me tell you. I vacillated between staring at the horizon and holding the acupressure point for nausea and staring at the water trying to make myself throw up. In the end, I didn't throw up and I decided to do the second dive because being on the boat was hell. It was a great dive and I'm really glad I did it. I felt better when I came up, but I was freezing. I was very thankful to be back on dry land in warm clothes when it was over. Afterwards, I met Aunty Mano, Aunty Rohini and Aunty Premilla for lunch at the Mt. Lavinia Hotel which is quite the setting and the food was great.

Now, I'm packing for the Maldives -- I leave tomorrow morning! Dinner plans at the Cinnamon Grand and will probably go out afterwards...

Sunset at Galle Face Hotel Verandah

Today's Agenda

8:30 am - Breakfast with Uncle* Lucky

9:15 am - Coffee (Pineapple juice) with Pradeep**

10:00 am - See off Aunty Kumu & Uncle Lucky

12:00 pm - Pre-lunch Drinks at Aunty Rohini's

1:00 pm - Lunch at Gallery Café hosted by Aunty Rohini

3:00 pm - Coffee (Lime soda?) with Vidhi*** & Aunty Rajes

4:00 pm - Tea (perhaps actual tea, maybe another juice) with Buddhika****

7:00 pm - Dinner hosted by Aunty Mano

Post dinner drinks?

I need to cancel my plans to go to the Colombo Zoo after lunch. There just isn't any time! Somewhere in there I have to get in the hotel pool with my new scuba mask and snorkel so I'm ready for diving tomorrow and start reading my PADI book for the exam I'll be taking on Thursday.

*A note about the terms "aunty" and "uncle". South Asians call all their elders "aunty" or "uncle". None of these aunties are blood relations, though a few of them are practically family. Most of them went to Ladies' College with my mom. They all grew up together here in Colombo.

**Pradeep is Aunty Padma's son. He's a really sweet guy and always takes good care of me when I'm here. Four years ago when I was here last, he was engaged. Now, he's married, their daughter will be two on Thursday, and their son is due in about six weeks!

***Vidhi is Aunty Rajes's (real) nephew. I just met him last week at Aunty Padma's dinner. We were the only two people under 40 and they made us talk to each other. Not that we wouldn't have ended up talking to each other, but Aunty Rajes didn't leave anything to chance. She asked me to come over, sat me down next to him and told me to "tell him about all the interesting things I'm doing because he's doing interesting things, too". Fortunately, he is actually doing interesting things and we've had a good time hanging out. He also has a lot of interesting friends and family that I've met over the past week. It has been nice to have someone to make my own plans with.

****Buddhika is a documentary filmmaker that I met at Heathrow checking in for our flight to Colombo. He was carrying a big camera case which naturally caught my eye. He bought me a Costa coffee at the airport terminal, his favorite coffee in the world, and we had a good chat. He's here for a month shooting a documentary on the aftermath of the war. My cousin is also doing a documentary in Sri Lanka, so it was great to talk to him about his experience. He went to Jaffna when I was in Trincomalee. I would've liked to go with him. There has been a lot of talk about Sri Lankan politics and the current and future state of this country since I've been here starting with that Costa coffee chat. I'm not too into politics in general, mainly because I don't keep up on it, but it's been interesting to hear all the different perspectives.

Mosquito Bites

I try not to scratch.
Once I start I cannot stop.
But it feels so good.

Back in Sri Lanka

I'm back in Sri Lanka after four years. My mom asked me to accompany her on this trip. She's mainly here to attend the wedding of her good friend's son. She's still really close to her friends from elementary school, and most of them are here, too. There are lots of people to visit and functions to attend. While she is here, I'm pretty much tagging along. Since I was making the trip half way around the world, I decided to go to India as well and get some hands on Ayurveda experience. I had been planning to go India to further my studies at some point this year anyway. I found out after I decided to go that a friend from my Ayurveda class was already signed up for a 3 week course in Chennai and Kerala that started about a week after my mom was planning to leave Sri Lanka. The timing was right, I have family in Chennai, and it seemed like a good program, so I signed up! That's how a trip to Sri Lanka for a wedding turned into a six week journey. With a week to kill between my mom leaving and my program starting, I planned a trip to the Maldives, a destination that is on my list and is disappearing. Speaking of the list of places I want to visit, here it is:

Never been:
Cuba
Brazil
South Africa
Antarctica
Thailand
Singapore
Maldives (gotta be Over Water Bungalow)
Pune, India
Goa, India
Cross-country drive (US)

Events:
Austin for SXSW
New Orleans for Jazz Fest

Always on the list:
Chicago
NYC

Cortona

I arrived in Colombo on the 30th of December. It's been a whirlwind of road trips, lunches, teas and dinners since about the minute I landed.

It's Day 10 and I'm heading out to a dive school this morning to meet the instructors and hopefully sign up for a course that will finish in time for my trip to the Maldives (Jan 17-20). I couldn't find my certification card before I left and I want to make sure I'll be able to dive in the Maldives, so I'm getting re-certified. It's been a while and I need a refresher anyway. The dive school is in Mt. Lavinia which is where my grandfather died saving someone from drowning. I can feel the fear about going into the water there, but it's not mine.