Wrong station, no plans...and now?

Dear Sam,

I left the campus at 3.30 pm. My train to Kanyakumari was leaving from Chennai Central at 5.30 pm. I had one last goodbye Cha-Sutta with Victoria, Linnea, Sid and Mathieu at Krishna gate around 3 pm. We had a great party last night at Dublin and all of us were still a bit hungover :-P

So then I took the local metro from Kasturibai Nagar. Just before I got down at Park Town for the Chennai Central at 5 pm I checked my ticket. For crying out loud, it said "Departure from Chennai EGMORE". Fudge!!! Got down at Park Town, pushed at least a hundred Indians on my way (I don't think they even noticed), took an autorickshaw, paid a hundred Rupee for only 3 km and whew... made it in time.

I met a Tamil Christian family in my compartment. I was minding my own business enjoying the Eastern Ghats and they theirs shouting at their imbecile kids. I suddenly noticed the small girl had a wounded knee and gosh! It didn't look good. I had to give her a band-aid. And then guess what? We became best friends. Specially the small girl's 15 year old elder sister. She was the only English speaking person in the family, so for obvious reason she felt sooo important while translating what I said. They invited me for dinner with them. Yumm. Homemade lemon rice with chicken gravy.I almost puked when I discovered it was a chicken liver that I was munching so joyfully :-P. Oh what fun they had! But too much love can always be exhausting. Or may be Darathi was a lonely teenager in a weird way. She was sitting next to me and texted me this:

"Life spent with someone for a long time may be meaningless. But few moments spent with someone who really loves you is more than life itself"

A 15 year old texting someone 12 years older the meaning of life! Well, impressive.

The train was supposed to go via Madurai. But it would be 2 o'clock at night. May be I'll get down at Madurai to visit the Sri Meenakshi Temple that you've been talking about so fondly. Did you know that Meenakshi was an Avatar or incarnation of the Goddess Parvati? And that it means "Fish-eyed"? Apparently an Indian allegory for beautiful eyes. Hmm...fish-shaped eyes? Hihihihi.

But I don't know yet. Let's see. You know that I'm pretty spontaneous. But 2 o'clock at night in a not-familiar-at-all city in India as a solo female traveler? Ob das eine gute Idee ist!

Gute Nacht.

<3 - TZ

04.05.13