The above video provides a glimpse of what its like to ride in an auto-rickshaw. The experience is so preposterously chaotic that it feels more like a video game than real life.
We experienced heavy rains at MCC today. People are starting to run out of clothes since they weren't able to do laundry on the trip and the humid air prevents any drying. After class, twelve of us went with Suresh on an adventure into Chennai. We purchased train tickets for 14 rupees/person and rolled down the tracks toward town. As we were chugging down the line, the train came to a sudden stop. Based on the Tamil conversations in the car, Suresh was able to decipher that someone may have fallen off the train. I was surprised when Suresh told me that this was the first time had experienced such an incident on the railway considering the sardine-like way in which people are crammed onto the open car train. The train was so packed that whenever we stopped at stations along the way to our destination, people boarding the train would pass their luggage through the train windows to strangers inside the car. I was impressed by the way in which most Indians I saw on the train were willing to help each other. There was a refreshingly odd sense of community on the public transport. We caught a ride on the auto-rickshaw shown in the above video to the shopping center.
The vendors at the Chennai mall were hilarious. One of them tried to interest me in buying a shawl with this gem of a sales pitch: "It can be zero degrees outside and you will be able to hatch egg wrapped inside." Oh India...
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