A Tourist at an Indian Metro - Part I

Last weekend I had an emergency call from a friend ``Hey Anu, we have a friend visiting us from Germany. This is his first visit to Chennai and he wants to see the town. What do we do? D'u have any suggestions?''

I'm sure all of us Indian city-dwellers have had this sort of a traumatic experience at least once in our lives. We have favourite haunts in a city and this is the place where we live. We do all the regular things like eating out, movies etc for entertainment and our weekend haunts are usually located away from the city anywhere between a two-hour drive to an overnight trip. But how do you show a friend or a visitor, how interesting the place you live is. Obviously there are selfish motivations, you don't want them to go back to wherever they come from and say ``You know what? Poor so & so... living in a dead place like that. I'm sure (S)he is bored to death.'' Even if you do live in a place like that, admitting it is a different cup of tea altogether.

I remember clearly, when I was living in Mumbai and a friend came to visit me. I am in love with Mumbai (even now long distance) and that was when I was still in the throes of thrill of actually living in Mumbaiite. I think I had told the world and its brothers,sisters and friends about how great a place Mumbai is and how interesting,blah,blah. But when my friend asked me what we were doing, let me tell you I was stumped.... Ummmm Gateway of India, Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Marine Drive,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,DUH!

I had no idea about city tours, country bumpkin that I am. And never having been anywhere outside the country or dumping myself on a friend to be taken around, I really had no experience of coming up with quick responses like `Oh, this city is not historical or cultural, you know! The interest is in living here, you know...'' sort of stuff. Not that I believe any friend who spouts the lines above. Well, yes, you come to know and like a city after you've lived in it for sometime or sometimes you go to a place with great expectations and find out that life is not in the least bit colourful as you expected it to be (as was the case with me and Ahmedabad). Most often than not, India's cities have something of architectural value like monuments, temples,churches, mosques et al. While we may be familiar with monuments and their history, we very often do not consider religious monuments (temples,churches, mosques) as places to visit, because somewhere in our minds, this is entangled with places of worship and relegion and hence we can't go, don't go,etc., etc.

On the other hand, if you go to Europe, cathedrals and churches are considered places of tourist interest. They usually have to do with period of construction and the then prevalent architectural style, stained glass windows as well as paintings and murals in the Church/cathedral. There are other spots of interest like museums and flea markets and monuments and beaches and many more.

I did take my friend to Siddivinayak and Mahalakshmi in Mumbai, but contented myself with intros like `This the famous Siddivinayak, you know'' kind of statements.Obviously he did not know and at the end of the tour remarked that he did not know Mumbai was also a pilgrim centre. The trauma of that remark still exists, let me tell you. But then he was a lifelong resident of Chennai and having grown up with a lot of temples around, I guess this was not of interest to him at all.

Anyways,to somehow end this introduction, which is rambling a lot without too much point, I decided that I will mark out a list of places of interest in some of the places I have lived - namely Mumbai,Chennai, Ahmedabad and if I still feel upto it and nobody is throwing rotten eggs at me, Madurai.

So amigos....here ends the intros and the next post is about the different places in my beloved city of Mumbai.