My first impression of Chennai hospitality was a sweet old lady on my flight. After demanding to see the captain for forgetting her South Indian vegetarian dinner, ‘Madame’ (whose name I never understood) kindly offered me a mint as she smiled at my clumsy British attempts at dialogue. I decided to see this as a gesture of affection rather than an observation of my breath and thanked her with an oafish smile.British Airways offers free television for all passengers on long-haul flights, and I had chosen my seat for the the extra leg room it offered. What I did not choose, however, was the only seat on the plane with a broken TV. Reluctant to make a fuss, I took to reading about the exploits of Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries until my newly adopted auntie took it from me, insisting that reading in such darkness was very bad for my eyesight, and so I sat like a restless child who had finished his sweets. The truth is I didn’t bring any sweets and was soon inconsolably bored. I managed to secure a spare seat further along the plane with a TV and after explaining to an angry old man why I was jostling with him two hours into the flight, I lost myself to the Irish hitman flick In Bruge and an episode of Family Guy. Upon returning to my place, Madame had awakened and was distressed at my disappearance, telling me how worried she was and how I should have told her where I was going. I tried to explain to her the difficulty in getting lost aboard this particular plane but soon found myself apologising sincerely to the amusement of a pretty 20-something-year-old girl nearby, whom I found myself conscious of for the rest of the flight.I arrived at a hostel at around 7am, and after three hours of restless sleep awoke to meet a bird that came dangerously close to making a toilet out of my room. Next, the phone rang and it was Krish, my guardian in Chennai, who welcomed me to the city and invited me to lunch at a gentleman’s club.Krish: Excellent, so would you be available to meet us downstairs at 11:30am?Me: Yes Krish I’d love that, I’ll be ready.Krish: OK then we’ll meet you at 11:30.Me: OK great see you then Krish, bye!Krish: Hello?Me: Hello?BEEPThe lunch was fantastic, and I took great pleasure in watching an American student anxiously pick her way through a heavily laden plate under the attentive gaze of our host. That sums up my first 24 hours and I’m still waiting to get a real night’s sleep, though I’m quite resigned to the possibility of 3 months without, so long as I still find it funny.
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