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| From Chennai Photo Album 2009 |
After that we had free time until 6pm when we were to attend a fireworks show.
So – the free time! Some of us spent time swimming in the hotel pool where, for the first time since our arrival in India, our body temperatures dipped to "cool." That was great.
After the swim, it seemed normal to meander through the town. First, as one of us is a volunteer firefighter, we went to the fire hall near the hotel. That led us to an alley where one beautiful woman (wearing a dress we both thought we could wear happily at home) was laying out what looked to be straws, in the sunlight. Another woman accompanied by a small throng of children took the position of spokesperson – and though our Tamil is nil – we learned that they were part of a cottage industry for the fireworks plant in that town. They were using recycled paper, rolling it (another woman sitting splay legged in the vestibule of her company apartment was rolling them by hand faster than fast) and our lovely dressed woman glued the cylinders and dried them in the sun.
By this time, people were hanging out the windows above our rendezvous point, laughing, and trying too, to explain everything to us. One man came downstairs with a bundle of 1000 of these cylinders and we learned that they would be filled with an explosive and used to ignite a firecracker.
That night, we saw two fireworks shows: one was a nightly show that occurs every night for six months to try out new firecrackers; the other was at a Rotary meeting place in the country, put on just for us by the Ambattur Rotarians.
It just is so good. All of it!
Mary-Jo Lang
for Team Chennai 2009
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