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08/21/2017

A glimpse of Chennai

Pictures of a walk in Chennai, alone, on a Sunday

Chennai - 20.08.2017.jpg

04/12/2014

Searching for the lost turtle...

When Indians ask for a leave, they always give you an explanation; this is pretty funny... They have to attend the naming ceremony of a newborn, take their wife to get an MRI of her arm etc. That’s how, one fine day (it was a Wednesday I remember), one of my direct reports asked me if he could take a day off to... go see turtles hatching! Turtles!! Not only did I give him a day off and my blessings, I also tagged along!

We left Mumbai early (very early), towards the village of Velas on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra. Very quickly a foul odor – which had already disturbed us a few weeks earlier – spread in the car. Incredibly brave, my favorite Indian opened the bonnet and discovered the corpse of a cat. As it was early (very early), he took the bull by the horns (or rather the cat by the legs) and removed it himself – ignoring my advice of delegating the task to any guy against twenty rupees...

Later on we found a place to clean the car but the pressure washer hardly helped, death smell is tenacious. So I spent a good amount of the journey playing with incense stick, to the tune of One Republic:
podcast

Seven hours later, we arrived in Velas, a village blessed with no network coverage (in brief, a village like I like them!). Our local guide had set sail for Mumbai without informing anyone and our small group found refuge in a random house, where we tried to call him (with a landline). An hour later we finally touched base with our host cum lunch provider.

After a micro-siesta we were off to the beach to meet the turtles!

A beautiful beach, without a human soul nor a... turtle! We learned then that the turtles come to lay their eggs at night only and the NGO involved in their preservation doesn’t let people walk on the beach at night to avoid disturbing them – annoying but fair... Anyway, we were also told that the previous night, only one turtle (according to fin prints) had visited the premises. Plus at night it was so pitch dark that the chances to spot that brave turtle were close to nothing! Still we woke up at 5 AM the next morning to go track down turtle prints – who knows?? Well we do now… Luck was not with us!!

As for eggs hatching, well, let’s say it wasn’t the right period...

Nevertheless, we saw a turtle! A river turtle (or tortoise) caught by a fisherman...

But we didn’t come home empty-handed since we got the information that it is on the beaches of Orissa (on the other side of the country) that turtles come by the thousands to nest...

And we could witness the work that an NGO can make  by empowering local communities in the preservation of endangered species: stop hunting turtles, protect the eggs from predators, and take on the path of turtle tourism, becoming a "turtle village" with a "turtle festival" (website). Quite smart! There is just a bit of work so that tourists can actually see turtles. Or so that white-bellied Eagles spend a little more time in their nest and tourists can see them also! 

Anyway, we spent a great weekend in the countryside! In a very quiet village with old-style houses, their floors covered with cow dung to prevent vermin, with cats in every house (which is pretty rare in India) to give warning of ophidian intrusions, with skinny chickens everywhere. We slept at a home-stay: very simple (very thin mattresses on the floor, Indian toilet in the garden (or more exactly in the palm grove behind the house) but clean!

The road from Mumbai is beautiful, especially when you leave the highway (well, the highway... the word is big) and the road gets empty...

And then we managed to defeat the dead cat smell by taking in a hitchhiking India: he was a Pandit (priest) who had come to perform a puja for a baby whose stars were not a birth (especially Venus) and who smelled of wood fire!

Velas, Maharashtra - Feb 2014

09/24/2013

Ganesh immersion in video!

Every year I go see Ganesh departure in the sea… (The idea here is that Ganesh, the God with an elephant head, comes in people’s homes every year and after a couple of days (up to 10) he leaves, carrying everbody’s sins with him in the purifying water.)

But for the first time I went at night on the main day of immersion…

Walking home took me two hours. Partly because it was overcrowded (especially Juhu Tara Road where all the processions happen) and partly because I was so busy filming!

 

It was amazing to see the joy, the fervour, the passion!

People also kept coming to my mini video camera and smiled and sang.

My ass got groped only twice which is a performance seeing the number of people gathered…

 

A truly energising and incredible experience!

 

Pictures of my previous Ganapati festivals are here. 

 

Here is the short version (10 min) of the 2 hours of shooting I did:

 

And here the long (30 minute) version!

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