Bangalore Brunette: Chennai: A weekend of beach ultimate, FOOD, and TED talks!

Now that I’ve caught up on the last three weeks, I can tell you the highlight thus far—my weekend of adventures with Veera in her hometown, Chennai! Veera was heading back home for a weekend of Frisbee, friends, and celebrations (it was her father’s birthday on Thursday) and she was gracious enough to let me tag along for the ride!

After a hellish few hours booking, refunding, and negotiating with RedBus employees Friday morning, Veera came through in the clutch and went to the RedBus office and got me tickets for our ~6 hour journey to Chennai. Hopefully next time it will be far less painful and time consuming...

After a late dinner of Delhi Food Point delivery at Veera’s place, we headed off to Christ University for our 11:00 pm scheduled “pick-up.” The place was super sketchy, so I was quite happy I wasn’t sitting in the dirty Sharma bus office all by my lonesome!! After a short shuttle to Madiwala, we hopped on our sleeper AC bus and were on our way. Pretty cozy little nook for the two of us. I wouldn’t be so comfortable sharing that double bed with a random stranger, but with Veera, I guess it was okay ;) Slept in and out for the next six hours to arrive in Chennai an hour late (around 7 am). Got a quick glimpse of Chennai as we autoed to her family’s place to pick up her car and get to Frisbee! From first impression (and I maintain this impression after the fact), Chennai has far more life and character than the oftentimes impersonal Bangalore. Teaming with much more energy, culture and heat (although it was REALLY mild on Saturday), this was more the India I was anticipating and hoping for. We met Pere, Veera’s dad and I got a quick tour of their lovely traditional home. Veera’s aunt and grandmother were preparing for a large pooja to celebrate full moon, but luckily we’d stay out of the way!

Thanks to the apparently RARE mild weather and light drizzle people were still playing Frisbee on the beach when we reached around 8:30 am! Met a lot of Veera’s friends and got to play with all the different teams- Stall7, Blitz, Chakra, Sugar Canes, etc. etc.- there was so many! Consistent with all Frisbee teams I met, everyone was so welcoming and excited to have me come play! And with much lower counts of women—it meant lots of playing time. Unfortunately running on sand, no breakfast, and minimal sleep the night before is not a great recipe for quality ultimate but I played my best!! Around 11 am Veera and I had quite enough and our stomach were grumbling. We were going to hit up one of her favorite idli/dosa breakfast joints but made a slight detour down some twisting back alleys to her uncle's place. And boy am I glad we did! Her relatives were very welcoming and INSISTENT we have some food. Veera’s aunt is a caterer and cooks meals for working folk, so naturally the food was varied and incredible! Some of the best South Indian food I’ve had yet…hands down! We indulged a bit more than our stomachs could handle, but I was quite content with my state of satiation. Headed back to Veera’s house for showers and some relaxation before meeting up with some of her college friends. Stopped by Café Coffee Day (I cannot believe I have been in India now for 1.5 months and haven’t step foot in one of these!) to split a puff and brownie sizzler to tide us over until dinner. Watched the Chelsea v. Arsenal game and came to the end of the pooja for rose water, dinner (idli, sambar, dosa – usually a breakfast staple) and clean up. Afterwards we headed to Zara Tapas Bar for drinks (overpriced peach margarita, yummm), dancing, and more conversations with friends. Got to here Veera's favorite Gangam styel TWICE, clearly a successful evening! However, we were back at Veera’s by midnight. I was honestly pretty pooped from the previous evening and day’s activities and wanted to be well rested for Sunday morning’s games!

Groggy Veera and I started moving around 6:30 (first games stared 6:15 am) – apparently we were more tired than we thought. Regardless, we still got some good playing in. We both played for Blitz, a highly talented, good-flowing Chennai team with only one girl! Tons of fun and we beat our opponents easily in a race to 11. We played a bit more pick up, tossed around a bit, took pictures etc. before heading out for the breakfast Veera had promised the day before and the start to Veera’s rendition of Food Tour: Chennai.

I won’t get into the gory details of breakfast, but lets just say- it was pretty fabulous and we left quite content. After showers and a quick rest, we were off to TedX Chennai for a change in scenery. We lucked out since Veera’s father was one of the photographers for the event so we got to sneak in with out paying the Rs 5000 registration fee- wahoo! It was quite different from the innovation, sciencey TED talks I’d seen on the web before, but some were still interesting. For the duration of our stay, we only saw female speakers and there seemed to be a recurring theme- gratitude, positivity, and making the most of life. I felt like I was at a feel-good, inspiration conference rather than a technology, entertainment, and design event- but as a I said, quite an enjoyable couple hours. At tea break, Veera and I headed down the street to one of her friends homes’ for some “girl talk” and quality chill (litereally chill—it was so cold in their AC room!) time. After some good conversation and laughs, Veera and I were off on the remainder of our Chennai food tour. We met up with her dad after the TEDx conference ended around 5 pm, continued the food tour at Marina beach, and headed back to Gopalapuram for the last legs of the food tour! Early to bed to catch our 6 am train back to Bangalore—yay for last minute booking!! The train was definitely good bang for your buck. Ticket included a moderately comfortable seat in an AC car (a bit too cold for my liking), water bottle, coffee or tea or both probably, newspaper, biscuits, breakfast, juice! Even better than Amtrak (if only they had wireless though...)

Overall, a weekend well spent! Next up on the blog will be the exclusive Chennai food tour—get excited for some photos and quality food writing!