SIVACRACY.NET

After our first day in Madras, Melissa and I got up way too early (time zones, you know) and were whispering about our impressions of this place while my aunt and uncle slept. This is my seventh visit; her first.

She was struck by the signs that life seems fleeting and almost disposable: no one wears helmets or seatbelts when driving motorcycles or cars. Electric transformers sit unfenced and unprotected, just waiting for children to climb up and play on them. Everyone intensely focused on the matters at hand that they barely notice what we read as hazards and threats. She said the streets of Madras are filled with a sense of "desperate vitality."

Yet clearly, life here is dear and precious. There is just so much of it. Everyone is powerfully alive. Losing a couple thousand of your neighbors can remind you pretty fast about that feeling. We went through such feelings a few years back in NYC. But this is a much bigger deal. This tsunami is the sort of event that reminds us how small and fragile we all are. We are very weak little animals in a big, powerful universe. And the universe does not always share our values and plans.

Everyday life continues. The shops are teeming. The horns are honking. The dogs are barking. The children are playing cricket. But conversation everywhere lingers around the events of last Sunday. Everyone has a story. Everyone was touched.

The thing that keeps events in Madras in perspective is the clear fact that Sri Lanka got it worse than we did and that Indonesia got it worst of all.

Life went on for tourists like us as well. We wanted to get to the beach immediately and check out the damage and relief efforts. But the police had closed all the roads. It seems that rumors had spread (by the government and others) that a second tsunami was headed this way on Thursday. So people panicked and ran. Police reacted. No one was hurt, as far as I can tell.

We have some familiarity with governments stirring up panic. But here it seemed like a stupid mistake. There seems no clear way to exploit panic for political gain (unlike in some large countries that will remain the United States). Governments always like to seem like they are doing something, even when there is no imminent threat. Something is better than nothing, they figure. This was ulitmately not a serious situation. But this incident indicates just how tense things are here.

So we could not go to the beach. Instead, as good Americans, we did what our president told us to do in times of crisis: shop.

Melissa and I are obscenely tall. Well, maybe not for the United States and Western Europe. But we stand out here pretty starkly. At least my tan skin gives me a little cover. Mel turns heads. It's pretty funny to watch.

We did some sari shopping and rode around in my uncle's car yesterday. Mel was struck by the intensity of driving in India. The roads are made for bullock carts, not cars and busses. But these days every road is choked with cars. Traffic laws are a mere suggestion. Driving in Manhattan seems like a dream compared to this place.

Today will will survey the beaches and the damage. And we will shop some more.

More soon.

Happy New Year.