A colleague arrived at his hotel in Chennai and was shown to his room last week. When the bathroom was pointed out to him, he took a quick gander and noticed something was missing. There was no toilet. He asked. The manager pointed at the shower. The journalist looked down. The shower doubled up as the toilet. It gave new meaning to the phrase “sh*t, shower and shave”.
I pointed out to him he could look on the bright side, that it would save him about 20 minutes each morning and he was reminded of an errand he had to run: “There’s no toilet paper in the room. It’s extra, I think. It must be. I think I’ll just go for the shower bit. Save the first one of those three S’s for when I get to the ground each day and I’ll shave when I get to Nagpur.”
He and the rest of the South Africans left for Nagpur, the venue of South Africa’s match against India on Saturday, yesterday. Myself and Stuart Hess were left in town for the day because all the flights were booked out, and so spent the first quiet day of the tour having a planning meeting beside the pool at our hotel. It was a sober planning meeting, mainly because I am on a three-day course of antibiotics as I attempt to shake a dose of bronchitis-chest infection-plague-ebola-man-flu, while Hess hates drinking alone. Except when Arsenal give away points, as they did on Saturday night. I’m in room 218. Hess is in room 214. I heard the F-bomb through four sets of walls. Arsenal deserved to win I told him the next day. He replied that the referee could go and take a shower in our friend’s hotel bathroom.
Before we landed in Chennai on Friday we had been warned the traffic there could be a little special. And how. On a “Chennai Traffic Police” barrier pushed to the side of the road was painted a command that to the users of that that piece of tarmac: “Obey Traffic Laws.” By command I mean more of a request, even a plea to the thousands upon thousands of drivers here. Here the rule of the road seems either to be survival of the fastest, the flashiest or the most flexible.
Delhi was a breeze compared to the traffic in Chennai, India’s fourth-biggest city. In Delhi and even Chandigarh, they had the good sense to put islands up in the middle of some of the bigger roads to stop those nasty head-on collisions. The main streets of Chennai are similarly protected – the Mahatma Gandhi Road (MG Road) at the heart of Chennai is one such thoroughfare – but the winding paths that make up the crooked backroads of what is a charming place need a charmed life to survive.
A large sign on MG Road reminds all motorbike riders to wear helmets. That rule seems to only be for the male of the species as they thunder along with their wives holding on for dear life and riding side saddle behind them. There are warnings about the tuk tuk drivers in Chennai, who have a tendency to try one on with tourists, yet I never found that.
Garrath and Diane Rosslee, close friends of mine, flew from South Africa for 10 days to watch the matches here and in Nagpur. They caught a tuk tuk and were taken on a tour of the city, shown to a gem of a hidden restaurant and, after their driver had told them he had converted to Christianity and given up booze for Jesus, allowed to drive the tuk tuk on the beach. It cost them the equivalent of R100 to have a personal chauffeur on a three-wheeled bat out of hell.
When the two of them arrived at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, the police refused to allow them to take their cameras in. Their taxi driver said he would look after them, gave them his cell number and told him he would look after their stuff. They had no choice but to trust him. After the match, eight agonising hours and a loss later, the taxi driver arrived with their cameras. Garrath asked him to pick them up the next day for the trip to the airport and gave him a Rs1000 (about R170) tip. His smile would have broken your heart, said Garrath.
Farewell Chennai. Nagpur awaits.