A Madurai morning – market magic

The next morning

Today is slow. I’m in a five star resort converted from a British cotton and silk merchant’s company estate. It’s lovely. There are peacocks outside my bedroom window. There are cool sweet scented breezes. There is a pool to which I will retire directly for the afternoon.

After last night and before this morning’s violent re-emergence of breakfast in under 15 mins – Karthick took me early to the Madurai markets. Apparently it’s Sunday and in good post-colonial style Sunday is still a holiday here so much of the markets were closed. But I still had fun wandering around the flower wholesalers taking photos scented with jasmine and rose. The rose wholesalers offered me chai and a smile.

Then we went to the vegetable market where my pictures smell of coriander, mint and curry leaves. Lots of smiles and waves and head wobbling.  Being 80% closed was much more relaxed than a normal day I’m sure, but that suited me and my camera.

Aren’t these just such beautiful people? Makes me smile just remembering them welcoming me like it was perfectly normal for a crazy Australian woman to be wandering around at dawn taking their photographs like they were royalty.

It was then back to the hotel for breakfast hmmmm. You will have guessed above, it was a fatal mistake. No more to be said about dodgey omelette. I’ll live, just feel like a day by the pool. Sorry to today’s three programmed temples, but I’m sure there will be more in the next 12 days.

I now receive a daily call from Delhi office to make sure everything is in order madam. Ah well, good to be memorable! I’m not mentioning the omelette, they’ll only worry. Now for that nap then the pool.

Author: Wendy's Out of Station

I write as a way of processing and reflecting on experience, and as a way of sharing that experience. When I travel I used to write email journals back to friends, family, anyone who’d read and risk immersing themselves in my reality for a while: writing for them was a way of writing for me. Borrowing from Graham Greene in a flip of Travels with my Aunt, I imagined writing letters to my nieces, as their travelling aunt. Crafting the sentences became a way of extruding the experience, giving it birth, drawing its meaning from my soul, nurturing it into something tangible with a life of its own. The aim of my blog is to open the world to my thought-children, to let them out of the safety of my friends and family and let them experience the world. And in the process I get the honour of taking a larger group with me when I’m wandering around India and beyond, or just reflecting on parallel truths, thinking thoughts that take me to new places new beginnings. Please journey with me View all posts by Wendy's Out of Station