Vacation – at home – Chennai

After a break – as always – am back to share with you some snapshots of my visit to Chennai for my brother’s marriage during the first week of May 2008. Well, the return flight was exactly as it was when I came to Europe, the combination of Finnair and Jet airways business class is definitely a class apart. So, am not going to bore u again with the details… just that everything went on well and was on schedule. In fact, the flight to Chennai was before time by around 20 minutes. My wife and my brother came to pick me from the airport at the odd hours of 1.30 am. Reached home in 15 minutes and went to bed without realizing am in for a surprise. Yes. My 5 month old daughter woke up and we played for almost an hour before she slept again – start of a most memorable time with my daughter for the next 2 weeks.

Next day completed all the purchases for the marriage and rechecked the final arrangements for the marriage from the groom’s side. In a couple of days of time, we were all set for the marriage celebrations. Finally, found time to get my hair styled in time for the marriage. Next day other people on the centre stage were set for their “beauty” treatments – my wife, my brother and his would be – so I had a day free for myself, which I promptly used to visit my friends after a long time  had a good time with them for a few hours before returning to pick up the “beautified” family.

The next 3 days was BUSY in the marriage and lots and lots of work and talking and meeting the relatives who made it to the marriage – lots of fun and frolic and of course food during those 3 memorable days. We were back to home on May 1 fully exhausted and tired. Again loads of work to reset home back to “before” stage. As you can imagine, so many things had to reset and it took all our remaining energy for the next couple of days before we set out for the spiritual trips to different temples around my native place. We left on Sunday night and everyone else returned back on Wednesday when I visited TVM office to see my teams and colleagues. It was an intense trip with quite a lot of news for me to digest in a very short span of time.
I reached home on Thursday with a little upset of the body and biological clock. But well, left home early on Friday for another temple – Thirupathi – one of the wealthiest temples in the world. Another exhausting day and finally my daughter showed some effects of all these travel and fell a little sick. Finally, on Saturday morning started to pack for the return flight to Helsinki. Quite a lot of drama happened before everything could be finalized and set for my flight. Had to visit the pediatrician for my daughter, then my uncle’s place for lunch and back home with a couple of hours to spare before I had to leave for the airport.

All through, there was always one irritating companion with me from the time I landed in India to the time I boarded the return flight – the one and only Chennai summer HEAT. I would not try to describe it… you have to feel it to understand it.