Chennai Museum and dinner at Brinda's house 17th

(The Madras Museum)

On the morning of the 17th, we woke with full blue skies and began with our normal breakfast of papaya and toast and headed to the Madras Museum... or the Chennai Museum funded by the government.  The architecture of the buildings was beautiful, but upkeep was defiantly lacking.  When we got in, we took a look at the archeological findings of statues from all periods as well as bronze statues of the Hindu Gods and Buddhist idols.  The exhibits and galleries lacked basic museum necessities for what would be recognized as such for in the USA.  In the natural history and botany area of the museum, there were still casing of snakes and reptiles in jars of formaldehyde behind glass panels for kids to look at from 1960; the animals in these "preserved" casings had begun to slowly fall apart and no longer look as intended, just as a lot of their stuffed animals looked as well. It seemed like the taxidermy was slightly behind in the proper ways of preservation as well as exhibition and demonstration of the animals.  Animals seemed dusty and not really taken care of, and aside from the bronze statues, the archeological statues were well within the lines of human touch for whom ever visited the museum, unlike anything that would be seen in the US.  Regardless of the lack of funding and condition of the museum, the bronze gallery was my personal favorite.  With Vidya by our sides, she described nearly every statue we brought into question.  Many times it was more of a personal goal to be able to identify whom the idol was.  I learned that many of the Gods have multiple names due to personalities they have taken on while conquering certain demons and completing certain life goals, such as Shiva and his firey dancing steps used to kill a demon.  I have no pictures of the museum due to the 200Rp fee to take a camera in, but here is a picture of Shiva.
.  
















You can see the fire around him and the demon beneath him.  After the museum we were intended on taking our




Sari blouses to the tailor but everything was closed due to the pongal holiday. Monday was traditionally a day at 




the beach for picnics.  We drove by the beach road and the majority of it was blocked off due to the thousands of




people that we on it that day.  So we went back to Niketana for a relaxing afternoon and got ready to head to 




Brinda's ( Vidya's sister's house and also where her mother lives) for dinner and time with her family.




The evening was a hit, meeting 4 of the 5 children that Vidya's mom had as well as dancing Bollywood as a family




and showing other styles of dance.  Vidya's niece is a famous singer throughout southern India and was gracious 




enough to sing for us a piece that her and her maestro had written.   After dinner, we made the trek back to 




Niketana by foot ( the same way we came) and retired for an early night due to a 5:30 a.m  wake up  the next day.






:)