Chennai, India - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Earlier today, I was informed by the Marriott staff that the water, even at the hotel, is not safe to drink - after I had just brushed my teeth using hotel water. I'm in a holding pattern for death by diarreaha now. I haven't felt courageous enough to venture outside of the security gates of the hotel to do any 'sightseeing', but it's been okay. I have an eighth floor hotel room and I have spent the day looking out of the window. It's been all the sight seeing that I needed. My view encompasses a way of life that is hard to describe. Off in the distance, I see what must be a high school. The students in the schoolyard are dressed improbably in white in what must be one of the most polluted, dirty cities in the world. Women hang their wash on the roofs of their, um, dwellings. A small stream that even from my bird's eye view, runs through the neighborhood.It is incredibly polluted and littered from bank to bank with refuse and garbage. Women pour their cooking refuse into it almost non-stop. Yet there is a rhythmn to the day. Men begin arriving home after another day at menial labor, the children play happily in the dirt and filth under the watchful eye of their mothers, a small boy has been expertly flying a kite from the roof of his, um, dwelling,virtually the entire day. Imagine a little  boy in America satisfied with a little homemade kite for an entire day. Women in brightly colored Saris stand atop the roofs and share the day's gossip together. As for the news you didn't hear in America, A cyclone hurled its way through Chennai and surrounding areas the morning before my arrival, leaving 33 people dead. And the rythmn of life goes on. India. What man hath wrought. In a country once so prized for its spices and teas, there remains  . . . . . . .the remains.