While Chennai is filled with the laughter and dancing and music of the beautiful south Indian people; with the enticing aromas of fragrant spices and sizzling biryanis and curries and sambars cooking everywhere; with the sight of BMW’s and Mercedes giving way to ox carts and street dogs while steering around cows simply napping in the middle of the road; the most startling experience to most newcomers is the gut-churning poverty seen throughout the city. Not just here and there, not segregated so we don’t have to be troubled to see it and can quickly look away, but an ongoing and seemingly inevitable and everpresent part of the weave of Indian life–life in a country about a third the size of the US but with more than five times the population–and nearly twenty percent of the world’s people. This couple seemingly takes up residence outside the wall surrounding the tank at Kapaleeshwarar Temple in the Mylapore section of the city,
while so many others patiently and colorfully await a blessing inside.
Author: David Hassler
David M. Hassler was fortunate enough to have become a relatively rare male Trailing Spouse when his talented wife Sarah accepted a job teaching music in the elementary division of the American International School in Chennai, India, in 2017. His role included, for more than three years there, serving as her everything wallah, but also allowed him time for exploring, discovering, and sharing new places, new faces, and new tastes around Chennai, throughout south India, and beyond. When the pandemic arrived, Sarah retired and they moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they continue to live and love life. David M. Hassler is a long-time member of the Indiana Writers Center Faculty and holds an MFA from Spalding University. His work has been published in Maize and the Santa Fe Writers' Project. He served as a Student Editor for The Louisville Review and as Technical Editor for Writing Fiction for Dummies. He is currently the Fiction Editor for Flying Island, an online literary journal. He is co-author of Muse: An Ekphrastic Trio, and Warp, a Speculative Trio, and future projects include A Distant Polyphony, a collection of linked stories about music and love, memories and loss; and To Strike a Single Hour, a Civil War novel that seeks the truth in one of P T Barnum's creations. He is a founding partner in Boulevard Press.
View all posts by David Hassler
Here Is A Temple. Do Not Commit Nuisance. Wow. All the pictures are worthy of what will sure to be a long-awaited book.
Thanks much! So many subjects to photograph . . .