Healthy eating: banana and five juices as a starter...

Getting to grips with the modern interpretation of traditional eating patterns. Juices were oddly sweet, after that more like standard south Indian fare.

Lion + Shore temple, Mahabalipuram

Last weekend

Bengali sweets, from a dinner guest who'll be invited back!

Despite the relatively short distance (300km or so) I flew. Although the heat of May had subsided in B, I was expecting humidity. And blue sky.

Circling the airport, we took a loop out over the ocean, a neat pattern of tankers either resting or like us waiting for further instructions. Smaller fishing boats made a bright mosaic on the beach. A striking number of blue rooves and warehouses I haven't noticed elsewhere studded the city as we came back round.

The drive from the airport was grimly familiar from other cities - roads narrowed by work on their own expansion and ugly concrete flyovers under construction, but not yet reducing the pressure of traffic (although at one, a neat wicket of green - looked like astroturf - in the nook beneath the rise provided a space for two boys practicing their cricket).

Towards the ocean, down a medium size street - part retail part domestic - we passed a wedding party, with an arch with the couple's names which has become familiar (my favourites always those made with hundreds of gerberas and other flowers).

This one was more cheerfully signposted by a band with drums and the groom (looking mildly overwhelmed) on an even more bewildered looking horse. Jains said the taxi driver. Horse, music, clothes. Jains are rich. Gold business, diamond business...

Then we reached the coast - some of the most affected by the 2004 tsunami. Marina Beach, 13km of lovely golden sand, had about 200 recorded casualties, mostly children. Still there are blocks of concrete council-style square blocks - weathered but unbroken. Perhaps more recent. And endless fishstalls, the proprietors of smaller ones carefully holding umbrellas over handfuls of prawns or little fish.

Skipping the temples without much hesitation (heading south for more) I was sad to miss the originally Portuguese San Thome Cathedral, with the tomb of St Thomas the Apostle who is said to have brought Christianity to India in the first century.

The roads and shops in Tamil Nadu are singularly absent in English signs and writing (even more true of Hindi) - the easiest protest for Southern identity against a government 2000+km and arguably a whole culture away.

The local politicians though, are very much in evidence...