When I was a child we called this city Madras. The British established Madras in the 17th century as a naval base and developed it into one of India's major urban centers. Chennai, situated on the Bay of Bengal, is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The language spoken by most of the seven and a half million people is Tamil, not Hindi or English. The city is the fourth largest metropolitan city in India and the 35^th largest metropolitan area in the world [Wiki].

A few years ago there was very little vehicular traffic until the large automotive manufacturers moved in along with heavy growth in the technology sector. On a typical weekday it can take 45 minutes to travel a few miles. See the gallery below for a typical drive on the main road in Chennai on a Sunday when it's rather less congested than on weekdays.

But I digress. So as I said, our host brought us to very expensive part of town for breakfast. We entered the Krishna Restaurant which has South Indian style food and I noticed that about a fifth of the diners were Westerners while on the drive getting here we did not spot even one white face on the streets.

We started off with Idly Sambar Vada - 38 Rupees or about $0.95 (Click for larger image). You take Idly (pronounced like Italy), a white sponge cake made by steaming a batter of fermented black lentils, rice and fenugreek, and dunk chunks of it into Sambar (Lentil soup) and Chutney (spicy crushed coconut with green chili). The same dunking is done with vada or vadai, a spicy rather than sweet doughnut made from lentil or potato. This dipping can all be simply accomplished with your fingers rather than with a fork or spoon, no problem.

The green part is banana leaf which you do not eat and is used mainly as a decorative plate to rest the food on, although I have found that it does add a certain flavor to the dish if it is used as a wrapper for frying or steaming.

Next came a plate of Masala Dosai - 38 Rupees (Click for larger image). Dosa is a gigantic potato-filled crepe made with finely ground rice and skinned black lentil bean and is almost the same batter as Idly except the rice is finer and it is fried like a pancake instead of steamed. You tear chunks of it with your hands and dunk it into both the Chutney and Sambar. Sambar is also written as Sambhar although Americans usually cannot pronounce or hear the small puff of air after the 'b' sound.

As for drinking water, there are dozens of brands of water such as Pepsi's Aqufina and many local brands most of which are served at room temperature. I have to tell you I do not like the taste of warm bottled water, I prefer club soda on the rocks. I do not drink water back at home even though we have a filtration system at home. I am a seltzer man.

Our breakfast was topped off with a cappuccino-style cup of coffee (all the cups for coffee in India are small compared to American sized coffee cups) and the bill came out to be about four bucks per person. I would like to mention that they add on a 1% service charge although my host leaves extra for a tip. The state also charges a 12.5% VAT tax on the meal as well. My partner paid with a credit card.

Later that evening we took a walk on the wild side. If you walk the streets at night you will see many vendors making pancakes, crepes, and idlys for sale. Cakes and sweets from street vendors cost about 20 cents or so. A cup of fruit juice goes for about half a buck. The roads are filled with cars honking, buses wheezing with hundreds of passengers some of whom jump off while the buses are still moving and thousands of motorbikes weaving in and out the traffic. Here you will see the father piloting the motorbike and is sometimes the only one wearing a helmet, his wife side-saddle behind him holding an infant precariously in her lap. Perhaps half of the riders wear helmets.

Interestingly local cops pull over young motorcyclists and check for licences. If they don't have any or are expired the cops collect a little bribe money. If the kid has a proper license, the cops will find something wrong, such as broken lights with which to extort some small fees from the poor riders. Such is the way of most countries in the world. In my previous article I wrote that a cabbie tried to charge me $24 bucks instead of the official rate of $4 for a ride to the airport. I should have mentioned that this is not endemic only to India, obviously this kind of ripoff happens at Kennedy Airport in New York as well.

You will rarely see cars with their windows down, the pollution is terrible and the streets smell of ripe urine. Chennai is growing so fast that it is having problems with infrastructure. I should mention that cable TV lines are strung haphazardly all over the place and is expanding tremendously due in no small part to its relative cheapness, only a buck or so a month for 88 premium channels.

I have come to Chennai because it is the premier center for information technology and other related communication-technology-enabled services which is the business I am in. If you are waiting for me to mention my company name don't bother, I never do, this blog is a personal blog, not a commercial for my business.

Tomorrow in New Delhi I will be meeting with government officials involved with telecommunications, broadcast, and information technology. Then on Wednesday I hope to see the Taj Mahal before coming home on Friday.