Spouting Cave

We’ve just arrived in Chennai after a long day’s travel, weary but excited. On the journey to Vellore, Nav’s home town, the raw force and pulsing energy of the street scenes leave me dizzy. Ubiquitous bright yellow auto-rickshaws – three-wheeled mini-taxis – jostle for space with cavalier bikers, brazen cyclists and cars without seatbelts. Commuters are crammed into kicking-can buses, with a dozen more hanging nonchalantly off the outside windows. Women in sarees sit casually sideways on the back of 40mph motorbikes, while rogue cows and bulls plod alongside or simply park themselves in the middle of the frenzied traffic for a nap. The scuttling packs of stray dogs are an unfamiliar species; straggly limbed and vaguely malevolent. Every would-be collision is a near miraculous escape in this zig-zagging, criss-crossing, technicolour chaos. The whole scene has an exhilarating offbeat rhythm, echoed by the Tamil hip-hop that pounds from the car stereo. The Gurusamy family home