So on this last day, I took a rickshaw to the High Court...the British temple to the law that was intended to rival the temples that previous empires had left over the landscape of Tamil Nadu. And like those temples, the high court was filled with people seeking justice, seeking favors, lawyers in black robes sipping coffee in the courtyards jammed with motocycles, judges sitting on high benches, scribes typing documents, messangers carrying bundles of papers from courtroom to advocates' offices. Above all the tall domes and the spires of the dark red brick buildings, their wide stairways and columns reaching above the trees. In contrast, the rickshaw driver's home (he invited me since we'd been together all day and we needed a break from the heat) was small, a few rooms on the bottom story of a very old house, his two boys, one girl, one nephew, wife, wife's father, wife's sister living in a configuration that was hard to discipher. Temples and people, warm, good hearted people, living on little...some impressions of a last day in India, at least for this time around.
