Top Ten Reasons I Knew I Wasn’t in Kansas

Reason #10 — Nobody gets in to see the wizard.  My travel buddies Janine, Jaya, and I, woke up to our third day in Chennai, excited because we were getting an expert tour of the city. A really close relation of Jaya’s family—I think it was something like her husband’s nephew’s wife’s sister-in-law’s very close friend—had kindly offered her driver and fabulous huge car for the day.

Her genial driver started by taking us to the Theosophical Society, whose website explained, “the Mission of the Theosophical Society is to serve humanity by cultivating an ever-deepening understanding and realization of the Ageless Wisdom, spiritual self-transformation, and the unity of all life.” Sadly, they must convey that wisdom on a more spiritual plane because the actual campus is closed to visitors, as is their (apparently idyllic) park. But that was okay, because…