Nothing beats the joyous atmosphere of an airport reunion and all of the elements were in place as we made our first steps into the hustle and bustle of Chennai. Padma’s cousins, Ravi and Minny from Gudur and Usha and Santosh from Chennai were waiting for us as we finally left the airport and took our first steps on Indian soil. Before we knew it we had beautiful garlands made of fresh flowers placed around our necks by Usha and Minny. We felt quite honoured to be welcomed in such a beautiful way and the delicate aromas of the flowers masked the body aromas accumulated from the long flight through the night.

Mercy’s neice, Usha and her husband, Santhosh, took a day off work to come to the airport to greet us and pamper us for the day. Usha and Santhosh are two of the thousands of university-educated IT professionals who are making Chennai one of the leading IT centres in the world. Usha works as a software tester for the global company Infosys while Santhosh is a programmer for HP.

Mercy’s nephew and niece, Ravi and Minny, drove from the Andhra Pradesh town of Gudur to meet us at the airport. They also will join us as we travel to Kakinada for the wedding. Ravi is a Christian bishop and we will be celebrating Christmas with him and his congregation in Gudur.

Padma has travelled to India many times but has never lived here. Her father was working as a medical officer in Malaysia when she was born and from there the family immigrated to Australia. She last came to India three years ago with Joshua, her brother and brother to bury the ashes of her father in his homeland.

There are shrines everywhere in India including this shrine to the Hindu gods on the dashboard of our taxi.