On Tuesday, October 27th, waking with the calls of peacocks, which apparently think they own the hotel and its beautiful grounds, we went to the spectacular Meenakshi Amman Temple, a huge complex, with tall gate towers that are covered with thousands and thousands of brightly-colored statues. 
Then we visited the Tirumalai Nayak Palace, an odd sort of place designed by an Italian architect in the early seventeenth century. There were huge Doric columns, Mughal arches, Hindu details.
After lunch and some down time, we took the bus back into town, where we were met by a bunch of pedal rickshaws (tricycles with buggy seats), one for each of us. We rode through a middle-class neighborhood (Indian middle-class, not American middle-class), people smiling and waving at us, kids in their maroon school uniforms shouting "Hi! Hi!" We stopped to watch a man milk a cow in the street in front of the shop where it would be sold. We stopped on a street where there were textile factories. We were going to visit one building where women were sewing towels, but the owner wasn't there and the staff wouldn't let us in without his permission.
Then we rode to a crematory. As we arrived, a funeral carriage had just left a body off. Smoke poured out from several open concrete pavilions, with corrugated metal roofs. Each pavilion had three cremation pits. Some of them were not in use, but others had pyres in various stages. One had not yet been set on fire. One of the untouchables who operated the crematory (they wore khaki shirts as a sort of uniform), mixed dirt with water to make a thick mud paste, which was spread over the body. Unlike funeral pyres in the movies, these wouldn't flame up, but instead there would be a sort of oven or kiln effect, which would burn the body more slowly and efficiently. The body was held up about two feet above the ground, I assume on piles of wood, the whole thing looking like a mound of mud, with large ventilation holes running across below. The deceased was a 70-year-old man. His seven sons, all bare-chested and barefoot wearing white dhotis (wraparound skirts), with a white cord from their left shoulder to their right waist, were in the process of having their heads and underarms shaved. When they were done, the deceased's face was uncovered and the sons, then the grandsons, then relatives and friends, sprinkled a handful of uncooked rice down the body, starting at the face. There were no women, except for one eight-or-nine-year-old girl, who was excited by the presence of us foreigners and bounced around from one to the other of us. When there was no one else to sprinkle rice, the deceased's face was covered, the oldest son took up onto his shoulder a large clay pot that had three parallel holes near the bottom rear. One of the attendants filled the pot with water and the oldest son led a procession clockwise around his father, three streams of water spouting out behind him, indicating the passage of life. When he came to the end of the third circuit, he stopped and smashed the pot on the ground, and the attendant lit the pyre, from below. Everyone left immediately, not looking back. The next day, they and their women would return to gather the ashes.
Out of respect, we didn't take any photographs.
We returned to our rickshaws, which took us to our bus. Coincidentally, as we drove back to our hotel, we met a funeral procession. Sudha said that it looked like a woman on the bier under flowers in the special open car. At the head was a bare-chested, forefoot man in a white dhoti, carrying a small clay pot with the fire from home, to use for the cremation. There was a group of men walking behind him, sometimes dancing wildly to the beat of a drum. Sudha said that they had been drinking, that one of the reasons why only men went to cremations was that there was always a lot of alcohol available. There would always be loud drumming and sometimes firecrackers as a procession proceeded to the crematory.
Then we visited the Tirumalai Nayak Palace, an odd sort of place designed by an Italian architect in the early seventeenth century. There were huge Doric columns, Mughal arches, Hindu details.
After lunch and some down time, we took the bus back into town, where we were met by a bunch of pedal rickshaws (tricycles with buggy seats), one for each of us. We rode through a middle-class neighborhood (Indian middle-class, not American middle-class), people smiling and waving at us, kids in their maroon school uniforms shouting "Hi! Hi!" We stopped to watch a man milk a cow in the street in front of the shop where it would be sold. We stopped on a street where there were textile factories. We were going to visit one building where women were sewing towels, but the owner wasn't there and the staff wouldn't let us in without his permission.
Then we rode to a crematory. As we arrived, a funeral carriage had just left a body off. Smoke poured out from several open concrete pavilions, with corrugated metal roofs. Each pavilion had three cremation pits. Some of them were not in use, but others had pyres in various stages. One had not yet been set on fire. One of the untouchables who operated the crematory (they wore khaki shirts as a sort of uniform), mixed dirt with water to make a thick mud paste, which was spread over the body. Unlike funeral pyres in the movies, these wouldn't flame up, but instead there would be a sort of oven or kiln effect, which would burn the body more slowly and efficiently. The body was held up about two feet above the ground, I assume on piles of wood, the whole thing looking like a mound of mud, with large ventilation holes running across below. The deceased was a 70-year-old man. His seven sons, all bare-chested and barefoot wearing white dhotis (wraparound skirts), with a white cord from their left shoulder to their right waist, were in the process of having their heads and underarms shaved. When they were done, the deceased's face was uncovered and the sons, then the grandsons, then relatives and friends, sprinkled a handful of uncooked rice down the body, starting at the face. There were no women, except for one eight-or-nine-year-old girl, who was excited by the presence of us foreigners and bounced around from one to the other of us. When there was no one else to sprinkle rice, the deceased's face was covered, the oldest son took up onto his shoulder a large clay pot that had three parallel holes near the bottom rear. One of the attendants filled the pot with water and the oldest son led a procession clockwise around his father, three streams of water spouting out behind him, indicating the passage of life. When he came to the end of the third circuit, he stopped and smashed the pot on the ground, and the attendant lit the pyre, from below. Everyone left immediately, not looking back. The next day, they and their women would return to gather the ashes.
Out of respect, we didn't take any photographs.
We returned to our rickshaws, which took us to our bus. Coincidentally, as we drove back to our hotel, we met a funeral procession. Sudha said that it looked like a woman on the bier under flowers in the special open car. At the head was a bare-chested, forefoot man in a white dhoti, carrying a small clay pot with the fire from home, to use for the cremation. There was a group of men walking behind him, sometimes dancing wildly to the beat of a drum. Sudha said that they had been drinking, that one of the reasons why only men went to cremations was that there was always a lot of alcohol available. There would always be loud drumming and sometimes firecrackers as a procession proceeded to the crematory.
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