Tamil Nadu

Chennai begins at the beach. Marina Beach runs thirteen kilometres, among the longest urban beaches in the world, and at half past five in the morning it hosts the city's true parliament: walkers in white, fishermen dragging in nets hand over hand in long teams, kite flyers, a laughing club whose laughter is entirely serious, and tea sellers moving through all of it like circulation. I helped pull a net for twenty minutes, at the fishermen's amused invitation, and earned a share of exactly nothing, the catch was thin, plus a tumbler of tea and the morning's news in Tamil, translated in fragments by a boy who wanted to practise English. His summary of Chennai, delivered with civic pride: 'Very hot. Very best.' Both true. The city wears its heat like formal dress and gets on with things: the oldest functioning British-era buildings in India, a film industry whose stars become chief ministers, and a music season each December, the Margazhi festival, in which hundreds of venues host thousands of Carnatic concerts, and the city argues about ragas the way other cities argue about football.

An hour south, at Mahabalipuram, the Pallava dynasty spent the seventh century using the shoreline as a sketchbook.