Finding a home in Madurai

By Jason Smith, ThD, Harvard Divinity School

Jason is currently studying Tamil at the American Institute of Indian Studies in Madurai with support from a SAI summer grant.

“Do you want a ride home on my two-wheeler?”

I had barely been in Madurai for a week, and this was certainly not the question I was expecting. I had just paid for a membership at a local gym near my apartment and finished my work-out when one of the gym members I had just met offered me a ride back home. It was a gesture of hospitality that I did not expect, and yet this kind of generous hospitality is what I have come to appreciate most during my time in Tamil Nadu.

I came to Madurai to spend my summer studying the Tamil language at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). While Chennai is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, Madurai boasts a major temple and pilgrimage site right in its center – the famous Meenakshi Amman Temple – and it played host to the Cankam poets, who produced some of the earliest works of Tamil literature during the first centuries of the Common Era.

While my quest to read some of this earliest Tamil literature is what brought me to Madurai, it is the incredible hospitality of its people that has made me feel at home during my stay. And it is this hospitality that will no doubt bring me back to Madurai again and again. Whether I am chatting with an employee at a nearby convenience store or learning the ins and outs of South Indian food from the cook at the AIIS center, I am so amazed by the kindness and generosity that greets me daily.

Looking back, the offer of a ride home after my first day at the gym was not all that surprising. After a moment of hesitation, I gladly accepted the offer and hopped onto the back of his two-wheeler. It was the first of many lessons in hospitality that I was to receive in Madurai. I look forward to many more to come.