Dakshin Chitra

Dakshin Chitra (DC) is a good con. By its very concept it is a con to rope in cash from Chennai tourists on pretext of showing them a glimpse of the rural life in South India. To those who have seen Saarang Village, DC is just an upgraded version of it with an entry ticket of 75 bucks (their site quotes less but they have revised the rates April onwards). Once you enter the campus, located on ECR Road, a little ahead of MGM Dizzie World, you can have a look at typical rural mansions of TN, Karnataka, Andhra and Kerala. The houses are real. I especially liked the mallu ones because of the extensive usage of wood. Man, I found some real nice making out areas in one of those empty houses. That was the best part of the entire exploration. Whenever the next girl friend happens, I am so taking her to this place all for the heck of making out.

Besides these real houses, you can also find some real artisans like weavers and potters at work, the way they would have been in a real village. These folks are hired for a regular salary, plus they also make money by selling of stuff directly to tourists (a part of such sales goes to Dakshin Chitra though).

Given that the entire campus is supposed to bring you close to Dakshin bharat ki sanskriti, take it for granted that the place is quite sad. It lacks energy. You really can’t feel much energy in the tourists till you run across those hyper firangs who love their cameras more than their dicks. I am sure most of them leave for Mahabalipuram after taking all the perfect shots at DC.

By the way, the first thing that you are asked to do before you are suggested to start touring the campus is to watch a sad documentary. The documentary might be sad but it contains loads of wiki-level information (which you might find on wiki anyway). So I would suggest you skip it if next time you enter the place and you are asked to watch the same thing. Go, pay a visit for an aesthetically good experience and probably if you wanna pick some handicraft stuff like beads and jute bags and clay dildos.