Material Differences

So one thing I've noticed about India, or at least Chennai is that they use a lot of stone here. Most of the sidewalks and even the road medians (when they exist) are made out of granite. It's really something to see these bid slabs of granite laying around, waiting to be cut into paving stones. Another popular material is marble. A lot of buildings have marble stonework in them. There is actually a large, beautiful shrine next to my hotel that is carved out of blocks of marble. Down by the beach, workers have been putting together a park that goes along one of the main roads and they are cutting the sidewalk out of slabs of polished granite and what I think is black marble. This really amazes me because most of the sidewalks here are narrow and stained with garbage juice or perhaps worse, so seeing something grand under construction is very interesting.

It seems too that a lot of the buildings here get second storeys added on later. I've seen a few older buildings that are being added onto which is a little disconcerting considering that the building wasn't initially designed to accommodate a second floor.