Sabre rattling causes tempers to fray in Old Chennai

Airline Paramount - one of the new ones springing up like tulips outside Amsterdam - took a unilateral decision to cancel its "business class" plane with economy size prices due to operational reasons, a word which means as much as leaves on the line does when trains are cancelled in Surrey.

We managed to get onto a Kingfisher fright but there were also some delays here, due, said the pilot, to technical glitches in the Sabre system. And no doubt because Saturday's bundh plunged Chennai Airport into the utmost confusion.

Things got so heated, the rumours go, that a group of about 20 passengers took matters into their own hands on Saturday when they were bumped off a domestic fright and beat up staff at one of the check in counters. We were safe in Pondicherry. Very safe. Maybe too safe.

Needless to say, this is one of the slenderest IT hooks on which to hang a few pictures we took of ancient site Mahabalipuram, just up the road from Pondicherry on the road to Old Chennai.

Elephant carved out of solid rock

The main drag at Mahabalipuranam

View over Mahabalipuram to the sea

Another fine temple in the complex