My hotel in Chennai is located on a major street in the heart of the city.  With heavy curtains that close out all light and no alarm clock, I am reliably woken every morning by the sound of horns and rumbling engines of vehicles on G N Chetty Road.  Today it is eerily quiet.  Only an occaisional car races by, there are only a handful of pedestrians, instead of the usual dozens visible.

45 minutes into the strike it looks like Chennai is substantially shut down.

I am going to keep all options open today.  Not totally confident that I will have a flight to Kolkata.  Getting mixed information.  NDTV and BBC are running banners under their news broadcasting showing flight cancellations across the country.   Now, as I write this, NDTV reports that Air Deccan, Jet and others have cancelled all flights into Kolkata.  If true, I am out of luck.

I have been reading Mike Yon, Jonathon Harley and Dan Brown and that has inspired/influenced my decision to go, despite the risk.  It seems like circumstances may intervene where common sense was absent.