My Chennai notes..

The inverted cone shaped dosa with lots of ghee never seemed to stop rolling. People ignored went about eating idli’s, dosas and pongal on one everyday morning. Then went on to the counter to get their morning dose of filter ‘kapi’. The coffee was dark brown, slightly bitter with just the right amount of sugar to not make it sweet. This was 7.30 am. To a regular job going Bangalorean like me, it was just past mid night.

Walking out of the small café, there are auto rickshaws, the drivers of which on noticing a person with a bag just go on ‘madam auto’, ‘sollungha madam’, ‘yenghe madam?’. It dosen’t matter to them if you know the local language or not, I’d rather want to say national language ;). They just make sure with their insistant noise for sometime would make you turn around and shoo them or ask them how much. I am quite amused, as to how a tamilian makes you understand their language rather than try to speak your language. Same scenario in Bangalore would sound like: ‘Madam auto?’, ‘English madam?’, ‘want madam? Auto madam?’, ‘yellighe madam?’, ‘cheppu madam’ and more blah blah blah. The same question of do you want to hire a rickshaw in many different language, assuming the possible native by gauging a person’s look.The heights of localization in terms of language is what surprises me. The look on a person’s face when one speaks Hindi, the boards on shops which are in pure chaste Tamil, the road names are in Tamil as well.

The temples are still cynosure for the people in the traditional Tamil land. The early birds catch a song and smell the fresh air and hear the sound of chants in the temple. The cows, priests and the flower vendors are a common sight. Priests are a clan that, as a Bangalorean, I get to see only when I visit a temple. But here you see them around temples, stores, airport, on bikes, in cars, shopping, walking and pretty much everywhere. The names of temples, the number of deities, the number of customized prayers, the type of offering for each deity, the permutation is unnerving.

The family is still the most visible group in Chennai. Appa, amma, and the kids are what you will see often on the visitor spots. Not to miss the paati and thatha. Another common sight, is the ratio of old people to young. The sight of the older people in Chennai is much higher. Either, the old people are very healthy and active or there are just too many of them.

The range of colours is predominantly bright. Rather, I’d say bright is a color used commonly in Chennai. You would not miss the bright yellow mangoes or the bright red flesh of a cut watermelon on a Bangalore road. But in Madras, it blends with the colors around. Either the vendor has a brighter color on or the customer, or the movie poster on the wall behind. It could be all at one go too. Now you know why our Quick Gun Murugan has shades on.

The traffic is smooth flowing, not many jammed spots. But the swaying turns on a road is amusing. You have to take a right turn after a nasty lane change and then quickly move to the left to make get to a signal to take a right turn. Note: All these are traffic rules. Nothing beats the maneuvering skill required at a T-nagar junction at the shopping place. People don’t care about vehicles, so do the vehicles – they don’t care about vehicles or people on the road. It’s a milieu of shopping stores, people, the humidity and heat, vehicles – include autos, rickshaws, autos, bikes, cars, autos, cycles, vans, cabs. Yes, autos is repeated, that is how they appear in that area. Simply multiplied.

Fried food is a surprise element in Chennai. People relish it at 11 am and 11pm, on a crowded Ranganathan Street and twilight filled Marina beach. Sweaty hot 11am? Beats me. We Bangaloreans crib to go out for a 36 C and drink plenty of TCs (Tender Coconuts) to keep cool. Chennai on a warm 40C has the tamizha walking around the crowded street and munching on a hot bajji.

The heat, the most obvious thing in Madras is something that is round the clock and year. All you do is sweat on a nice morning, sweat on the hot day, sweat at lunch, sweat during a bath, sweat at night, sweat, sweat, sweat. This is like the omnipresent thing for anything in Chennai. The beach, I must admit is the best of it all. Even with the crowd and the day’s heat, a night on the beach is a chill pill. But hey, here I am…the hot warm air that engulfs you as you move away from the shore. Phew.

Chennai, for all the glory of the beach and the wonderful everything. Vanakam.

Expression of an emotion

How could I be an emoticon? One, that could be used based on the required emotional criteria. It often beats me when it comes to sounding sad or sympathetic or even happy or angry. Or even looking sad or looking very happy. These degrees of change on the human face are something that I was not manufactured with.
So, how does one learn the act of sadness and happiness? Have I missed out on that universal language? No, I don’t get excited and exude happiness and joy during sad hour or am I remorse at the time of excitement. But then I don’t express it with all my might or rather don’t pretend to be something that everyone around is faking. I am me.

It’s all about the Genes..

he said. THis thought provoking statement by a friend made me think, not only twice but surely twice as much. Now, sometimes I wonder is it the genes that are dictating my life. Is it this inherited factor the cause of many a things I do? Or all the things I do?

Am I writing for the love of writing or my genes are making me do it? Am I or am I because of my genes? Do I have a wicked sense of humor? Or do you think am a spoil sport? Or I have fear for heights?Do I just blame it on my genes?

So, genes not only control the character but the human being as well. The selfish gene was the one behind all this – the this thing called life. This factor called gene is what is making me sleep so much? Making me the sloppy dancer that I am?

So, they say it’s the genology. Does it mean that the curly locks of my great grandfather, mixed with the luscious hair of my grandmother, together with the brown tan of my paternal grandfather with the straight hair of my maternal grandmother’s hair and the money and care from my parents .. I am bald. Oh genes.

Playboy

The essence of a word is in the way we use it. The said word or the pictorial representation of it greatly adds sheen and attaches importance to a word. India, and its hypocritical social environment is so openly secretive about the taboo topics of physical intimacy and its acts. The state’s dictatorial demeanor of entertainment viewship is in no way inversely proportional to the related crime. Forcing a social façade by heralding ethical morality is not creating any ancient generation. The façade only satiates a generation and the self proclaimed moral policing fanatics.

Getting back to the word….Am amused by the abuse of the word, image and use of ‘Playboy’ in India. Yes, in India. As I make my way through the traffic ridden Bangalore lanes, there goes no day without the playboy bunny image. Be it stickers on vehicles, clothes, jackets ..they are there everywhere. Call it ignorance or the intentional use in the land of kamasutra, Mr. Heffner your orgasmic entity has lost its flutter. No one would twitch or raise an eyebrow in India on seeing the bunny. We have moved on. We are more worried about Big Boss house and Rakhi Sawanth.

Gratitude to a master craftsman

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine


And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they


Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie


In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

- William Wordsworth

wonder how they put such wonderful thoughts into words. It might not be the host of golder daffodils; but the vistas of nature, the wonderfull dreamy things. so true, "what a wealth these show to me had brought..... They flash upon the inward eye which is the bliss of solitude..."

In gratitude to a master craftsman.

My other chattels

Working to keep stride with the visibly floating population, I often wonder about my possessions. Possessions in terms of the old world furniture, the crockery, the umpteen number of upholstery sets and the small knick-knacks. Moving houses has always been the permanent change in my life. From my childhood to my days as a student in the US and now as a working professional, I have lived with certain things that I know not the reason for.

The value of these physical objects is recognized by the grazing look it gets as we tread past. The dust piled in the crevices, in those unreachable cleaning spots, describes its antiquity. The days we ogle at its long forgotten beauty is when we proudly present its presence to a guest. The other hundreds of days, it’s an object for cleaning. The physical weight and space occupied and the emotional weight and space occupied take precedence based on the mood of the day. The broken objects that stick on in the small places available in the bottom racks are only there because of the emotional weight that we cannot shake off. We wonder how we can NOT keep these things that have been with us for …hmmm, let me see… don’t know how many years. What happens if we just discard (the word throw is emotionally hurting) them. Will someone with lesser opportunities in life find it and make it a useable object in their life?

The money invested in visual temptation result in accruing physical object stack. The bonding will be created unconsciously by the money spent on it. This makes it unmovable and after a couple of years, unfashionable. It is neither an object of envy or one for Christie’s. The small ceramic figurines and plaques with happy b’day on it, the number of candle stands, the small idols of god; all gifts from ..ah..guess friends from school or belongs to my brother or ..the or’s could include all family members. The gifts from oblivion are in the stack too. These can be used by the archeological department to pick dust from fissures and practice their carbon dating techniques. The ancient gramophone cum radio is pretty sturdy and is now a stand in some relatives home.

The bags with upholstery sets remain enclosed as a prized possession. They remain wrapped in clean covers. Have seen the expensive silk ones powder after years of safe keeping in the hidden darkness of those totes. Not to mention my skirt from my kindergarten days, shoes that I loved, socks that are pretty, the cute container (so small that it sits prettily in my desk), the boxes of some curios, the beautiful plastic bags. If we remove the adjectives from these objects, it will possible be the reason of anguish.

The heirlooms are part of our tradition. The royalty of ancient years owned them to display power and culture, the lesser mortals then heralded it for some obvious public acknowledgement of association to power and now we keep it for emotional reasons we don’t question. We are just preserving our culture where we never discard useful things or rather things we inherit. No matter how often we use them or how many of them we have, or even if it’s broken.

I am not an ungrateful kid or grandkid that I don’t understand the value of possessions. But then…

Toe-ma-toe or Toe-may-toe? Po-taa-to or Po-tae-to?

Whatever. I prefer, or rather have been used to saying Toe-may-toes. My Cambridge educated English teacher in primary schooling days has instilled strong pro-nun-ciation in most of the English words I use. Then, I did not fancy my English classes when my English teach made us make weird sounds to practice pronouncing words; like saying…wooo making a round ‘O’ with your lips to pronounce the word woman or making a small ‘o’ for the word police. Hearing her say ‘phonetics’ in school made me feel like Calvin when the planes go way above your head and one wonder what is happening there. Could not make much sense of much of the words she used. The Oxford English pocket dictionary that we had to compulsorily tag along to the English class, did not help. Two reasons, the spelling was wrong because of my misconstrued imitation of the word or the second – that my imagination took over and with time my laziness caught up too and did not open the small book in class.

Albuquerque, would surely have been Albuquer-queue if not for my teacher. E-co-noh-mic would be echo-nomic. The examples are ample. From my school days of wanting to skip the English class to being thankful for the wonderful strong basics. Thank you ma’am. Yes, many, if not all of them have remained in my head.


... and Anandh, this is for you ;)