http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/24215256/The-new-edgier-Chennai-hasn.html
(Its very difficult to make people believe that I didn't rip the idea off this article. But I didn't. I wrote this about madras way back when I had just come back from somewhere after some time)


A tribute to a very ordinary city

Ah! Here we are, the city of normalcy. 

We walk on the beach for no apparent reason, and complain about the heat in the month of april, may, june, july, august...We dread walking on the streets of south usman road or soundarapandian angaadi, as much as we love to watch the sight of the davara tumbler and rava idli oblivious of the waiter's stained uniform and the stained racks and the stain ridden walls and the stained wash basin inside the hotels in these stretches. We like the trains like we like our city, and we like our city like we like our trains. We  are cramped in broadway and triplicane, widest in the Mount road and GN Chetty road. We stare wide-eyed at our thalaivar's cut out anywhere. Most of us are dark because of geography, but we will always be made fun of. But we really don't care. 

Most of us can tell facts about cricket that no one else in this country can. Not only about India, but about every other team. We idolize and defile 'The hindu', but we can never survive without seeing the mahavishnu in the early morning. We speak tamil like the way cho speaks in bommalaatam, kamal speaks in pammal k sambandam, and we don't know how tamil evolved this way. Our autokaarans are the rude and disrespectful, but some of them give us a hand when we most need it. The slum clearance boards and the vast stretches of slums right behind is our contribution to dichotomy. Our roads are pot holed during the rains in november. We love rains, so we don't care. 

We felt bad when they took down liberty theatre, the woodlands hotel and numerous other artifacts that were revered by our fathers and grandfathers. We live vicariously across generations, pleasantly travelling across time in the pattabiram military siding trains with the steam engines chugging and  spewing particulate on the neatly starched and ironed shirts of the workers; the bangalore passengers from arakkonam at 4:15 in the morning never missed the beat either. None of us ever understands the logic behind the perambur loco works station, only a hundred feet from perambur; but we really don't care.

We are mad about brilliant tutorial idli kadai, nandanam signal traffic, the age old anna flyover, vast stretches of  haunting memories in sands and shore on the marina, vaanathi pathippagam, somasundaram ground and the raving mad cricket loving crowd, the sambar mug and the sambar in rathna cafe,  unbelievably over crowded 21 G, the twisted narrow lanes of thiruvallikeni, the temple tanks of marundeeswarar and kothandaramar, the pondy bazaar flower shops on the footpath. We wear a muffler in the december even though its not that cold, but we really don't care.

We have never been bored of telling people about our marina beach and our railway station. Cheetah fight matchsticks are more of a reminder of the lovely industrially dense chennai-gummidipoondi corridor, with the wimcos and the ashok leylands. We are also the forgotten shunmugham snuff house in thandiyarpet. The dunlop factory in ambattur is a mystery to all of us. But we don't care.


 Besant nagar beach, in close proximity to the church and a lakshmi temple, togehter with an atheistic theosophical society is our belief.  There isn't much we can do without our saravana bavan, and only in heaven will we know the recipe of that saambar. The true glory our our city lies in the early morning smell of a rich aroma of coffee mixed with an equally endearing smell of the coovum.We have one of the biggest celebrity in this country who is lionized all over the place, but who stays away from endorsing brands or giving interviews, someone who does not shirk from being who he is in public with his balding pate and kurta pyjamas. 

We  believe in living life our own way, rather than walking around behaving like someone else, unabashedly becoming cheap imitations of some other culture, and we are told we are 'conservative'.

Like I said, we don't care. 

That's why we love Madras. 

God bless.

Ps:
#I might have generalized. In a gross way. I am being told by some stupid surveys in newspapers that people prefer fair skinned people. A very dangerous notion being carelessly pandered around for ratings. Sad.

#I might have missed so much about madras. I know. I know very little about my own city. Sad.

#This post does not take into account the current 'modernization' nonsense, also a euphemism for the rape of our countryside. No IT expressways, no skimpy clothes, no rational people, and no knk roads and express avenues and unabashed consumerists that we have become(yes, yes, me too).

#I might have come off as a crackpot in the process of trying to fit my city onto a simple blog post, which is very reductive and does not really do justice to the city. Sad again.

After all this, I must say, I really don't care.

cheers.