Six Years in Chennai

Six years!! Six fricking years!! Yep its been that long since I moved into Chennai in Tamil Nadu. It wasn't an easy decision to move here at all. I still remember my friends at Birlasoft in NOIDA trying hard to dissuade me from moving to Chennai. But there was friendship on one hand and a newly solemnized marriage with Vidisha on the other hand. A love marriage to boot for on top of it. There is a saying I read somewhere, "Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache". In short our love marriage meant we had near empty pockets by the 20th of every month. Something had to be done to change our lives and that something came in the form of a job offer from Cognizant Technology Solutions in Chennai. So I accepted the job offer.

Chennai is not all embracing to someone who doesn't speak the Tamil language and has no money in the pocket too. I remember walking 5 KMs to office on many days just because I did not have enough money after the first month I moved in and I did not know the language enough to ask for lifts from colleagues. The reason being I had to pay 12 months rent in advance in order to get a house. It was tough to adjust but adjust I did or should I say walk I did as after all "Paapi Pet ka Sawal tha"...lolz. 

Chennai takes its language with gravitas. I still remember informal office meetings sometimes getting conducted in chaste Tamil sidelining me completely. I used to feel bad about this initially and it really hurt. 

Chennai has the most genuine people around. Those same team members who had earlier conducted the meeting in Tamil would summarize everything in English at the end so that I did not miss out on anything.

Chennai taught me to surmount the language barrier by simply being polite to everyone. So my introduction to the two life saving words, Anna and Akka. Just dole out an Akka or Anna while addressing people and they would definitely try to help you out.

Chennai is a city that slowly grows on to you and grow it did. The old world and the new world live in perfect harmony in this city. One still sees people cycling on the roads while the Jaguars and the Mercs glide past them. 

Chennai has been a gastronomically delightful place and I have eaten some of the best North Indian food over here. If Delhi had its Chandni Chowk, Madras (Oops! Chennai) had its Mylapore.

Chennai doesn't differentiate the 365 days of the year into seasons, One gets to see different degrees of heat here with all of them being above 36.5 degree Celsius. Phew!!

Chennai has probably the strictest police force around. I really am not joking here. I had tried bribing a cop once and had to pay a 'chalan' double the initial amount. Salute to them. It indeed is one of the safest cities I have ever lived in.

Chennai takes to Brandy like Punjab takes to whisky. Seriously I have never seen so many brands of brandy in a liquor shop as I see in Chennai. 

Chennai loves its gold. Six years and I am still awestruck seeing the kind of gold people wear over here.

Chennai takes its politicians seriously and their movie-stars even more seriously. Be it a political rally or the release of the latest Tamil block buster movie, posters appear magically overnight and disappear too after some days only to be replaced by the poster of someone else.

Chennai loves its beaches. Any public holiday or any regular Sunday one finds the beaches chockablock even with the sun beating down on your head.

Chennai loved its whistle podu team aka Chennai Super Kings. Alas, CSK got banned now. I still remember people having murder in their eyes for me when I used to cheer Mumbai Indians during the annual jamboree called IPL.

Chennai has taught my nearly 2 year old daughter more Tamil than she has picked up Odiya, Hindi, Sindhi or English. She still addresses me sometimes as "Appa" instead of "Papa"

Chennai you have taken 6 years of my life but you have given me back equally. The same chap who once used to walk to office, could earn enough to buy his first car here. Now we are all set to take possession of our first house too when I return back to India. A house that the once young star crossed yet empty pocketed couple would like to turn into a Home Sweet Home in a city they call their hometown now. Chennai you are mine now. 

Namma Chennai - Chance ey illa!!

Summer Vacations

Bapa n Maa have arrived today in Chennai. Well that's Bapa n Maa for Lil' Sam, Nana and Bou for me. In other words my parents have traveled all the way from Odisha to Chennai for the summer vacations.

Here I am 14000 KMs away all alone. Miss being there in Chennai now. Good days have come to roost in Chennai. My niece will be travelling from Ahmedabad to Chennai for her school vacations. The house will be filled with cheers and shouts of joy when two grand daughters get reunited with with their grand parents. Cartoons 24 hours of the day. Ice Creams, cold drinks and of course chips flowing. Story telling sessions during the evenings. Running around the house. Swings in the park nearby. Perhaps a visit or two to the beach.

Time sure flies by. It still feels like yesterday, when all of us cousins used to get together for summer

vacations with our grandparents. We used to be a motley bunch of kids numbering sometimes up to 15 cousins. Ohh!! The fun..The games....The fights....Moments which will remain etched forever in all our hearts.
My grandparents used to live in a village named "Nalihana" which was about 30 KMs from Puri. They owned a farmhouse which was spread across 35 acres. Warm sunny weather with the cool sea breeze flowing in the evening. Trees to climb all around the place. Mangoes to be plucked straight from the 100 odd mango trees and eaten without being washed. "Hoo-doo-doo ing" the bullocks which to the uninitiated was the war cry to make the bullocks go faster as they pulled the bullock cart. Fishing in one of the several ponds. Long lazy baths in one of the ponds owned by our
grandparents. If I remember correctly there used to be seven ponds but the best was the "Bada Pokhari". Nature at its best. Fresh coconut water from one of the coconut trees. Fresh honey from the apiary. Cricket matches and the occasional kabadi matches with the village children. 


My grandfather owned a Luna.Moped. That Luna was probably the first bike all we cousins ever rode. The thrill of zooming down the broken village roads at 25 KM per Hour......Wooohooo!!! I tell you we were speed demons...lolz. Evenings brought with them the
cry of the cicadas. The sea breeze made the evenings much cooler, not that we cousins minded the heat of the day. Night came early as most of the times there was no electricity in the village. The night brought with it, "Chuda Ghasha". That heavenly concoction of flattened rice mixed with generous amounts of pure ghee and lots and lots of coconut and jaggery. Yummy!!! I am salivating just thinking about it. 

Personally for me the best part of all those summer vacations spent with my grandparents were the story telling sessions. Both my grandfather and my grandmother were voracious readers who could read Odiya, Bengali, Hindi and English. The stories they would recite to us while all of us cousins sat with them during the evenings under a star lit sky still ring true in my ears. My favorites were the Jim Corbett stories. My love for story telling and story writing probably comes from those stints with my grandparents. 

Time sure flies by. That small lad from Nalihana today is in the USA and has his own daughter of nearly two now pestering her grandparents for a story this summer vacation of 2016.