Chennai Chronicles Part 1

Like a photographer who turned his lens on another interesting subject, Chennai was out of my focus for the last 14 months though I had always kept an ear on the city. For a Carnatic music aficionado, traveling with violin duo, Ganesh & Kumaresh was perfect musical entry into Chennai. 

15 mins before touchdown, the captain announced weather: 31 deg C and strong westerlies was cooling down city, not a surprise for this time of the year. Both newspapers The Hindu and Times Of India had done a good job of keeping me abreast with Chennai musings and nothing was a surprise; even the on-schedule metro project and as a result one-ways and billboard announcing new health clinics and housing projects. And when I put my lens back in focus I did notice a few surprises. Come in let's discover together...

A dear friend of mine had come to the airport to receive me and he had rented an AC taxi to take me home since his car AC had problems. Not that i had to travel by an AC car, but I was deeply touched by the warmth of his friendship and something that is so special to only India and that I was waiting to experience. 

Hardly 8 hours after touching down, I was on "Uzhavan (Farmer's) Express" to see my grandparents at Mayavaram and also visiting my native village. Indian Railways and my grandparents (at 80 plus) were still active and hadn't aged much in the last 14 months. On the way home I noticed the river bed and fields appeared dry. The rice-bowl of South Infia tilled and ready for sowing paddy (rice) and the farmers hopefully looking up at the sky for some rain and tracking the inflow to Mettur Dam (a reservoir that waters the fields of Tamil Nadu) and water level in the dam (farmers' stock market).

On returning back to Chennai four days later, my experiences were different. I will begin with auto drivers, someone who I hate haggling with and often felt like beheading them when they loot customers. The last time I had seen a functioning meter in the auto was 30 years ago, when I was 8. Without me asking/demanding the auto guy turned on the meter and I paid 35 rs from Royapettah to Alwarpet. 

Should I assume all auto guys had mended their ways and the TOI campaign "Bring back meters" was a big success? No way! A few days later an auto guy demanded 40rs to travel from Luz corner to Royapettah despite me demanding him to turn on the meter. Unrelenting to my request, he turned his back on me and expressed his displeasure. 

I felt it was my duty to support the Government in change management and demand them to turn on the meters. Eventually, I convinced another auto, but he wanted to hold on to a few coins left behind from the three ten rupees notes I handed over. Though this is not right or agreed upon earlier, I still left that as a reward for turning on the meter.

One evening I made a trip to the nearby vegetable market with my mother. I was expecting to see a kilo of tomatoes and onions (Government altering veggies) selling at 100 rupees, but  I was shocked to see every other vegetable priced at above 40rs/kilo. When I moved on to the fruits section, I was in for another high voltage shock: Apple priced at rs 210/kilo made keep the Apple away, a 50% increase in the last year. With no opportunity for haggling in such shops, we returned home with a small bag of produce for 500rs. While at the store I noticed the building being expanded; the store owner was prosperous and the wrath of Mylapore Mamis' didn't seem to affect him. 

A few days later, when I came to the billing counter at the Dental Clinic, the clerk handed over the bill, explained the charges for various treatments and told me that they had charged me nominally for their services. I was never going to haggle over health care and doctor charges and her words made me ask, are clinics the new vegetable markets?

One ahead of my trip to Chennai, I had emailed my relationship manager at Vodafone to activate my SIM card in their safe custody. Though he had not confirmed the activation, despite several reminders, but the card was active and saved me a 30 mins wait time at the store. 375 years ago the name Madras was given by the East India Company and today I realized that the city was providing customer service digitally. To test if this was true in other areas, I decided to give a miss to Indian Railway food which is often berated in the press for passengers discovering dead insects in their food. Instead I ordered food on idlyvada.com, to service that delivers quality food to your seat at the specified station. I was reasonably surprised by the quality and promptness.

This morning (Aug 10) when I opened The Hindu I was shocked to find out that the Pilot Theatre and Landmark Book store will soon be shutting down their operations. Both places were landmarks for Royapettah and Nungambakkam. Movie halls and book stores are not like the Airlines, that can fold their wings overnight, but it wasn't clear why their owners decided that way. 

This is 8th day of my vacation and many more subjects to put focus on. Keep following me.