10 things that refuse to change in Chennai
Today as I sit in the sterile confines of my home in California savoring the sweet smell of the late summer air carrying with it a curious mix of citrus and cherry scents the nostalgic longing for the wafting aromas of the mulagai bajji stand manned by the oldest patti that I have ever seen is overpowering. Those evening trips to the Marina beach were a special treat indeed. As soon as we’d hit the edge of the sands we’d make a beeline to the sit-down-but-do-not-mind-the-dog-poop eatery that the old lady with a thousand crags on her face ran. She was a true martinet shouting at all of us kids to stay away from the hot oil with the choicest epithets that, in retrospect, bespoke the unconditional love that she had for the little uns. Incredibly, just as easily as she unleashed her storied (and steroid) wrath for being the vagabond oil violators that we were so was the ease with which she used to take sizable chunks of plantain, large chillis, potatoes, onion — uncannily all of the same size, or so it seemed — and threw them with gusto into the seething cauldron after having dipped them in the crimson batter. I can still feel the swirling eddies of saliva in my mouth just by conjuring up those days in my mind.
Growing up in the early 80s, school was a complete nightmare though. The slightly rebellious nature of the teen years were sometimes romantically enhanced by the oft quoted (and usually mangled) lyrics from Pink Floyd — “We don’t need no education….” — heard by some friend’s friend in a hi falutin sounding place called “Basement Blues” in Nungambakkam. Little did I realize that this place was truly in the nether reaches of some decrepit building and certainly did give one the blues upon entry. The service was appallingly indifferent though the selection of music, despite the unbridled ignorance that most of us exhibited towards western pop culture, was quite good. Not having a stereo player and a half functioning radio at home it was shops like Basement Blues that provided the much needed succor by way of imparting “cutting edge” music information that we would then parlay into our own versions of half truths ( “Oh yes, that Milli Vannilli are a great band with melodious voices”).
Musical adventures notwithstanding, school seemed to be a misbegotten venture the likes of which ought to have been reserved only for the morbid criminals amongst us. The St. John’s Senior Secondary School in Mandavelli loomed large like a haunted house each morning. The only problem was that the apparitions suddenly became the baton wielding mastodons whose desire to teach was slightly under matched by their yens for tattooing welts on all open body parts at the slightest provocation — in other words when we were awake. In visiting the school back in late 2008 I was deeply overcome with absolute gratitude for what I thought were fair disciplinarians who only wanted nothing but the best for us. Senility does not exactly become me but there it is!!
Pradosha Thandavam – a dancer’s rite of worship
My favorite parts of the year in Madras were December and January. The cold winds from the Margazhi Maasam mornings brought with them a certain briskness with which the day began. Actually it began in whimpering protests as usually I had to get up at 5 AM in our Triplicane street to get the milk from the vendor down by the Parthasarathy Kovil (Temple), a Sisyphean walk of 300 feet from our home. The vendor was a crotchety man with a predilection for taking one rupee for his own private venture capitalist enterprise for every extra sachet milk (‘yeshtraa paal”) that was inevitably purchased during that season. All protests were duly registered with a smirk that seemed to say “It is either milk for you and a rupee extra for me today or lactose purgatory for you forever!!”. Who could resist such sweet nothings whispered in the ear during such auspicious times? The extra rupee duly changed hands for a sachet of milk which was thrown at your face with casual impunity and not one word of protest was uttered out of fear that the Cro-Magnon behind the counter would summarily yank away all milk buying privileges.
But the December and January months had special appeal because there was an all around sense of joy that descended on the city. It was fuelled in parts by the holiday season, the winter break for children after the half yearly exams, the music festival, and a clean break from the sweltering summers that seemed to last for nearly 10 months in the year. Each morning we could hear the sounds of Thiruppavai from the Temple towers which slowly gave away to the Devi Karumariamman prayers from other smaller temples in the vicinity (and there were probably about five or six in each half pint street) that was sung with such gusto that you could feel the presence of the Goddess in your midst. Usually during mid-mornings the Parthasarathy temple’s idols were carried around the agraharam, where we lived, as part of the utsavam celebrations during that season. The highlight of the celebrations were the running of the huge temple cart around the 4 streets and invariably each year there was some difficulty at the corner of our street that in turn resulted in the cart coming to a standstill which gave the old folks something to be happy about for the day. It almost seemed like there was a high level conspiracy among the G7 (Geriatric Seven, for lack of a more creatively inspired name for the wily 70 pluses in the neighborhood) to stop the cart each year just so that they could have that extra glimpse of the divine and bask in the knowledge that only they could manage something so deliciously subversive.
The highlight of the evenings during these months were the myriad music programs going on in one of the several music clubs that dotted the city and have grown in size and number in the intervening 18 years since I left. For those of you who are inclined to know more about western music an apt comparison would be to say that an evening of Carnatic Music programs in Madras during this season would feature the equivalents of Hendrix, Clapton, Dylan, the Beatles, and the Stones all playing at the same time in different venues. Whom do you choose to see? What I’d really like to know is how the choice was arrived at. How does one choose between the virtuosity of a Lalgudi Jayaraman on the violin playing at the Music Academy and the insouciant fluidity with which M.S.Subbulakshmi sang at the Narada Gana Sabha? How does one forsake the flabbergasting skill with which D.K.Pattammal showcased her interpretation of songs for the supreme flute recitals of N.Ramani? Attending a concert during these times was usually bitter sweet in nature. There was always a lingering sense of pleasure at the mellifluous sounds that have just been heard but also, like a bad scab, there was an uncomfortable sense of having been cheated by the scheduling Gods for the temerity exhibited in foisting conflicting times on the public.
The Madras tea party: How Madras Day was born | Soul of Madras: Triplicane revisited
It was not always Carnatic music that caught the collective imagination of the people in the city. In fact, Carnatic music aficionados were but a small sliver of the populace. The rather larger following, myself included in this group, was for the more popular and easily accessible film music that resonated well with the cultural sensibility of the masses. Carnatic music, with all its attendant complexity, was a bit hard to digest after a while except for the hard core cognoscenti from whom I am umbilically disconnected in more ways than one. The film music, scored by the talented Illayaraja and other assorted hangers on not called Rahman, had a special appeal in that the music was very creative and often quite catchy. The lyrics, however, was a different story. They were (and are and will be) tawdry and laden with a botox appeal that is more fleeting than enduring. The songs from the 80s blaring from all roadside loudspeakers with a languid disregard for noise pollution concerns were a delight to listen to. Simply standing on a street corner in Mylapre with the sound track from thalaivar Rajini’s (Rejini for the self styled contrarians) Pokkiriraaja movie was a total delight. Of greater delight was witnessing an AIADMK rally in one of the central venues of the city that was preceded by patriotic and heroic songs from movies of the uber legend MGR. The crescendo of whistles, cat calls, and ululating admiration for the Puratchi Thalaivar (Revolutionary Leader — not to worry that it had a slight tinge of Maoist affinity, but who is looking) during his time and after his passing was an absolute carnival to watch.
During all of these times of tumultuous activity in and around the city the one constant was (and still is) the ubiquitous auto. The yellow boxes have come to stand for, rightfully so, the raw arrogance and brazen chokehold that the city denizens experience on a daily basis. The auto driver has become the Darth Vader of the local transportation world and for most of the folks living in the city local transportation such as the city buses and the autos are the only ways to get around. Every city dweller has at least one telltale sign of “auto abuse” (“Saar, meter mela patthu rooba pottu kudu saar. Return journeys kedayaadhu” — Give me Rs. 10 over the meter because I cannot return with another fare — was the standard complaint even when going to populous and popular destinations. By the way it was never a singular usage of the word journey. It was “journeys” pronounced jurrrneees). The hapless and the harried usually were bullied into giving up to the heartless buffoons behind the wheel. The hardier put up a cool fight and even though such occurrences were rare it was a treat to watch. It was almost as if the cat burglar was caught napping in the midst of a whip wielding frenzied mob. The schadenfreude of joy at the misery of the auto driver was openly flaunted.
Madras memories: Vishy Anand on dosa and degree kapi | Chepauk: The hallowed turf
The auto unions in Madras apparently were supported by one of the two main political parties in the city. This support brought with it a certain sense of invincibility to the union members and hence their moral certitude. While auto drivers engendered violent reactions of disgust among the people the politicians had the more salutary effect of creating a culture of apathy, sometimes even laughter at their comedic excesses. The joke was always upon us but when we were having a good time what difference does it make? The general feeling was that the two political parties (each with a dark glassed chief at the helm) had a standing agreement to misgovern every 5 years and the Tamils with their unique ability to do well in spite of the craven overlords did not mind the syncopated governments of the DMK and the AIADMK. What made it that much more palatable was the intimate intertwining of the silver screen and politics. Along with this, and perhaps as a manifestation of this intertwining, was an explosive scandal du jour. Madras is perhaps one of the few cities wherein scandals of the flesh are always second to financial scandals given the ubiquity of the former and the paucity of the latter. Nonetheless, a scandal is a scandal and be it of the flesh, finance, or the cloth we will take it and discuss it at length, assign all sorts of responsibilities to a new revolving cast of characters and generally create a rip roaring narrative that even the best script writers in Hollywood would be hard pressed to match.
Even though it has been a long absence for me from the city in the sense of not having lived there for an extended period of time I carry with me a thankful reminder of my times there. Madras (and as a concession to all the DMK thondans among us, Chennai), to me, is a city with redemptive power: The power to endow you with a strong sense of spirit to beat back the often frustrating things about India — the crowds, the corruption, the heat, and the sickly poverty; the power to create an opportunity for making things economically better for yourself and others around you; the power to leaven the unforgiving nature of capitalist living with the right dollops of spirituality to help make sense of a sometimes crazy world; and finally the power to laugh at the daily vagaries of human life. You will know what I mean when you suddenly stop in the middle of a crowded bookstore with the latest titles from all corners of the world, as I usually do, and listen to the distinct patois of the locals as they discuss their lives and those of the others in their lives. Suddenly all is well with the world and in these topical times, worth more than a 100 Olympic Golds.
The author a long time US resident, is originally from Madras and spent 21 years of his life there before leaving India. Sri came to the US for graduate school and after finishing a couple of degrees left to work as a consultant and is now, surprisingly still, gainfully employed in the Investment Banking industry.
