Chennai is the new Venice

These photos are from Rangarajapuram, Chennai, where San's aunt lives.

The grandparents home in West Mambalam has water (knee to waist deep) inside the house. Luckiy they got grandpa and grandma out in time.

My dad who is 70+ years old has to wade in waist deep water to get out of the street in Mandaiveli. He tells me that the storm water drains that were installed mandatorily during JJ's time as CM, don't work because those tunnels are being used by cable TV operators as pre laid pipework for their cables!!! After they put the cables in, they apparently seal off the entry point for the the storm drains with concrete.

Sadly now, the rain water has nowhere to go! My dad says they have to get someone to clean the remaining drains that are clogged so that water can drain out faster.

He was consoling me saying "Even if you were here, you will also be wading with me in this water." Somewhere in the back of his mind, my not wading in that water is his way of giving me a better life and he is also so certain that my being there would not change anything! Do not know if it is based on the lack of confidence in his child or the absolute knowledge of a system that is doomed to fail, but that is how he justifies things internally.

For now, we go back to memories of making paper "kappals" and singing "Rain Rain go away"!

Things have a way of complicating themselves.

They also have a way to simplify themselves after reaching a critical oomplexity. Let us hope for that in this case!

.

The good, the bad, and now the Ugly

The whole series of posts on the recent 11 day trip to Chennai is coming to an end!

While those posts were a travelogue or commentary on the humorous side, mostly focusing on how the kids and the wedding brought back great memories, there is one last post that deals with things that remind you of how things could be better.

After my previous India trip, a lesson learnt was that if you do not live in India, anything slightly negative about India, will get you in trouble. Even if one mentally prepares to take an argument to the end, it still irks you to find out that you lose the right to say anything negative about India, if you reside abroad. It also gets ridiculous because the people who take you to task are the same ones who seem to have some kind of birthright to criticize things in the USA, although they dont reside in the USA!

In any case, this post will simply point out three things that were observed during the trip (which may be more information, than rant)!

1. Follow the Arrow (the line side, not the triangle side)

This seems to be a repeated theme in airports, stores, etc. where there is a board which shows an arrow for a line or a service, and the cops, regulators have the line setup elsewhere. Mutliple lines form because of the chaos and the last come get served first!!! Happened at Mumbai airport in the "transit" area! It was pathetic.

We had 100+ people, old people, little kids, who came by Jet Air (we were put on Jet through Shanghai after our Cathay flight through Hong Kong was cancelled because of a typhoon) and we were cooped up in a small waiting area to be transported to the domestic terminal to catch a flight to Chennai! There was one set of restrooms, both blocked by garbage and not in usable condition, no access to drinking water and we were told to wait for 2 hours there.

Why? because it is the Mumbai airport that provides the connecting shuttle and not the airlines! So the airlines people blamed the airport folks and the airport folks pointed the finger back at the airlines. There were five newbie kids in blue suits and orange ties who were asking "how may I help you?" when we walked in to hand over our baggage, but were useless and totally ineffective in helping anyone!

Apparently they were all "trainees". After some drama and what would have almost been a lynch mob, they got two shuttles to transport us to the domestic terminal, so no one would miss their connecting flights! The funny thing was the trainees pointed to the arrow and the people who were in urgent need of the shuttle waited by the door only to find that the folks who least needed the shuttle ended up getting in through another door (courtesy of a chain gate and backdoor line set up by same trainees!)

Same thing at the Chennai airport. There is a big sign that says "-> Check in" and you will see a policeman direct you to the exact opposite direction! Then there will be another cop who says "get in line. you are not in the line!" because you were redirected for follwoing the big painted "official" sign board!

Lesson : If you are travelling in India, don't count on FIFO. If there is a counter which says "tickets", do not go stand in front of that counter. You might never even get a ticket! Wait a few minutes to see a line form, then see where the ticket seller actually shows up. There will be a last minute scramble to get to the new location of the counter, and make sure you have the vantage point from which you can make it to the new counter or door or gateway.

2. Always build a temple (before you build a house)

After landing in Chennai, was calling Chennai Call taxi to get a ride. Was in the process of giving our door number when my dad suddenly corrected me..

Dad : "we are not 3/4 anymore, we are now 5/4"!
Me : WTF? When did that happen.. from when I was a baby this has been 3/4. I don't understand!
Dad : After all these years, the street temple has been given a number. Also the illegal house built with a shared wall to the street temple (both built by same dude, who was a king in the illicit liquor business in his heyday) have been given legitimate street numbers (this after 25 years mind you!).

You have to see this to believe it. There is a temple in the street corner. Sharing a floor and a wall with this temple is what appears to be a garage which also doubles up as a prayer hall, and on top of it is a residence! Imagine all the trouble the old folks in this street go through because their door number changed. Go back and do an address change in anything and everything from old bank records, insurance files, etc. etc. ! Bummer.

Lesson : If you want total protection for your house irrespecive of MMDA approval, postal department approval, which political party is in power, etc. dont buy insurance. Just build a temple as part of your house and you are covered. Lord Ganesha is the worlds best home insurance dude!

3. If you feed them, they will come ! (A must read if you plan on opening a restaurant).

Oh wait, I predict that the only restaurants in Chennai will be Saravana Bhavan's or Sangeetha's in ten years. Everything else will be bought by these two guys. They are spreading faster than the Starbucks craze in the USA. Every street corner has a "Sangeetha's".

Little wonder then, that there is a Sangeetha's next to our place also. Apparently they showed a garage in the basement while getting their permit and are now using the basement as storage. That means the customers park on the street and jam the road!

Now what happens? The entire road is made a "one way". One way's are the universal solution to all traffic jams in Chennai. If the Chennai politicians food gets into a jam in his stomach, he will probably make his @$$ "one way"!

As usual, instead of keeping my mouth shut, I ask the people around me, "Why don't you guys complain to the cops? This Sangeetha's is running a valet parking service on the street, when he is illegal in the first place. That parking is for residents!"

They quietly pointed to the three cops redirecting the "valet" effort. Apparently the cops get a free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the restaurant and therefore complaining against their annadaata might not work out in the best interests of the residents!

Lesson: Follow the food chain before you make hasty judgments!

Why bother to write about these things?

In spite of the trip being a short one, there has been plenty of time within the 11 days to do some soul searching on Chennai, never going back, fitting in, etc.

One of my Chinese friends remarked that India could use a project manager like me. He said "If they had ten guys like you, you would whip that place to compete with the US!". Told him that while being extremly happy at that compliment, being a great project manager in the USA does not mean success in India. My own parents never approve of my methods.

Finally told him, "They will throw me out, because they cannot handle me". His response "Why? What is wrong with you?"

Have been trying to answer that question. For starters, "speaking out" is considered a risky activity by everyone in the family. Hush, keep quiet, what if someone hears you, why do you want to buy trouble, etc. etc. is all they tell me, when my blood boils at seeing something and I actually try to go take someone to task, be it a storekeeper, a call taxi dude or a cop! My relatives promptly tell me "you dont know how things work here. your memory of this place is still based on what you saw as a school and college kid fifteen years ago. Things are different now!"

Also, any attempt to point out the current state and a suggestion to improve is always considered as a "negative" stand on the current state of things. This is a catch 22. Why?

Improvement is change in the positive direction.
It can be seen only if measured simply as an equation

"Change = New - Old"

That means, there has to be a mention of the "old" or current and if that is perceived as accusatory, finger pointing, NRI attitude etc., then there is no point in continuing a conversation. For every improvement there is a reason. A problem statement, which when attacked methodically, can have a solution which should also be measured against to verify that improvement has indeed happened!

Any discussion of the metrics, and the discussion turns to argument and the "we are happy with what we have" sets in!

Thought right is right and wrong is wrong... and boy was I wrong on that one!

In any case, it has been proven to me that life for an average middle class person in an Indian Metro like Chennai is ridden with issues that the people just put up with, for fear of retribution. To me, that is unacceptable in the worlds largest democracy, but then again, I do NOT partake in that democratic process and the people who do the "putting up with BS" tell me that it is their way of life and they did not ask me to come and try to change things (for fear that it might make things worse for them after I leave) and have instead gotten used to it!

With that in mind, will leave them to their ways, and will keep myself busy with my way of life. My retirement age just got advanced another 10 years thanks to Lehman, the banks, the @$$holes who gave home loans and the @$$holes who took home equity loans on their homes (which they had no way of affording in the first place) to pay for trips to exotic islands and are now cooly declaring foreclosures and bankruptcys!

I want my money back!! All of my retirement money.. NOW!! Want every person who gave loans without checking background on the loan applicants to be arrested. Want every one who took that loan, to have stuff they bought repossessed. Why should sincere people shoulder the burden of the irresponsible? How can these guys who borrowed money knowing that they can never pay it back, be allowed to walk away with no consequence? This is economic terrorism inflicted by an irresponsible few on the taxpaying many. Is anybody listening?

Well, guess not! So life is not much different in the USA after all. Much like that cop who gets fed by Sangeetha's restaurant, the politicians and regulatory agencies here were probably fed by Lehman?!

For those of you who came here expecting funny stuff, my apologies. We will get back to the lighter side of life starting tomorrow.

It has indeed, been a long day! A ten year extension of your retirement age will do that to you.

.

The rules of the game

Cricket, the wonderful game with which I have a love hate relationship, is gaining popularity even in China, according to the news buzz!

In truth, I have always loved the game. It is the players, the umpires (referees), the coaches, the cricket control organizations, sports media, gamblers, bookies etc. that I really hate.

A nice game turned into a mockery, sometimes even a soap opera!

When my brother was here visiting, we were watching CSI. He commented that, there was less crime and more cleavage, and it was something else other than the scene that was being investgated and my response was :

prime time shows : soap opera in stage
Star trek : soap opera in space
CSI : soap opera in lab
24 : soap opera in counter terrorism office
Law and order : soap opera in DA office
20/20 : soap opera in cricket field

If you noticed the previous post, you would have noticed that both Jr. and the little one are now courting plastic cricket bats, thanks to their australian cousin's refusal to share his bat, while the men and kids were waiting in the verandah, after being kicked out of the house during a "ladies only" ceremony before the BIL's wedding!

All these kids are growing outside India, but the aussie dude has an unfair advantage in that he is growing up in a land where Cricket is played! He even knew who Sachin was, and Jr. ignored his critical knowledge and insulted his intelligence by holding the cricket bat with one hand, baseball style, and generally swooshing the bat in arbitrary directions and coming up with a higher success rate at connecting the ball with bat.

Sachin in pink and Dhoni in yellow set me back fifty rupees on Station road in West Mambalam and the weird game of cricket played by three kids with three bats and three balls along a single pitch, started. We even had great grandpa (from San's side) keep wickets, for fear that the ball might end up in the open toilet!

This game as usual, brought back a rush of memories. The rules of cricket are simple and can be explained to non cricket playing folk in California terms as follows:

1: Dude hurls ball at another dude who has a bat
2: Bat dude hits ball
3: fielders converge on ball
4: Bat dude runs across and trades places (bases) with another bat dude while fielders get ball
5: If the ball clears the outer boundary of field, with bounce they get more runs, without bounce is even more runs.
6: If ball is caught before bounce or if bat dude misses the ball and it hits the wicket (equivalent of plate), he is out and next dude comes in.

the official rules are here! and as you can see, are a lot more elaborate than the ones mentioned above. However for most practitioners of the game on a field, the rules cover 80% of what normally happens.

The keywords here are "on a field"!

We now venture on to practitioners of this wonderful game on the streets of Mandaiveli. Come on, you knew that was coming way before you even came to this paragraph, didn't you?

As a touring member of the Mandaiveli Therukkutheru Cricket Club, myself and my brother must have spent approximately 45.75% of our middle school years playing cricket. Of this ~ 82.37% was spent around Devanathan street. The most important lesson learnt from all that time?

The game is defined purely by the boundary! Guess this holds true even for the "real" game. If you play on a smaller field, every tom, dick and harry can hoist the ball across the boundary and give the bowlers more than a "run" for their money.

In street cricket though, the rules are very different. It is almost like living through the story "A table is a table", where a bored fellow decides to call a Table a chair, a chair a bed, etc. till he becomes so wrapped in his new world he is unable to communicate with others!

Let me explain. Let us say, you are using the electric box on Sambandam street as the wicket.... Oh wait, you don't necessarily know the local map. So I have taken the liberty of using google maps, which by the way does not do justice to the street layout! The U shaped road marked in that map is Sambandam street.

(thank you Google)

Going back to the electric box wicket, the rules were, if you hit the ball straight out to Devanathan Street you got runs, if you hit to your right into the middle Sambandam street, you got runs (with the exception of the house with Django the dog) and you were out if you hit it into any of the three houses with musudu maamaa's and or maami's who would keep your ball! Django was another story altogether, and did I forget to mention that if you hit the ball into the house with the glass windows owned by angry thatha, you had to sit out the next two games?

If you have not got the picture yet, the danger houses from those times are all marked with red, orange or yellow dots depending on the % chance that you would get your ball back. Needless to say, the rules when the electric box on Chandrasekaran street was used as the wicket would be completely different based purely on the danger houses!

When playing the boys in another local street, they would first explain the rules on their street for the first five minutes before the game proceeded! This reminds you of the National Geographic videos where people from one polynesian island sail to another island and the locals explain things like "if you enter any womans hut, you have married her, and if you come out immediately after entering the hut, you have married her sister as well!". Once the rules were clear, you would just throw caution to the wind and hit the ball, hoping that you were not out by the local street "rules" and would stay on to play the next ball!

Now, don't even get me started on Uppukkuchappas! (something you won't find in any cricket rule book).

.

Stone Temple Pilots

As we were going through the old CD collection, a CD of the "Stone Temple Pilots" was spotted. They were a popular rock band in the early nineties. Popular for a very short time, but they had one single that I liked and hence the CD in the collection.

At that time, it was my opinion that,

Amitabh Bachchan : Mithun Chakraborthy :: Pearl Jam : Stone Temple Pilots

Anyways, this post as usual, is going to steer away from the opening paragraph. To a different world, a different time and place!

The very first time the name of this group was mentioned, and we (Myself, my friends Sedat Alkoy and Indradev Samajdar, may god find them happy wherever they are!) were watching the group perform live on one of the late night shows, it remined me of a different type of Stone Temple Pilots, and for some weird reason, that memory came back! Now we are going deep into my brain, for this is a flashback of a flashback, something not attempted, even in K. Balachandar movies!

Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a custom called Pradhosham. Every 15 days, the entire family would assemble at the Kapaleeshwarar temple in Mylapore and watch the idol of lord Shiva (on his silver bull) being carried around the temple three times, with a short break after each round. The temple would be "standing room only", and the oldies and the kids will go hours in advance to reserve vantage positions to see the prayers during the breaks.

Think of it as stadium seating where the half time show is viewed best!

My brother and me, would have our own agenda when going to the temple. While grandpa would be busy choosing a safe view point for grandma, we would go do our thing. We would watch and chase the peacocks behind the "punnaivana naathar", chase each other around the entire temple, put vennai to the hanuman on one of the pillars outside the Kapaleeshwar sannidhi, and last but not the least, chase each other on the stone elephants in the hall facing the subramanya deity! It was by far our favorite activity.

We would race across fantasy lands, throw in some Mahabaratha lingo learnt recently from grandma and beat the elephant on the head to go faster, faster! We would hog the elephants as much as we could till grandpa would dislodge us to give the the other waiting kids a chance.

The beauty of the pradhosham, is that if you pray to Lord Shiva over that narrow 90 minute window every fifteen days, he would forgive you for all your sins and grant you all your wishes! The other beauty of the pradhosham is that as soon as the final deepa aaradhanai is done, the crowd disperses within 10 minutes! The ladies disappeared to feed their family while the men had to go around the Mylapore tank and bargain with the vegetable vendors to buy veggies for the next days menu! The gaslit lamps, the crude weighing scales which made the bargaining moot, the cows that would be running the backlane between the open stalls for the discarded vegetables, the smells, the visuals... someone needs to come up with a software that can take the image in your head and convert it to .jpg and upload to blogger! Better, make that a request for video upload directly to youtube.

Where were we? Ah, the rapidly dispersing post pradosham crowd! You see, grandpa was a very patient man and he loves us dearly! That said, he would let us play on the elephants for an extra half hour. This would be followed by a request for drinking Kalimark goli soda outside the temple and he would yield. Then we would make our way to the Ambika Appalam Depot and buy :

1 piece Palkhoa each (wrapped in a translucent butter paper)
1 bag of kara sevai
1 bag of ribbon pakoda

and we would start the long trek back home. Occasionally I would roll and the floor and throw a tantrum outside the book store near Leo coffee for the latest issue of Chandamama and grandpa would buy me that too!

Every India trip over the last fifteen years has included a Pradosham, call it an old habit, a prayer for shiva or whatever. Except this trip!

We went to the temple one evening, to stand under the same Dakshinamurthy who was in some ways instrumental in me marrying San, while my brother pointed out the real Dakshinamurthy shining high and bright over the Madras sky!

Jr. is now about the same age as my brother was when we enjoyed piloting the stone elephants. She really enjoyed it. The little one will have to wait a couple of years, and then we can have the next generation race all over again!

San tells me that I live in the past when we visit India, and it is true. When you spend less than a month out of twelve in India, one does tend to live in the past, look for those connections, grab for roots, all in the hopes of refreshing the DRAM's in your head!

All said and done, it is great to go back to this temple, anytime, any day, be it Pradosham or otherwise, and take a look at those elephants!

I can be eight years old again!

.

A wedding and a Deepavali ?!

After the BIL's wedding was over, we had 4 days before we were going to be on a plane.

Just before we left for the airport, we celebrated a mini Deepavali on our terrace.

You see, my parents miss me terribly, every Deepavali, especially when they see how kids today have no enthusiasm for firecrackers. It simply devastates them to think that kids today don't obsess over crackers.

When it came to "pattasu" or firecrackers, Mandaveli Sundaram who currently goes by Sundar Narayanan or Dr. Narayanöhe, set the bar high. Very high!

Before the local "pattasu" stores would come into seasonal existence in and around the Mandaiveli, Mylapore area, more notably around St. Mary's road, RK Mutt Road and all around the temple tank, little platform vendors would start selling only cape! My parents did not save me any cape this time, but for those of you who do not know what we are talking about, they are little paper dots with a small amount of explosive chemical in the middle. You fire them with a cape gun or any other pressure spring (which would make the things look like mini spaceships)!

My brother and myself would even have cape revolvers where you would load a roll of paper tape with the "cape" dots and would fire them, mostly at the caterpillars eating the plants between our house and the neighbours and the process piss off the mami next door. The cape goes off with a sound and a little spark and we would play for almost 15 days with just the Cape, waiting for the stores to start unleashing the latest and greatest firecrackers from Sivakasi!

From Airplanes to rockets, Snakes to sparrows, sparklers to sizzlers, we would cover the spectrum over the last week. The only presents we would accept for Deepavali were things with the picture of Red Fort or goddess Lakshmi or a yellow sparrow on them.

We were probably the only kids in the street to burst crackers three days after Deepavali was over and most of that bursting would be done by me. When I was little, rumor has it that I would take all unburnt crackers and put them in a "Thulasi Madam" (a small shrine like thing in every Tambram household that grows holy Basil plant) that was empty and create a bonfire with the leftover chemicals!

When it came to firecracker bursting, let us just say that I was some legend, or at least my parents and relatives, still tell tales like that!

So, every India trip, my dad saves crackers for me to burst from the latest Deepavali. This time we kept postponing the event till the very last minute and an hour before the "call taxi" was to show up to take us to the airport, we went on the terrace and had a blast! (Well, there were none of the explosive crackers, so the blast was more figurative).

I was a kid again, and my dad had tears in his eyes watching me be a kid again. It is my sincere thought that given a choice, my parents would do some voodoo, convert me back into an eight year old and freeze me there. The grown up version of me probably has a lot less to offer them! Anyways, we are getting lost in thought, as usual.

We celebrated Deepavali, as a family for one hour and it made us soooooo happy, but we left India with a heavy heart!

Needless to say, there ARE pictures!

Belated Happy Deepavali to one and all!

.