Before I wrote the first one, I dint know that Chennai is called Tambiland. The name simply rocks. The Tambiland has fascinated me like no other place and there are loads of things that you can do here. To start with you can go and watch the Chennai Open – India's only ATP event. I love the concept of sports and I would like to see it live. I have never ever stepped inside a sporting arena (except a few matches of Counter-Strike and Halo ... if you can call them sports). If I can manage the leave from office and go the event, I shall update.
Today I would talk about Tambi temples, a freaky accident on road, driving through Chennai and the mystery of old and new numbers.
I will start with driving – my favorite past time. Chennai has got probably the worse roads (especially coming from Delhi, these roads look like hell). There is only one road in Chennai that is three lanes wide. Everything else, including the flyovers is either two lane or single lane thingy. All these roads are full of potholes and I can only imagine what would be the condition in monsoon. I have talked about this earlier also but people drive as if they were about to take-off. They drive like maniacs but what makes it worse is the uncanny knack of pressing the pressure horns even when their vehicles are parked. Thankfully they haven’t got creative with horns. I am dreading the day they decide to use Tambi music as horns.
One thing Chennai can certainly do is to somehow work on pollution control. Delhi is so much cleaner after the CNG buses and phasing out of older vehicles and Metro Rail. Chennai is bad. All vehicles are literally the old-age-smoke-emitting-chimneys in action. Even Titanic wouldn't have emitted this much smoke when it was going full-speed ahead.
There are a lot of good things about driving through Chennai. First and the foremost is the feeling of getting lost when you are driving through unknown lanes, roads etc. I guess, once I am familiar with the city, I wouldn't actually get lost but again a new place is always fun. You also get a visual treat as you drive through the street. The huge hoardings are done very very well. The graphics are stunning and a lot of the ads are actually very good.
Hoardings are temporary. The permanent structures – the houses and the buildings are equally awesome. Coming from Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida, I thought I have seen all the good buildings and structures but Chennai is in a different league of its own. Delhi, buildings are vertical, here they are more horizontal. Buildings are made over a huge plot of land with a garden and almost always symmetric. Someone might say that all the buildings in the world are symmetric but these buildings have some thing with them. Something that attracts me and something I cannot explain in words. Actually I don’t even know what attracts me. I just love them. However they are painted with bad color. There is so much scope for improvement if colors could be adjusted. But as they say things come in a package and all the goods and the bads make the package what the package is.
While driving through you can see a lot of small temples on crossroads, alleys and everywhere. I think we would have thousands if not hundreds of them here. These temples are done with an artistic talent that cannot be matched by anyone in North India. Once I get the camera, I shall post the pics. My talents with the camera might not do justice to the beauty of the temples but they simply are unbeatable. They are carved out of stone and then they are colored with shades of yellow, red, blue and good colors. You could stand and look at them for eternity and not get bored. I now understand what they mean when they say life like.
Driving is a pleasure but at the same time it can be dangerous also. Dangerous not as in falling-from-your-bed-in-sleep kind but real mortal danger of being actually hit head-on by a double-decker bus. I was subjected to almost a similar incident. I was walking down the road when a schoolgirl decides that she hates me and it's about time I was removed from the face of the planet. She banged her bicycle right into me. I have no clue why she did that and why I dint do anything. Actually that's why I was hit. If I did anything, I would have moved out of her way but as things would have it – I dint do anything. It was my training as yellow-belter in taekwondoo that saved me life. I jumped like RajniKanth and stopped the bicycle before it could touch me anywhere.
Every moment you live, you learn lessons. I learnt not to walk down the roads when I see a Tambi girl on a bicycle. Once bitten, twice shy. Once hitten, twice not hitten (just invented the word hitten). Today I would officially complete my ten days in Chennai and they have been average. Work sucks. Not all work doesn't sucks ... this one does and city is ok. If only I had more time to explore the city and move around, things would have been just right.
I would also move to my friends place this week. The place is called Thiruvanmiyur. Yes I know its complex but it is easy to learn. Break it up and learn. Thiru-Van-Miyur. See it’s easy. I plan to join a swimming pool and obviously learn swimming. I also plan to buy that elusive PS2 to kill some time at home and in process divert my mind off the stupid things that are happening. As with everything else, there is a problem. We would have only one TV amongst the four of us and it would be kinda hard to get the TV out.
I want to know what is about Tambiland that attracts a lot of VIPs here. I have been in Tambiland for about 10 days and have already seen the VIP movement twice. In Delhi, in my entire 24 years, I have not seen the VIP movements more than 4-5 times. If the trend continues, I would have seen even the neighborhood goon (read VIP) in Chennai in 4 months. The process (if can take the liberties to call it a process) is not very different from what we have in Delhi. Before the VIP decides that he want to pass through the busiest road in the city, there would cops all over the place trying to show themselves off as hyper alert. In Delhi we had people on Qualises and Gypsys but here since the cops move in sedans, you can see flashing Hyundais moving around the city. And as soon as the VIP would come close, they would stop traffic on all roads (including the VIP cavalcade). And then the VIP would be given the right to pass. I sometimes wonder what would happen if two VVIPs want to cross the same intersection but going in a different direction.
Chennai also has this concept of two numbers to the same house. A typical address in Chennai would read as Old Number 24, New Number 7, Pycrofts Garden Road, Off Haddows Road, Nugambakkam, Chennai. Ok time for some deciphering. The trick is simple. Read from right to left. Chennai is the city you are in. Nungambakkam is the locality you are in (something like Connaught Place), Off Haddows Road is the closest landmark (something like Palika Bazaar), Pycrofts Garden Road is the exact road where your destination is (something like Block B, Inner Circle) and the Old Number 24 and the New Number 7 is the magical door to your destination (something like B-24). I really want to know why every house is identified by the old number and the new number. If you lost one of the numbers (Old or New) you couldn’t find the house. Imagine if someone name was Old Name Saurabh and New Name Sagar. And then if someone were asked about his fathers’ name, the reply would be Saurabh and Sagar.
I did a Google (and Snap and Chacha) on this and as usual I could not find about these small intricacies in Chennai. Even the best of search engines fail to give me the answers.
Tambiland is also making me addict to coffee. I had almost stopped having coffee when I was not in Tambiland but now I have to have loads of it to keep myself alert, awake and attentive. More Later!
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