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Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts


Feminism in a desi setting
Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Fellow blogger and one of my oldest mates, apu tagged me on this. And she says we have good ole Ams to thank for it. As it is a tag, I'd like to tag my fellow fem bloggers - Suj, Dee, Premalatha as well as my fellow mommy bloggers - Mad Momma and Tharini, as well as Kishore to take the baton from me.

Right, now let's get started. What is feminism, exactly? According to the dictionary, feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Feminism in an Indian (or desi) context is a wierd thing. It is like Antartica - everyone knows what it is but no one wants to go there. To most, life goes on as it always had, as if feminism never existed.

Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I realised what feminism truly is and that I am a feminist only after I started blogging actively. Till then, I was going along with the Antartic effect. Having been brought up to be fiercely independent, I did not question my right to do things my way. I always thought that that was mostly thanks to my folks' outlook towards most things concerning self and sibling. But I realise now, it is thanks to them being feminists (in their own setting) that they could go with the choices they made, which in turn made it easy for me to go with my choices, my way.

But to many, this is not the case. I have heard of many, many cases where the girls were so 'protected' that many had hardly ventured into the Big Bad World on their own. S frequently jokes that I had a lot more freedom growing up than he did!

In that sense, I feel feminism is linked to your basic freedom as a child. If you, as a girl, are raised as an equal to your male siblings, then you (and your siblings) will grow up to think the same way. If, on the other hand, you are told right from the time you were a child that you must defer to your male siblings or that they come first, then chances of both sexes retaining this and forming a template to their lives, is very high.

So, what has feminism given me. Well, it has given me the right to be me. I can be my own person and not be defined as someone's child or wife or sibling or mother. I can be my own person, in my own right, charting my life the way I want. It lets me be what I want to be. Heck, it gives me the right to make that choice. It puts me in the driving seat of my life.

This basic right is denied loads of women across the country. For them, the alpha male has to make the decision - should they work full-time, do they stay at home,
can they do this or should they do that. Every time a woman is unable to act independently, she is denied the right to freedom.

In my opinion, feminism is synonymous with freedom. And for feminism to truly flourish in a desi setting, it is imperative for not just the women, but the men to become feminists as well.

Read Ams' and Apu's view points.

Posted by DesiGirl 11:08 am 5 comments  

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Doggone It!
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

As a child growing up in Madras, I remember my granny telling me every summer during the baking 'kathiri veyyil' days (when the sun is reputed to be at its peak) that if I went out of the house, I might come across the dogs that were driven mad by the heat. Of course, I made sure I stayed put inside the house, all the while looking out of the window for any stray mad dogs, rather like Scout.

Why am I thinking of mad dogs now, you wonder. Well, in the past few months, the news reports I have been reading / watching about the doggie antics, makes me wonder if it is the mad dog season world over.

Things took a decided turn for the worse in England on New Year's Day when five-year old Ellie Lawrenson was mauled to death by her uncle's American pit bulls. Young Caydee-Lee suffered a similar, horrible fate - her parents were pub-sitting and whilst they were away, couple of dogs dragged her out of bed and killed her. As a mum, I cannot even imagine what those poor parents must have gone through and what they have to live with for the rest of their lives.

Last week on TV, there was a special news programme about the dogs suddenly running amok and turning on the people. One lady who was a victim of such attacks, talked about how her whole life is in ruins now. Apparently, as she was walking down a park near where she lived, two American pit bulls latched on to her and tried their best to drag her away. She held on to the railings for dear life and it was a good twenty minutes before a passer-by braved the dogs and helped her out. She's in excruciating pain now and is unable to use her left arm. She needs a full-time carer to help her and it was real pitiful to see this once confident and beautiful woman broken up in pieces.

There has been a widespread dog amnesty in Merseyside as well as in other areas of the country. Police have had owners of Rottweilers, pit-bulls and other ‘danger’ breeds come in and leave their dogs with the authorities, without fear of punishment. A lot of dogs have been culled, much to the RSPCA and animal activists' disgust. But even the police admit that the ones that really breed these dogs to become nasty killers are still at large and the public, still at danger from these dangerous beasts.

Around the same time this is happening in the UK, similar events have been taking place in India as well. By now, you might know the story of the children these stray dogs attacked and the resultant culling. Whilst the act has upset animal lovers, the sadness over what happened to the poor children reigns supreme. After all, we have all looked at these mangy curs askance at one time or another, wondering if they are going to take a chunk off you that day.

What has happened to these dogs to make them go on a rampage? Why are these random dogs across UK and India turning on the people? More importantly, what is the solution to this problem?

In the UK, the general belief is that these dogs, that have been especially bred to be aggressive killing machines, possibly for ‘entertainment’, must be culled and their owners, severely punished. Though it is no fault of the dogs that they are so, they still cannot go against their nature and it is in our best interests to protect ourselves and if the only way out is to put them down, then measures must be taken to do so. The ones that must be punished are those short-sighted people that bred these dogs in the first place, thereby putting the unsuspecting public in danger and causing untold grief to the sufferers. At the same time, proper legislation must be put in place to protect the innocent dogs , so that they aren’t mindlessly killed.

In India, the situation is completely different. As the dogs involved are not all domestic pets, one might think the prospect of putting these dogs down might not be such a wrench but these are still animals, and we need to think how we ended up with so many strays littering the countryside in the first place. We need to get some more dog shelters and find ways of funding them so these dogs are rescued from the streets. We must find it in our hearts to set up organisations like the Battersea Dogs Home, where these neglected and discarded animals are given a new lease of life.

Who knows, by doing so, we might make sure that these sort of horrific events do not take place ever again.

Posted by DesiGirl 6:17 pm 2 comments  

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Holi Aayee Re!
Monday, March 12, 2007

Holi. The festival that heralds spring. Living in Chennai, it didn't mean much to me. Life went on pretty much the same as always.

But whenever I think of Holi, I remember the gulmohar trees that dotted the grounds of the apartment block I grew up in. Red, yellow and orange coloured blossoms used to cover the green foliage and from the terraces, it used to look like the trees were on fire! Every spring, the trees would be full of the riotous colours and so will the ground around them. The fallen petals would deck the brown ground so that it looked like a beautiful carpet has been spread all around the area.

But, of course, growing up in India, you do hear and see images of how the rest of the country celebrated this rather rowdy-ish festival. Holi also brought to my mind, images of Amitabh Bachchan singing 'Rang barse', multi-coloured kurtas and general all-round mayhem. I remember wondering why the North Indians always wore white on Holi when they knew well that there would be folks chucking colour at them from all directions.

There were pockets of Madras that used to celebrate the festival. The streets of the Hindi areas of Sowcarpet, Vepery and the surrounding, would be chock-a-bloc with girls and boys of all ages running amok, covered from top to toe in the most lurid colours imaginable. If the day fell on a Sunday, Monday morning these girls would wander into college, still multi-coloured - partly because the colours were real fast and partly because they wanted to show-off.

Those were the times when I wished I lived in one of those 'cool'er cities, where Holi was a definate day in the festival calender, where folks drank bhaang and sang drunken songs and danced in the streets. Alas! That never happened. I was stuck in staid Madras all my life. Now, sitting a gazillion miles away in staid-er England, I am wishing with all my heart that I can play Holi. I could toss colours at folks, folks would toss colour back at me, I would get gloriously drunk on bhaang and sing silly songs and dance in the streets. Oh, clad in whiter than white salwar-kameez, too! I want to wake up the next day with the colour still sticking to my skin.

Maybe I should sign up as an extra for the next Bollywood Holi number!

Posted by DesiGirl 1:42 pm 4 comments  

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The Brits Are Not Racists!
Sunday, March 04, 2007

We gave P a big bday bash yesterday. We'd been telling him for quite sometime that for his 5th birthday, we'll throw him a big party and we did. We invited every one of his classmates plus a few of his nursery friends as well as some desi friends whose kids fall in the 4-6 category. The pains started fairly from the word go. I did not have a complete list of his classmates and made do with an incomplete birthday list compiled by a mom and random inputs by P. Still, I managed to leave two children and when his teacher pointed that out, I furnished extra invitations for the two.

Then there was the RSVP. I thought it was the desis who could not fathom the whole RSVP concept. Turned out, the Brits were too. Or maybe they just decided to ignore the invitation. When there were two full days to the party, I had heard back from 30% of his classmates. But text messages kept coming in till 3 hours to the party from mums of supposedly eager children. We never said 'oh no we can't take them as we've finalised numbers' as in typical desi style, we had ordered extra places.

Then there was the actual event. We arrived at the venue to find some parents already there. Though none of them had deigned to say more than the occasional 'hello' to me till that day, I still knew them all by face and welcomed everyone and tried to get the party started. None of them had a clue who I was. I am sure they must have walked past me most mornings. But none chose to retain an Indian woman's face in their posh brains.

When the kids were busy bowling, S and I went around asking if the parents would like drinks etc, generally trying to play our roles of hosts to our best efforts. The firang had all gathered together, like nails to a magnet and S and I and our desi friends were stood a distance away from them, as always. Every now and again, the two of us would bridge the gap to ask them if they were comfy, to which we normally got curt nods. Though I smiled till my teeth ached, all I got from the other mums was random stern glances but no answering smiles. After a while, I got tired of being sidelined in my own son's party, gave up the Brits as a lost cause, sat down with couple of friends and cousins and watched my son enjoy his party.

Then came the time to say goodbye. Other than P's best mate, whose mum is the only one who treats me like I am human, NONE of the others remembered who the birthday child's mum was. They ALL went to S's cousin and said 'thank you for inviting us to the party', to which she said 'thank you and there's P's mum, why don't you say that to her?'. I ask you! Is it that hard to be nice? I am no alien, I assure you but I swear, last night, any alien would have been welcome in that gathering, not me!

To everyone thinking of the Brits as racist or discriminatory, I say this: they are not racist. I am no Shilpa Shetty but I tell you they are not. Why? Because they can't be arsed. Intense feelings of any sort requires an effort and these lovely folks cannot be bothered to waste half that effort on the likes of me even to discriminate against me; so they just go on like I am invisible. Of course, our paths might literally cross again from Monday morning but they don't give a shit. Even if they collide headlong into me, I would never cause a blip in their radars.

Sod you!

Posted by DesiGirl 2:54 pm 2 comments  

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The Changing Face of Indian Marketplace
Saturday, January 27, 2007

I was reading this article about Reliance Fresh shops and the quality they offer. When I read about their rates, the first thing that came to my mind was what would happen to the regular kaikarikaran / sabziwala? They won’t be able to compete with such a venture, surely?

But on second thoughts, I realised that the door-to-door vendor’s market is safe as no one offers what he does. He turns up like clockwork, builds up a good rapport with his customers, chats them up and cajoles them to buy more than they intended and if you have a special do in your house, he could be relied on to bring you some extra special veg, at a special rate, of course! As no Reliance Fresh or any of their ilk could offer this, the vendor’s market is safe.

The one that is getting affected by this new chain to hit the market in Chennai is Pazhamudircholai. For the non-Chennaivasis, Pazhamudircholai is the name of an exceptional fruit and veg store that held sway near Kasi Arcade in T Nagar for many years before spreading across the city. This store had the freshest of fruits and vegetables available all year and though they were on a slightly expensive side, they were a very welcome addition to the market place.

Once you set your eyes on their fat, juicy, glistening wares, you cannot walk away without getting your hands on at least a few tempting fruit or that rare veg. They do not employ any ‘buy one get one free’ gimmicks and rely purely on the quality of the items they sell. At the front of each store there is also a man selling fresh juices and he is normally surrounded by hundreds of maamis and aunties, vying with one another to get their hands on the day’s special. The fact that they do takeaways made this hugely popular and highly successful.

This chain of stores quickly built a name for themselves and if one outlet opened in your area, it generally meant that you can now shop for good quality fruit and veg in relative ease. No Food World or Nilgiris could do much to stand in the way of this store’s success – after all, no one went to Food World or Nilgiris to buy their fruit and veg now, did they?

But this new kid on the block, this Reliance Fresh, with its real cheap rates and marketing gimmicks, seems to be changing the status quo. The Reliance Fresh outlet in Ashok Nagar, for example, is right opposite the Pazhamudircholai one and has already stolen most of the latter’s client base. I, for one, am much saddened by this, as I really liked that store and am against the big name brand stores changing the face of the arena anyway. Though this turf war could mean that the public may be well be getting some really good deals (Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda vie with one another here in the UK to inundate us with coupons and other enticing offers) the sort of aggressiveness they display is a big turn off.

Other big disadvantage of having these big name stores coming everywhere is that pretty soon, the local colour will get wiped out. Every market place or mall will have the same group of stores - Reliance, Music World, Landmark, LifeStyle, etc and slowly, the variety and the abundance that exists now will slowly get replaced with this sort of corporate uniformity. In Britain, for example, every High Street boasts of a Body Shop, Marks & Spencer's, Monsoon, Regis, Pizza Hut, Clarks and at least one Tesco or Sainsbury's or Asda store. The smaller shops are slowly going out of business and high streets across the country are all beginning to look eerily the same. It is surreal how familiar a Brentwood High Street looks to a small town high street in Yorkshire.

With every facet of Indian life undergoing radical changes, it won't be too long before we end up with a similar set of circumstances. Though with our population, the Nadar kadais will still have its patrons, I hope that the average Joe has a fighting chance against the big bad corporations. I sure hope so.

Posted by DesiGirl 10:26 am 2 comments  

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India’s Economic Progress: Much Background Work Needs To Be Done
Thursday, January 25, 2007

For a long while, India was famous for its brain drain - we used to read about the myriad 'India Born's' who went on to become leading lights in their chosen field in their adopted countries. With the new IT boom, India is becoming the chosen destination of the First World countries to house their call centres and, in increasing number of cases, their development teams.

Now that the Western world is slowly getting convinced of the fact that we don't travel to our workplaces on our elephants, have pet snakes, do the rope trick every night before dinner and sleep on nailed beds, a lot of them want to sample the country's natural beauty. This is good news for us in terms of the revenue tourism would bring.

But the increase in our international profile also means that things that had so long remained in the dark now will be put under the global microscope. Lack of basic facilities in public areas, sloppy customer service, non-existence of emergency services and civic sense are things that every Indian knows and shrugs off - but these are the same things that are causing the well shaped Western brow to lift in alarm and/or derison.

Real estate in India is booming - land value has sky rocketed and there are malls and IT parks coming up everywhere. The picture that is being painted of the country is that of a prosperous nation on the brink of global leadership.News reports claim that the Indian economy would be much better than that of UK's by 2015 and by 2030, China and India would be among the world's greatest economic super powers, just behind USA. While this sounds fantastic, the reality might be a completely different thing. Political sociologist Amandeep Sandhu argues that "although it is often asserted that India's democracy allows it to manage diversity, a greater threat to India's growth can come from within. In the recent past, India has experienced or is experiencing conflict in Kashmir, Punjab, North East India, and it experiences regular urban communal riots between Hindus and Muslims."

One of our biggest problems is that India's accelerated growth is neither multi-dimentional nor is it well thought out. IT and manufacturing sectors are reaping the rewards of this boom whilst others such as farmers, artisans and the other regular folks are languishing in the wayside. Whilst throwing open our doors to international trades, we haven't safeguarded our own homegrown industries that are now bearing the brunt of the government's short-sightedness.

Our own police force has come under fire following the murders of Welsh charity worker Mike Blakey and Englishman Stephen Bennet within the span of two weeks. Their sloppy detective work, lack of professionalism and conduct has created waves here in the UK and are putting the country in a very bad light.

If our country is to really prosper, then a multi-dimentional overhaul is necessary. Our basic infrastructure needs to be vastly improved. Frequent power cuts, roads riddled with potholes, lack of emergency service facilities are not features of a successful economy, much less an emerging world superpower. Other industries such as the small scale industries, agriculture, tourism and other non-IT fields also need to be encouraged and their grown furthered. Ultimately, we need to slather a layer of professionalism over our good selves if we were to compete in the global market and emerge victorious.

All of this and more, needs to be done and needs to be done now. Otherwise, this boom will be more the bang with which our glorious future came crashing down.

Posted by DesiGirl 12:32 pm 2 comments  

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Judgement Day?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I am tired of Jade. Tired of seeing her carefully school face showing remorse peering at me from every street corner. Tired of hearing her well rehearsed apologies 'I am not a racist but I can understand why you would think so'. Her well oiled PR machine is working overtime to clean up her tarnished image and I, for one, am tired of being played like a banjo.

Jade is using the 'tu queque' argument someone accused me of, to excuse away her actions. She keeps saying what she did was wrong but is repeatedly pinning the blame for it on her upbringing, her social class, her parents and anything else she could think of.

Couple of other 'interesting' repercussions of the BB row are Danielle losing a £100,000 modelling contract and worse, being dumped by West Ham footballer Teddy Sheringham, the same man she slept with to win the Miss Great Britain crown last year. Of course, Danielle doesn't know that she ins't a WAG anymore. Jo, on the other hand, didn't have much of a career to speak of since her S Club 7 days so doesn't have much to lose and is carrying on as before.

Whilst I have had my fill of the Jade Baddy Saga, I feel Danielle and Jo, who have said more racist comments and have egged Jade on, deserve to take on the blame as well. It was Danielle who said 'I thought you were going to punch her' after Jade's pronouncement 'you are stuck up so far up your a**e that you can smell your own s**t' and even said 'your mother would be so proud of you' and even called Shilpa a dog. Jo has generally been nasty and while I cannot remember what pearls of wisdom she dropped, she has been coming across as the type of person I would cross the road to avoid, purely for my own personal safety.

I was watching The Wright Stuff earlier on Channel 5 (young P's down with chicken pox - hence am cooped up at home!) and today's panellist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said something that seemed real sensible to me. Jade was the 'expert' on the show today and after 30 minutes of 'yes I can see how it will be construed as wrong, but I wasn't the only one' and many rueful shakes of her head, Yasmin adviced Jade to use the next three years to get a proper degree and.... well, we never heard what as Jade butted in, prattling about the same old stuff and made Yasmin gave up what she was trying to say. But I can see where she's coming from: one of Jade's biggest reasons for being such a bully is that she learnt those at her mother's knee. Well, she's in her mid-twenties now and cannot blame Mum for teaching her every wrong thing under the sun. It is time she learnt few good things on her own, especially with two young children to raise. Yasmin's advice strikes me as an exceptionally sound one, as well as her view of it will take a long time for someone to change their views (the racist or the bullying sort) and will not take place in the span of three short days, as we are seeing in Jade's case.

Education is the only way to open people's minds to the world out there. Respecting others' differences and not feeling threatened by them will only come with time. Britain today is as multi cultural as it gets, a fact that threatens many, many people. One of them decided to show their distaste by spitting in front of me as I was out for a walking with my little one and shouting 'Go back home!' Another one did his level best to push my husband on to the rail tracks by catching hold of his shirt fronts and yelling 'You bl***y Paki!' As more and more Asians come to the UK as skilled workers and as more and more jobs are being sent to the subcontinent, the ire of the locals who perceive us to have cheated them out of their jobs is on the rise.

Being different always makes us fair game and this is true none more so than in our own country, which is as widely diverse as it can get. State, language, religion, social / economic strata - we have innumerable things seperating us from another. Try to imagine the case of a Madrasi amongst a group of Hindi speaking Bombay or Delhi folk. Attire and accent are just two of the things that are causes for mirth. My telugu neighbour still speaks to me like I were from a planet many light years away rather than from a nearby state when she speaks of the 'customs and traditions of Nellore' (my husband is Telugu while I am Tamil). Couple of my tam-bram friends changed their minds about me in a hurry once they heard of my own mixed parentage.

While I do not rue the loss of their so-called friendship, I rue our own penchant to divide ourself so neatly. Even after paying with our own freedom for celebrating our differences hasn't stopped us from going back to doing the same. What is needed for us to look at one another as just people, instead of 'Jain, rich, gujju' or 'Hindu, Tamil, padayachi'? When will we stop judging one another? Isn't it high time we changed our outlook for the better?

Posted by DesiGirl 10:51 am 2 comments  

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The Absense of Good Desi Chick Lit
Friday, December 08, 2006

We have a mini-library of sorts in my team, at work. Well, mini-library seems a rather grand way of describing what it is, a collection of books, but we take it very seriously - we even have a librarian to monitor the traffic! Most of the books in this collection are light, even frivolous read - none of the blood chilling or brain workout-y type of books I'd like to get my teeth into, so I generally
stay away from it.

But one day, a random thought struck me and I actually went through these books. Most of them were written by women and covered subjects such as shopping, clothes, dating, partying, drinking, sex... 'chick lit', as I describe it. Not that I have anything against such things, I even borrowed one such book when the library was shut. As I was reading all about three enterprising women and their ideas to nab themselves a dishy guy, I couldn't help wondering how come we have no such books in the desi market.

How come us desis girls don't muck about such light material? Lord knows we could tell the world a thing or two. How tough it is to walk past a crowd of roadside romeos without batting an eyelid; how to cross the road opposite Ethiraj College (in Chennai) without getting run over by blokes driving outsized bikes; how to go on a date without grandparents and assorted relatives spotting you around the countryside. There's also the intriguing life of upstairs-wali Mallika and her shenanigans, the old boy next-door and what he gets upto when maami goes to the market, Flat Association President mama who makes sheep eyes at Lily aunty's cleavage at the committee meetings... well, you get my drift?

Why is it that the desi literature scene so heavy? Is it because us desis cannot read chick lit or anything half so flimsy? Do we need meaty subjects all the time? Why? Why can't we kick back with the tale of Meena and Seema as they try to plot their way around their workplace, trying to get past the letch Mohan or Ammu, as she tries to solve the mystery of who-put-the-salt-in-the-soup-and-ruined-her-dinner-party?

I say the desi lit world needs some input from the likes of us Desi Chicks. The Jhumpa Lahiris, Arundhathi Roys and Kiran Desais can have their hard core, heavy works but we need some fresh, new blood from some regular Janes too.

What say my gal pals?

Posted by DesiGirl 11:51 am 4 comments  

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Madras, namma Madras!
Tuesday, November 28, 2006

In the past few weeks, quite a few people have written something about my hometown be it their brush with the humidity and the pollution or how diametrically opposite it is to the North Indian cities, such as Delhi. Reading about these have made me quite home sick for my lovely city and I thought I shall put pen to paper and write about what makes me love it so.

Chennai, or Madras as it was known then and familiar to me today, has always been the perfect amalgamation of the old and the new. It is a city, where the kancheevaram sarees and old maamis live hand-in-hand with the Mocha coffee swigging, tank topped teeny-bopper. It is a city where the December Music Season is the highlight of the year’s cultural calender. But it is also the city where multi-stored malls and ginormous technology parks are coming up at an alarming pace. Kapaleeshwarar Temple still holds sway while Dublin continues to rock the party, come Saturday night.

The old and the new have meshed together so well that one barely leaves a dent on another. The Geetha cafes and Saravana Bhavan clientele still continue going about their daily toils, the latest opening of Baristas notwithstanding. Pizza Hut still has a mile long seating queue outside its premises most evenings and the latest branch of Madurai Idli Kadai just a little over a mile away doesn’t put any pro-Italianos off their stride.

It is also a city of crazy traffic and diabolical drivers. Having a countdown at the traffic lights seems to have made these speed demons crazier than before, what with all the revving that happens even when the timer has a good 20 seconds to go! Latest model Honda Civics aside, the potholes the latest bout of rains have gifted to the repaved roads will give your bones a workout no Shiatsu massage ever will.

It is also the city where the humidity hits you like a wet blanket the minute you set foot in. The sweat running in rivulets, combining with the dust and grime will make you look rather like an Indian brave by the end of the day. If you are not used to it, it may well make you weep!

Though Tamil is the language of the state and the DMK fervour had made sure that there is a bit of ziddi in speaking the language, the people are not averse to learning a new language. Proof of this would be the hugely popular language programmes run by the Alliance Francaise and Max Muller Bhavan, which teach French and German, respectively. But this trait is not to be found solely amongst the younger generation. My old vegetable vendor used to speak in highly fractured but extremely serviceable Hindi to one of my neighbours, who had moved to Chennai from Bombay a few years back. Though the lady had been a resident of the city for about 3 years then, she hadn’t picked up a word of the local language while the wizened vendor knew enough to sell her bhindi and baingan on demand!

Chennai, the city, is split into many zones, depending on its population. Accordlingly, in Sowkarpet, you will find Sindhis and Marwaris whilst in Parrys Corner,you will find lot more Telugus than Tamils. (Aside: Though the Sindhis and Marwaris have settled in the city and generations of their families have been calling Chennai home, none of them could speak a word of Tamil amongst them. This was a highly irritating factor during my college days. )
Eastern Madras is full of the brahmins whilst the South has folks connected to tinsel-town.

Though the city is now expanding in all directions at break neck speed and once shunned areas such as Velachery and Virugambakkam are now extremely sought after, the old demarkations still exist. The new perimeters haven’t erased the old they have simply, in typical Chennai fashion, become a part of the fabric.

It is also the city where education is supreme. Every year, during admission time, you will find anxious mums and dads queuing outside the city’s top schools, just to get an application form. The streets will be bereft of children come evening, as they will all be busy at the abacus classes, trying to master that ancient art, before taking off to the Bharatnatyam or singing classes. It is the same city where John Britto and Swingers dance schools flourish, helping wannabe Prabhu Devas turn their dreams into reality.

This is also the city where NIFT sits comfortably next to Co-Optex showroom. The city where the latest fashion trend is a saree with a pocket for one’s cell phone. The city where heels come with butti patterns to match the pallus. The city where hipsters jeans are worn with a zari top. This is the city where the paati’s Annamacharya keertans jostle for space with grand daughter’s James Blunt.

That is the magic of my city a city where the roads are full of potholes, the traffic snarls legendary, the water problem one of epic proportions, where sabhas are as important as the multiplexes but one in which a person can go for a spot of masala dosa and milkshake at mdnight, on the way back from a disco or a pizza and fresh juice for high tea, before joining the pattu saree maamis at Music Academy for a K J Yesudas kutcheri. A city where aalaapana and Air Nikes exist comfortably.

This is Madras, nalla Madras. We are like this only, saar!

Posted by DesiGirl 7:40 am 12 comments  

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