Charming Chennai!

Warning: No offense meant to anyone from Chennai, this is just my personal take on my recent visit to the city. To be taken in light humour and not personally. Many thanks.

A broken down auto-rickshaw at 5:40 in the morning and ending up at the wrong terminal at Mumbai airport- I managed to miss my early morning flight to Chennai. And this after Mumbai Indian’s horrible loss to Chennai Super Kings the previous night, I felt miserable to say the least. Re-booked on an afternoon flight, I set my stall out on a corner sofa at CCD – laptop, pen drive, MP3 player and a strawberry shake.

Waiting there I saw a bunch of 50 odd “annas” (South Indian men in their late 40s) all sporting the CSK yellow jersey. At first glance, i got excited thinking it was the actual CSK team I was to be lucky to see! Alas, it was nothing like that! And these men were in such great mood (for obvious reasons), they kept smiling at all the people at the airport! (Ya ya, we know your team won I said to myself!)

Somehow I managed to kill time till 2pm (or should I say murder time) and got onto my flight. And after approximately 2 hours we were to land at the Chennai domestic airport. I looked outside my window as the plane prepared to land. And unlike Mumbai airport, where one is greeted with slums and garbage, Chennai welcomed us with lush green coconut trees with bright coloured houses creating a beautiful mosaic with them! I got into a taxi and they were all bulky Ambassadors rather than the Padminis I am so used to seeing back home. Felt very spacious inside a cab for a change! 🙂 And as I moved out on the road, I was again bombarded with posters and hoardings of Dhoni, Raina, Hayden and the likes. Wasn’t enough salt rubbed into a Mumbai Indian fan’s wound already???!!!!! 😦

The next experience was with the food. I am a total North Indian food lover and hence ordered a paneer dish, dal makhani and biryani. And unfortunately, they all tasted either bland or sweet. Nothing like how they normally serve it up in the North or for that matter in the West as well. I guess it was either not the right choice of food or not the right choice of place to eat. The language too is a huge barrier here. To converse with drivers, waiters and the likes is next to impossible.

Thankfully my hotel room and my fieldwork venues were both with ACs, which spared me from the heat and humidity of Chennai. My fieldwork included interviewing housewives and giving them a hair oil to use and test. And I was surprised to see the “oiling” culture they had in Chennai. It was as much as a daily ritual for them as was brushing my teeth in the morning to me! The women there oil there hair almost everyday and moreover, some even have different oils for different purposes! And having so much oil in your hair when the temperatures are so high – its something I would never dare to do!

But in all this differences, there is something very pleasant about Chennai. The people might not understand your language, but they try their best to do so and are very polite by nature. There is always a feeling of warmth even if you talk to a stranger. All the women my team interviewed over the 2 days were so co-operative and helpful, it more than made me forgive CSK for beating Mumbai Indians.

This was just my second trip to the coastal city, and I missed visiting the beautiful Marina beach this time around. Hope I get to see it the next time!

Until then….

Cheers~~
KS