Namba ooru-Its Singara Chennai!

This post is published as a part of the CBC Tablog.CBC, for everybody is the Chennai Bloggers’ Club, which I am honored to be a part of. Over 35 bloggers from Chennai are taking part in this blog tag- we take turns to write about Chennai and what it means to us. This tag is preceded by Harikrishna Raghuraman whose mokkais are freely available at <http://freezingeternity.blogspot.in/>

To me, Chennai means my homeland and a place I wish I never move out completely from. It’s a city that shows gradual development and a complete evolution when compared with its past. It bears people from diverse backgrounds and thoughts, mostly unfriendly and lackadaisical in nature and in Chennai, there is no common linguistic platform. It’s Tamil everywhere and everyone has to know Tamil to survive here. That’s one thing I never liked about this city, when compared to the others.

I live in Vadapalani/Kodambakkam area, the Kollyhood/Cinema hub with massive studios & sets, cinema shooting spots, unbelievably strange looking people calling themselves actors and giving their best shot to act and the others covering the area around the studio just to cast for their debut performance. It has been generous enough to pick anyone who wanted to act.LOL. Paah! Those dialogues in Tamil movies and the English movies that are dubbed in Tamil are more than enough for a non-Tamilian to learn the language.

Chennai being Tamilnadu’s capital, the shambolic political system of Tamilnadu starts off here. During the elections, they emerge from nowhere, conducting meetings in different places, and demonstrating future plans for making Chennai a better place to live, bribing poor fellows to vote for their party.Oh! And laying roads in a single night can happen only in Chennai (up to my knowledge level) and a drizzle for an hour can wash them out leaving pits and muddy hard path.

There are so many places to visit here. The heritage buildings that were constructed during the Brits era, shore temple, Mahabalipuram, ECR-the party part of Chennai, fashion to an extent and tradition at its best, southern Indian “saapaadu”, events like sabhas and plays, workshops and campaigns for assorted tastes of people keeps the Chennaites lives lively.

I wouldn’t miss to talk about the origin of the troublemaker (mosquitoes)-our very own Cooum River which is now a dump and nothing more. If this river is drained, then eradication of mosquitoes would become simpler I guess. Like Indus valley civilization, we can probably start talking about Cooum civilization in the History textbooks.

The last thing that I wanted to mention was about namba (“our” in English) Chennai’s very own slang a.k.a Madras bashai. It has its own phonetics and people can actually plan about starting a business for printing dictionary for Madras Tamil-Tamil. Poda bemali, unga ootla soltu vantiya, dhodaa, eeena panikinu eekure are few examples.

Chennai might be a hell for many and at times for me too; it might be deficient in many aspects, even when I leave the city for long vacations, on entering Chennai and seeing its aerial view, the exhilarated feeling I get is unexplainable. Whatever might happen making Chennai to be the best or worst, enaku pidicha ooru Singara Chennai dhango! (My favorite city is beautiful Chennai).

I pass this tag to Karen Xavier-Fernandez whose blog is <http://www.summer–breeze.blogspot.in/> with contemplations and ruminations, relating to events in her life and random thoughts!

About these ads