Peripherally yours,
Chennai
Centrifugal forces have been acting on me at large, and over the decades, getting me to explore
new facets of Madras – now Chennai – in its different facets. We would as kids travel from Delhi to Madras, spend a
few days in Mylapore and quickly take the meter gauge train from Egmore to
Thanjavur and descend further into quaintness.
Yes, there was less traffic in Madras, and yes the pace was
unhurried, but the poverty was stark, and the differences between haves and
have-nots was a really deep chasm. By
early 1980s things began to change – we moved to Adyar while grandparents lived
in Mylapore, a few airconditioned joints showed up in Mt. Road, a hole in the
wall in Adyar had a name called Hungry Tiger doling what was called Pizza, and
if we needed Chinese food, we could catch a 5B, or drive a herald or a vespa
and eat at Waldorfs just before the IIT gate,.
A decade and more later, with Ford at Maraimalai nagar, and TCS at the
TIDEL park in madras, the city actually had a consuming middle class – along
with an array of restaurants – Eden, Wangs Kitchen, Dasa Dosa, Cascade and the
like that kept those looking to unwind a place to do so, in airconditioned
comfort and friendly service. And with
movie theatres and a mall (Spencers) and the sabhas in December for the
cultural affirmation. If people wanted
an outing and a swig, Mahabs was an hour
away and two hours more there was Pondy.
And for an evening stroll on the beach there was Bessie,. Madras or Chennai seemed to still retain that
cosy feel, while growing in comforts.
Those who were in were in. Lets
leave it at that.
Perhaps our future has little in common with the black hole,
with its mammoth inward pull.. As it
often happen in these modern times, people find other places and pursuit to
disperse into. While life had taken me
to US for a decade and more I have found a nest in the cooler Bengaluru,
assignments and family still calls me to Chennai – but this time around it is
as far away as Kalyan is from Churchgate.
To places like Maraimalai Nagar and more. Even a city with a reputation for efficiency
as Chennai will throw a traffic jam or two if the commute is 50 KM. I found that the magic lies in multimodal
transport – a fast airconditioned metro to Meenambakkam and an Uber from
there. Sometimes meetings would yank me
around like a yo-yo from south Chennai to places like Padi. So I get Uber to take me around. My first question to the Uber driver is, is
the AC good. Some of them will say – sir
– come to the front. And in the next 40 minutes I would strike a
conversation or sometimes listen in to their world. His daughter asking when is he going to come
home – his wife asking him to buy sweets as guests are coming. I would ask them where are they from – Bodi,
Ramanthapuram, Chengam, Nellore. The
drivers are a polite lot, each having a different taste – the radio-stations
whose film songs play to the lowest common denominator in any language were
often ignored by the drivers – “yaaru sir, atheu paatu kaettindu, thalai than
valikum – who can listen to these songs again and again – it is just a
headache”. Some of them play a
downloaded movie on their cell phone – Jai Bhim – that’s discerning.. he turned down the volume and turned to me
and said – sir – my target is 3000 rupees a day, 25 days a month. If I do that I run my home, take my family to
the movies, send my kid to an English medium school and send money to my village, Another driver drove clients from Truichy and
was trying to Uber his way back, at least till Mahindra world city to cover his
fuel and toll. He said Truichy is not an
Uber city – he has his network of tourist hotels and thrives on temple
tourism. Most recently a Wagon R had a large central console – the driver
logged me in, touched the touch screen, scrolled to a You tube channel in Tamilnadu
– the topic was polluting thermal power and nuclear plants and their safety..
what happened in Fukushima was lucidly explained. So I asked the driver is he an engineer – yes
– I drive Uber sometimes – and he talked about solar panels in every-rooftop
with batteries to reduce load on thermal power and much more - yes – we prosper here because there is peace
and there are no divisions based on religion and there should not be any class
/ caste differences –no one higher and no one lower, if that really happens it would be even
better. Mylapore is of course 50 KM
away from these conversations. The
evening took us to the fabled Old Mahabalipruram Road – from GST road, and
Vandalur, bisecting the gloriously wooded
zoo the left and some land
cornered by forest department – equally wooded to the right. More patches of lakes and woods followed –
giving way to VIT, and then residential
towers and IT parks and on to Old Mahabalipuram Road – Madhya Kailash (at
Adyar) – 30 KMs it said – while IT complexes and swank apartments sprung out of
land in or abutting water bodies – with restaurants and malls on the main
road. A new Chennai – hopefully a bit
more peripheral to the hardened divisions of class and more, knitted together
by Ubers in case one wants to mingle a bit more by design or circumstance,
instead of our own cocoons of commute to office and home.