The Language:
Now the language spoken in this town is its own, the diction is a mix of various eastern and western languages and yes, we have our own words that have absolutely no definition in any dictionary, mind you, our English would baffle the folks at Oxford and Cambridge. The Tamil (our mother tongue) here is so foul and just plain wrong, the scholars and literaries of days gone by would probably be rolling in their graves. Not only did we invent a list of words for ourselves, but we took the originals and spiced it up a bit. The Tamil we speak is unbelievably funny, for eg, “andha bugger enna overa torture pannaran”, now you might think that half the words are in English (bugger, over and torture) but the truth is, that was purely a Tamil statement. Everyone is multilingual in Madras, a regular Tamil sentence such as “indha galeej seriyana lavada madhiri behave pannaran, sensea illa” contains Kannada, Hindi, English and Tamil ancestry. This makes Madras a place easily inhabitable by people of all nationalities and cultures, truly a city that encourages diversity.
The English we speak, that’s right, we speak English, not just any English, the Queens English, even the Brits realising our flair for the language set up their First Indian Fort in Madras, they truly understood our potential. We took the language from them and made it ours, words like Peter, Root, Without and Line, etc don’t really mean what they should, for example “root” and “line” are both ways of describing one person flirting with or hitting on someone else, “Without” means someone who hasn’t bought a ticket for their use of public transportation, so on and so forth, the list forever changing. We do our share of altering the English words too, “Country” means an illiterate village fool, “Doop” is actually duped, “Wines” means a liquor shop and not the liquor itself, “Cutting” can mean both a haircut or a large round at the Wines and the word “Tight” means someone who is really drunk and also its actual meaning of tightness.
The Food:
Food is not just a necessity in Madras, it’s a passion, it’s a lifestyle choice, it is a vital part of our culture. Not only is the food here unbelievably good, it’s cheap. The restaurateurs in Madras understand one thing, people here love to eat and food of all things should be cheap. The people here aren’t bothered by change either, we love to experiment, for a town with a majority of vegetarians (or supposedly vegetarians), we have a wide variety of cuisines, from Various Indian to Chinese, to Italian, French, American, Japanese, Thai, Korean, I can keep going on. The availability of all kinds of meat, poultry and greens and fresh sea food makes it easy for anyone to survive here. But it’s the traditional south Indian cuisine that gets you to fall flat on your face.
The Dosas, Pongal and Idlys along with the Chutneys is simply orgasmic, and the Sambar, my good lord the Sambar, it’s gravy from the Gods. Breakfast alone has over a 100 different items on the menu, Heaven. We do eat the occasional English breakfast, bread and butter with a helping of bacon and sausages, an egg and end it with a cup of tea.
Lunch is a whole new ball game, “the meals” (that’s Tamil again by the way) is an unlimited supply of Rice with various accompaniments, it is a three course meal that starts with the rice and a mix of Sambar, yes the Sambar again, every true resident of Madras loves his/ her Sambar, then the second course is with Rasam, or Pepper Water as it is known in our Queens English is an extremely tasty and spicy mix that acts as a digene and flu medicine, it will kill a cold, fever and any throat related ailments in a matter of minutes. The final round of the meal is rice with a mix of Yogurt or Butter Milk, this usually calms the burning that is felt after the Sambar and the Rasam rounds and acts as an extremely effective aesthetic. We Tamil’s specifically designed our afternoon meal in such a manner that it aids in the post lunch nap, and yes, we all take a nap after lunch.
Dinner is usually a variety of things; it ranges from the usual Rice to Chapathis and Parotas (Borota) to even the Dosas and many other things, the Curd (Yogurt) is usually had in one form or the other and again that’s as a sleep aid. Don’t fret thinking “why is dinner so lousy, after a day of food par excellence?” Dinner is when the meat shows up, Chicken being the most favourite (Chicken 65, Kurma and Chilly the most popular types), some fools consider egg as vegetarian and others fish, isn’t it wonderful how we bend the laws of nature according to our whims and fancies.
Beverage consumption in Madras should be a whole new blog. Coffee is probably Madras’ biggest passion; we have evolved and developed a new highly heat resistant tongue and internal organs, I have not seen boiling hot coffee being drunk so casually before and at such pace. The entire population of Madras don’t really drink coffee, they shoot it. A glass of piping hot coffee (approx 200 ml) will go down in 5 seconds flat, no heartburn whatsoever.
We also drink tea in massive amounts, but as an evening beverage, something we picked up from our English ancestors. Not just any tea like you other slobs, we drink only “special tea” (Tamil once more). We have a variety of them too, tea with a mix of various ingredients such as, Ginger and Cardamom (Elaichi or Ealaka) are the most popular. Apart from tea, we drink a lot of juices, lime, tender coconut, orange, watermelon, mango and the most popular Sathukudi Juice (Sweet Lime), it’s our speciality.
Cinema, Cricket and the Beach, these are the three things that we do on a regular basis to keep ourselves entertained throughout the year, but that’s not all we do, there’s more, there are special activities that pop up for each season, during the Pongal season we actually partake in the eating of sugarcane very religiously. Then we have the summer where doing anything outdoors is a suicidal venture, but we still enjoy the sweet Dharboose (Watermelon) and the sun burn at the beach, during this time we also celebrate Holi and Easter, there is a 15 to 20 day stretch at the end of April and beginning of May called the “Kathiri” (also means Brinjal), this is the heights of summer when the heat is turned up to maximum along with the humidity.
There is a season for flying kites and a season for dance, there’s a season where all the concerts happen and another one for theatre, we even have a shopping festival that lasts a whole month, all around you there’s a play or a dance or whatever it is that people do during the respective periods, the bottom line is that there is enough to keep you entertained through the year. In a few days we are going to be cheering the Chennai Super Kings (the greatest cricket team on Earth) on for the IPL season, but Chennai is not the fanatic city, we cheer on both our team and the opponents, we don’t care who plays as long as the game is good we cheer them on, that’s the kind of people you find here, sometimes it’s stupid, we lose a crucial wicket and everybody’s cheering the bowler on for delivering a spectacular ball, good sportsmanship but then again.
The Beach is the place to be if you have nothing to do or no friends or no money, hence the reason our beaches are always crowded. We have over 10 beaches in Madras, 3 major and many smaller ones, our Marina is the world’s second largest beach and probably the world’s largest “lovers park”, there are couples there from seven in the morning till one in the night, its remarkable, these couples are so in love that they can withstand the forces of nature, hot sun, insane humidity, pouring rain, loss of jobs, financial crisis, inflation... no worries, the love will go on.
Cinema is a whole topic by itself when it comes to the folks from Madras, we don’t just watch movies, we try to base our lives around it, we sing and dance the songs, we dress like the stars, we even worship some of them, Rajinikanth is not a hero who saves the world, He is the World. Ajith and Vijay (Thala!!) have some of the biggest fan clubs on the planet though they churn out horrible, box-office failures, this is because they have something that Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins will never have, “Mass” (meaning mass appeal, also a Tamil word). Mass is what makes the Kaas (Money) when the actors don’t know how to act. With one of the largest film industries in the world, we produce and watch hundred’s of movies a year. Since the passion for movies is so great we automatically have some awesome theatres in Madras, Sathyam with its clarity and comfort, Devi with its size and Woodlands with its trash, these are some of the most crowded spots in Madras, even roads had to be changed to accommodate the thousands of movie goers.
7.5 million people in a large cramped tropical city with no winters, massive beaches, perennial sunshine, good food and pretty women, sounds like some beach paradise yes? From the above description you are probably thinking of a place like Miami, but the truth is far from it. It almost seems like the God’s (we have an estimated 3.3 million Gods) were playing an insane prank on us. They drop us in the most fertile place on Earth and forget very often to provide us with rains, Madras’ Marina is one of the largest beaches in the world, but the water too dangerous for a swim, some three small rivers that’s too dirty for life, Heat that makes you wish you were dead, the best traffic cops in the country that is, till the end of the month when they decide to bankrupt you, Bus drivers who are maniacs and Auto drivers who are the biggest embezzlers you’ll ever meet. Our politics and politicians are far from good but they seem to know when to behave themselves and when to go crazy.
But we don’t let such trivial things bother us. We are some busy people here. We are the first to rise in India, at around 4.00 am the tea shops are open and by 5.00 it’s packed with customers and it’s not just the tea shops, six in the morning is the best time to buy meat and go for a haircut, the vegetable market opens at six along with the Wine Shops (Wines) and both remain crowded for the entire day (Bangalore wakes up around lunch time) so on and so forth. Night life is quiet peaceful, you have your parties and pub’s, dinners and coffee shops and restaurants and Kaiyendhi Bhavans (a fancy, multi-cuisine, fast food outlet sort of thing).
Madras is a highly fashionable town, our trends change, not seasonally (we have 3 seasons, hot, hotter and humid) but on a daily basis, highly flexible aren’t we, that’s right our Hawaii Cheppals provide extreme flexibility whereas our Lungis provide absolute ventilation and the Baniyan is an all purpose and optional vest, all together a complete man. The Women, not just pretty but smart women, diverse in both personality and looks, they with their sensual Salwars and sexy Sarees seem to be getting only better, the choices are limitless.
Living it up in Chennai requires a certain amount of patience, a sense of humour, love for the simpler things in life and a hint of charm, if you do not posses these qualities, no problem, we really don’t care. We have a place for everyone and anyone is welcome, we are not racist but will probably rip you off since you are an outsider and may not know the ways. Bottom line, it’s a definite YES, life doesn’t get better than this, anyone who has ever been here will agree, you can get them out of Chennai but you can never take “Chennai” out of them, cause once you go that quirky, there’s no going back...
