Chennai Callin!

I had lived for seven long years in Bombay, had made a really good set of friends and had started loving the life there when my father got a transfer order to Madras! To be honest, the kind of impression that we were fed with there about Madrasis (and to be occasionally referred to as one! ) was not all that encouraging! So it would not be very correct to say that I was looking forward to my days at Chennai!

But I came to Chennai on 22 Oct 2000. From that day to this, this city has managed to invoke a variety of emotions in me! The city has different faces, different moods and is constantly changing! The Chennai that I live in today is outwardly no where close to the one where I landed in 2000, but inwardly it remains the same that it has been for the last hundreds of years!


So exactly what is it that keeps this city going?


Not one, but many things. Right in the middle of it lies the rich tradition and cultural heritage untampered by any serious war or infiltrations, unlike our Northern cities. This has resulted in an unadulterated evolution over the generations.

Secondly, its the patronage to arts. Historically, patronising arts and developing them was the role of the rulers. Partly because of the cultural inclination of its people and partly because of the non-interference from other kingdom, Madras has always been the centre of excellence for so many art forms. These include music, dance, theatrical art forms and most recently movies! Madras was undoubtedly the centrestage of both Tamil and Malayalam film industry until the recent past. The very fact that most of the Malayalam movie stars and musicians still reside in Chennai bears testimony to this fact. This has definitely contributed to the development and prosperity of Chennai!

Thirdly, it is a kind of learning and knowledge evolution over the last few decades. Chennaites have patronised learning and education as much as arts, and as a result there are so many of its representatives in the Silicon valley and other significant places across the globe as brand ambassadors of Chennai.

Overall, the traditions, culture, arts and learning are the pillars that have held Chennai up over the times and responsible for its growth and prosperity.


Whats unique about Chennaites?


For the last ten years, I have constantly been interacting with Chennaites and there is this one common thing in them that amazes me! The competitive spirit and killing instinct! Here everyone is fed on competition, right from the criss-cross driving commuter stuck on the road in the Anna Salai traffic to the young students at TRS classes aspiring for a seat in IIT!


It is this crave for achievement (and being able envy a few neighbors and cast a ´good impression´ and attain a ´good reputation´ in the society) that drives the people here! However I must clarify here that by no means are they any unfriendly. It is just that these competitive insttincts are ingrained in their DNAs and its the way of life!

Many of my friends from the North say that they find Madrasis not so open and outgoing as their North Indian brethren. I wish to oppose that allegation with an explanation that the definition of ´openness´ and ´outgoing´ is a little tweaked here, probably because of the unadulterated flow of culture that I was mentioning.

Discos and night life are alien to this place (to an extent) because everyone goes home in the night. Its a routine! Not many foreigners frequent here as they do in Goa or Bombay. Not many diplomats or dignitaries visit this place as they do in Delhi! Not many people from outside the state come here in search of jobs as they do in Bombay! So where is there an opportunity for changing the Chennai way of life? And hence it should not be a surprise that Chennaites have different mentality when compared to a person from Bombay or Delhi!


Whats lacking here?


Lack of awareness and illiteracy are two things that are holding back this city from reaching greater heights. While I told about the city´s patronage to learning, I must clearly mention here about the emerging (social-)class struggle in this place.


The affluent middle and upper class that has family links in America, enjoys Carnatic music as much as rock and jazz , and spends an average Rs.1000 on weekends with family in 3 or 4 star restaurants and malls (so many of them coming up in the last few years! ) present a completely different image as that painted by the average and lower class led by auto and taxi drivers who altercate with the upper classes in pucca Chennai Tamizh (copyrighted by the city and its residents, not to be found anywhere else! )for Rs. 50 and 60. These people do not understand IIT, cant differentiate between NIT and NIIT, do not believe India exists beyond Delhi!

The consequence? Hero worship and blind faith! They would burn themselves to death if a political leader of their faith is arrested. They would burn effigies if a hero of their faith is pointed fingers at by someone. They would vote and elect anyone who has shown caliber in show biz to the highest offices in the government because he/she belongs to their faith. In this way, they place their faith in a religion of their own where Rajnikant, Kamal Hasan, Vijaykant, Sachin Tendulkar (not Amitabh Bachchan! ), AR Rahman, SPBalasubramaiam (not Kishore Kumar or Lata Mangeshkar!) etc done the role of Gods!

This has to go! Basic education and exposure to the outside world is utmost necessary for the upliftment of this class. It is required to show them cities like London and Paris, built on similar foundations, and emphasise on the different aspects like cleanliness, civic responsibilites of citizens and embracing outsiders (which Chennai is not particularly known for esp when people concerned are coming beyond Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh) to mix with them like the sugar in milk in building the city!

No wonder theres a long way to go and this city that is now my home, has the capability of going that extra two miles! And I dream of the time when Chennai becomes one of the best cities to live in this world!



WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADRAS!

(I still prefer Madras over Chennai when it comes to a personal level! )

Independence Day 2010!

I wish all fellow Indians a very happy Independence Day!

It is our annual tryst with destiny, to assess our proximity to the dream that our forefathers held high in spirits!

#ID is very much the time when we must script the India we wish to live in, and how we can work towards making it so!

Cheers 2 all Indians! The future belongs to us, and the take over process has already begun!

Jai Hind!

A few ID tweets from twitter:
GabbbarSingh

India's 200 run loss to NZ has eroded my patriotism by 200 basis points. #truth

SrBachchan

T89 -Happy Independence Day ..!! May India no longer be 'the third world country' or a 'developing nation' but FIRST WORLD and DEVELOPED !!

anandmahindra

Happy independence day...independence from the poverty of ideas and solutions...

sachin_rt

I wish everyone a Happy Independence day.All of us in our small way should contribute to make our country a better place. Jai Hind

FestemberX

Awesome publicity video made by my friends in NITT for FestemberX.

A must be place for all lovers of music, dance and arts on 24-26 Sept 2010!

Check out www.festember.in

NITT Global Alumni Meet AND MORE!

The one day I spent with my friends in Bangalore showed me how much I am missing in my life! I had a spectacular weekend in Bangalore which is definitely worth sharing, and my new broadband connection at home is all the more reason for me to blog tonight!

Shanky and Duck have been actively involved in the organisation of GAM, and it is this renewed dedication in them (after Pragyan) that actually drove me to take the pain of going all the way to Bangalore for attending the event! As a matter of fact, it was Shanky who paid for my GAM registration too!

Anyway, I reached Bangalore, early on Saturday morning. One thing with Bangalore that I never learn, despite repeated incidents, is that the place is so damn cold in the mornings! So after another bone chilling taxi ride, I reached the Confident group´s resort which to me seems so far from Banglaore city that its just a stone´s throw away from the Bannarghata National Park.

The place and the atmostphere there brought back to my mind the days of Pragyan and Nittfest that we orgainsed in college! The mornings are filled with anxiety, and fear of any last-minute-goof-ups, while the mind secretly constructs a castle out of every successful moment in the day; each brick in its way trying to reach to that orgasmic satisfaction that one derives at the end of the event!

For the first time, I was a part of the media relations team of any event. It was a wonderful experience, all the more boosted by my friends Vibhu, Siva, Polly and Rohan with whom I worked. I really appreciated the role of media and news channels that day, and the excitement involved in delivering a live incident to audience across the globe as it unfolds!

But when everything goes your way, you know that something is not right. This time it was the rains that spoiled the whole show. All plans were literally ´down the drain!´

In the evening, we set up a video conference with KRSridhar which was possibly the only thing that went right after the rain in the morning.

The next morning, Duck, Shanky, Vibhu and I had breakfast with Arpit, Abhinav and Anurag. It was interesting and exciting to hear about the story behind the origin of Pragyan- something that played a very significant role in our college life, from the same people who were responsible for its start! They spoke to us about their four years in college, and I for one could not help but draw parallels between our batches. We both seem to have had a lot of fun bending and breaking the rules of the college!

Sunday evening was spent in Garuda mall and Leela. I did bowling for the first time in my life! It was great fun!

All in all, it was an amazing weekend, and special thanks to the people who made it special! Looking forward to meeting you all again very soon!

Weekend trip to the Chatsworth house and Heights of Abraham

Hi folks!

I went on a really good weekend trip to Peak District, known to be one of the most beautiful places to be visited in the UK, organised by the Indian YMCA. It was a fantastic tour and we covered the Chatsworth house and Heights of Abraham on Saturday.

Both these places are located in Derbyshire. Chatsworth house is the residence of the Dukes of Devonsire and their families, of whom the most prominent ones are the scientist Henry Cavendish and Deborah Mitford. The family owned a lot of land in the London city including the most famous Portsman Square. The Chatsworth house is as old as sixteenth century but has undergone many modification with changing times. The house is a spectacular display of ornate decorations and has a large collection of artefacts. It also has some of the most beautiful sculptures in addition to the cascade and water fountain. More details about Chatsworth house is available on WIki.

Heights of Abraham is in Mattlock. It is from the Victorian times. There is a cable car service that leads to a beautiful scenic point and to the cavern where miners have mined limestone in the earlier centuries. More information is available on Wiki.

Photos uploaded on Facebook and Picasa. Have a look; these places are simply mind blowing!

Cheers!

The Great Indian Novel of Thuvakudipuram and Garnet Society

Hey folks! This is Captain Shyam Krishnan from Dwarakpur! Today I will be meeting my cousins with whom I spent my childhood. I have five cousins- Dharmashanky, Bheem Nagi, Abhyarjun, Sabanakul and Vijaysahadev. My brother Balrachit and I have spent many of our childhood days in their company and even teamed up with them for a grand fight with the most despised DOTA gang (Sathyo´D´hana, Karnaditya, Kravindan and Somanatham). Today I will tell you about that story.

Dharmashanky was the eldest among us and a natural philanthropist. Naturally he was the leader. Bheem Nagi on the other hand was the gentle giant of the gang. Now the first one thought with his heart and the second with his limbs, who would think with his brain? Abhyarjun; he was the gang´s strategist. A six feet package of shrewd and clever ideas, he was also the most handsome among us. Naturally the only one behind whom the girls of the village flocked! The twins Sabanakul and Vijaysahadev are inseparable individuals with very identical thoughts and opinions. It was speculated that no one had ever seen one of them without the other. Sabanakul had a craze for collecting KPN bus tickets and was an active KayPeeNatelist (something like Philatelist) and Vijaysahadev was crazy about English music! I dont know how much time has changed these people, and I am very excited to see them today! My brother Balarachit is also arriving tonight from the USA!

Coming back to our story... Once for vacation all of us had come over to my place at Thuvakudipuram . Our family owns a house in the Garnet society there and since it was unoccupied we thought it would be the ideal place to spend our vacation. But only after we reached there did we realise that Sathyo´D´hana´s parents had purchased the adjacent house to ours and he had come over with his DoTA gang to spend the vacation there. I really dont understand why, but our gangs never got along well with each other. Some small issue or the other cropped up and Dharmashanky had to act as mediator and settle it every time.

Now in Thuvakudipuram lived a beautiful girl called Pragnya. She was so beautiful that people from around 60 countries fought against each other to win her! Pragnya was a shy girl and never spoke to anyone in the village. She used to spend most of her time in the ´Surya Computer Centre´ at the village junction where Sathyo´D´hana and his DoTA gang used to practise DoTA. While they were there Sathyo´D´hana fell for Pragnya´s beauty and wanted to propose to her. He made KRAravindan write a blog post about her beauty and himself got her a brand new wrist watch from Tux Vendors.

Meanwhile Pragnya happened to see Abhyarjun with us at the Shakthi Tea And Fruit Faloodaa (STAFF) canteen in the village when she was there with her friends. She whispered to her close friend Festy that Abhyarjun looked so much the ´chocolate boy´ types like fimstar Madhavan and that she had fallen for him. In matter of no time she became a good friend of all of us and a very special friend of Abhyarjun. He used to tell us how he fell for her smile. Yes, her smile did win many a hearts! Hmmm...

Anyway, so when Sathyo´D´hana was all set to propose to Pragnya after doing all the preparation, he was shattered to know that Pragnya was already committed to Abhyarjun and he challenged us for a game of DoTA. Though none of us except Vijaysahadev knew anything about the game (and Vij was no better actually!) Dharmashanky and Bheem Nagi felt that it would be cowardly to turn our face away. So we accepted the challenge for Pragnya and Abhyarjun.

Vij tried teaching us the game and told us about the game strategies. Dharmashanky vowed to play the game only if it was linux compatible and the complexity demanded a 32GB computer. He felt anything less than that was below his level. Bheem Nagi wanted to incorporate networking protocol algorithms into our game strategy (and was naturally hushed off! ). Abhyarjun wanted to put to use his Hindu paper memorising talent into the game strategy. He wanted us to follow the pattern established by the Polyester Prince. That was his contribution to the game plan. Sabanakul wanted us to use the KPN hard algorithm for ´traveling sabarish´ problem for deciding the game strategy. My brother wanted to incorporate the patterns of Ragas in music (I still dont understand what he meant, but he used to be obsessed with this Raga thing those days). I had only one opinion, it must be economically efficient!

Well, as u could see we had no idea of DoTA and naturally we lost the game against Sathyo´D´hana and his pro-team. Sathyo´D´hana was a computer wizard. His best friend from ´B section´ in school Karnaditya was a smart and pious chap. He used to help people get employed through his contacts but himself preferred to be a farmer. Somanatham and KRAravindan were twins who got their diplomas in manufacting. Both were smart workers who knew how to put in least effort and yet make maximum profit!

Since Abhyarjun and Pragnya were already in a relation, they did not bother to ask her out now. Instead they asked us to shoo off from the place for 14 days so that they can have the society playground all to themselves for these days. So we (along with Pragnya) went to our uncle Shakunan´s place. He is believed to be the most crooked one in our family having made himself infamous in the most popular Banana scandal that rocked Thuvakudipuram administration.

Uncle Shakunan told us a master plan to get even with these guys and save our reputation in the society. He told us to seek support from his friend´s son Ashwatnami. So we brought Ashwatnami into our group and told him about what all had happened. We had just one day in hand before the commencement of school and we had to settle scores. After our defeat at the game of DoTA Pragnya was also upset. She told Abhyarjun that she would be his girl only if he defeated and humiliated Sathyo´D´hana.

So we decided to use Ashwatnami´s gulti-friendship with Sathyo´D´hana to bring him alongwith his gang to the Garnet society pond where we will launch surprise attacks at them. Since they will be unarmed for the fight, they will be caught by surprise and we will be able to defeat them easily in public.

On the fifteenth day when we got back to Garnet society, we positioned ourselves as planned and sent Ashwatnami to Sathyo´D´hana. When he and his friends reached, we launched water missiles at them and made them lie flat on the ground. Bheen Nagi´s strength, Abhyarjun´s sharpness and Dharmashanky´s wisom were our strengths. But things went out of hands after a while. Sathyo´D´han and his gang were mighty strong compared to ours. They soon got back on their feet and started attacking us with water missiles. It was a closely fought battle with neither team conceding defeat.

At last I thought of an idea. I discussed it with Abhyarjun and he was happy with it. We asked Ahwatnami to stay outside for a while and made Dharmashanky to inform Sathyo´D´hana that his gulti-firend was not feeling well. On hearing it he dropped his missile and Bheem Nagi got him on his knees with one strong one on his legs. His clothes were torn and he was humiliated in public. The happiness on the face of Pragnya who was witnessing all this was shining like a bright sun.

With Sathyo´D´hana out of the battle, the others could easily be brought down by my songs! All I had to do was sing a few lines and the rest of their gang surrendered their weapons and conceded defeat!

And thus we won the great battle of Thuvakudipuram. Abhyarjun proposed to Pragnya and she happily accepted. They were bonded into an everlasting relationship. Dharmashanky and I decided to be the best men on their wedding. Meanwhile my brother had gone off before the fight to continue his research work on Morning Ragas and so he could not be a part of it.

After we parted ways then, there has never been a vacation we were together. And today all of us are going back to Garnet society to spend a week there. And guess what, I just heard from Karnaditya that Sathyo´D´hana and his friends are also going to be there. Lets see what is in store this time!

:-)
Cheers!

(L to R): Bheem Nagi, Somanatham, Vijaysahadev, Shyam Krishnan, KRAravindan, Dharmashanky, Karnaditya, Abhyarjun, Sathyo´D´hana.
Missing : Balarachit and Ashwatnami.

Disclaimer- This is purely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to living or dead beings, or locations is simply coincidence! :P And a special word to conspirators of NITT- please do not try to decipher unintented meaning out of any part of the story. It is entirely meant for fun! So hav fun!!! :-)

Residual Colonialism in the British Media

I have been traveling in and out of the UK for the last two years and one of the first instructions that I received when I arrived here from India was that words like ´Blacks´ etc. are considered highly racist and any use of these words, however unintentional, is considered an insult.

However I was shocked to find the word ´Black´ being used by the most prestigious media corporation in the UK-BBC. During the pre-match discussion (or the news report, I fail to recollect), the reporter said that football in South Africa is considered predominantly to be a sport of the ´Black´ people! Also offending was the way they focused on African teams in the pre-match session.

The BBC reporter remarked how South Africa must try to make it to the best 16 teams in order to avoid becoming the first host team to be eliminated in round one. This would not have been considered offensive had they not followed it up with a special analysis of all the African nations that are playing the tournament and what were their possibilities of making to the next level.

After the match, BBC showed the reaction in a room packed with South African fans for 1. The South African goal, 2. The Mexican goal and 3. The Mphela miss in the 90th minute. All this, while the Mexican fans´ reactions were completely neglected and ignored. To me personally, it looked identical to an experiment where you take footage of the reaction of mice and guinea pigs to certain stimuli.

While it is understandable and justified to encourage new teams into the game and have special coverage of the host country and the enthusiasm there, it must not occur as the Big Brother´s arrogance that says ´See, this is where I am better and you have a long way to catch up kid! ´ or isolation of any ethnic group.

BBC is a leader in world media that sets very high standard for other new channels. As someone who has been a fan of the news channel for the last fifteen years, it was shocking to me that such things were observed in their World Cup coverage. Hope the English World Cup spirit does not take the better over their responsibilities to their global audience!