"People are lego." - Shibani

"Tamizh is spoken with the tongue; English spoken with the jaws."

- Arun Prakash Samiaiah

Madras, meri jaan

It was perhaps a sign of things to come when the first thing I saw the moment I stepped into Chennai Central a year ago was a biriyani kadai. It was around 4 pm and a couple of people stood around, consuming generous plates of chicken biriyani. I thought to myself, chicken biriyani? Interesting. It wouldn’t have been ‘interesting’ in Bombay. It wouldn’t have been interesting anywhere else except in Madras, back then, considering I had assumed that the entire city was vegetarian.

I wish I could meet that girl and enjoy the surprised look on her face as she saw the streets lined with as many biriyani kadais as there were amman koils (perhaps more). Perhaps they became highlighted in my mind because I couldn’t immediately shake off my surprise.

We’ve all met people who say to women-who-take-offence, so what if we use ‘rape’ casually in our conversations? It doesn’t make us rapists, it makes you over-sensitive. The curious thing about language is how it infects you and sits in parts of your brain which get lit when you encounter change. I never realised that parts of my brain had been infected by ideas of Madras being a vegetarian city, until I passed by a couple hundred poultry shops, non-vegetarian restaurants and kadais as I left the station.

Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be a change as obvious or tangible as moving cities. Perhaps there’s wisdom in the idea that it’s good to move around people different from you. What happened to me when I moved might happen over a conversation with someone tomorrow.

An overwhelming majority of my colleagues love non-vegetarian food. They cook, consume and celebrate it like I never have back in Bombay. I felt the irony: it was as if Madras was gently pulling my leg. Madras, like most Indian cities is a city of pluralities. There are only-on-Thursdays, everyday-except-Thursdays, egg-is-fine, fish-smells, chicken’s-best, swear-by-seafood, will-eat-anything-that-moves pluralities among non-vegetarians as well. Food is as protean and alive in its contradictions and patterns as its consumers are.

It isn’t as if these puzzles don’t exist among vegetarians. But it was important for me to understand that no city can ever be flattened into a single food type. Only living beings have blood types; places don’t. I would never do what I did to Bombay since it has an enduring reputation of being a melting-pot, cosmopolitan, global village, fluttering immigrant magnet, whatnot. But I did it to Madras because I figured it’s down south where everyone eats idli-dosa, is super-brainy and speaks Tamizh. How does one apologise to a city?

As April descended into Madras last year, the city’s famed summer season became a constant refrain. It gets hotter in a room if you keep saying it’s getting hotter. I couldn’t really feel the difference. People from Madras and Bombay alike would ask me, how are you managing? It must be so much better in Bombay, no? I’m managing fine, thank you, I said. If Madras gets hot by nature of its geographical location, Bombay doesn’t fare any better thanks to its relentless pollution and smog.

In a passive-aggressive conversation with my mother, I realised that the climate, like the food, is another infection we unknowingly let fester in our minds. The tongue is a vicious organ. The heat of Madras is as much about climate as it is about supporting a dark-skinned, loud-mouthed, Dravidian, anti-Hindi, conservative, ‘Madrasi’ narrative of the south.

Sometime in July, a friend from Bombay asked me if I missed the city. I had visited home for a few short days in June and began to outline to him specific places, moments in the day, restaurants, lanes, places and people that I could see vividly in my mind. Yes, I missed Bombay, I said. The friend nodded his head with great self-assurance. Once you’ve lived in Bombay, you’ll miss it anywhere, he said. Madras is no match for the energy, vibrancy and of course, the heady nightlife that the city has to offer. Do they have nightclubs in Madras?

This conversation repeated itself over many people across time. Unsurprisingly, none of these views came from Madrasis themselves. Which made me realise something else: Madras is possibly the most unpretentious Indian metro of all. It simply doesn’t believe in calling attention to its city-ness.

Perhaps the place where this hits you the hardest is its airport. Madras Airport is one of the most unassuming airports I’ve ever been to. A local train stops at walking distance from the airport: you can literally walk into it from the station’s subway.

Just late this February, I accidentally wandered into the International Terminal and it was calm, quiet and almost empty. There was a man sitting in one of those small shuttle cars and he asked me if I was lost. I told him where I wanted to go, and he happily offered me a ride. I couldn’t believe my ears. He ferried me—the only passenger—all the way to the Domestic Terminal and even stopped in the middle to offer his friend a lift. It was quirky, it was heart-warming and it was possibly when I realised for the second time that I had fallen in love with Madras.

Sometime in August, I was talking with a friend about something I don’t remember now. We were standing on her terrace which overlooked the junction between KMC and Eega theatre. While she spoke to another friend, I happened to look down at the traffic inching its way home.

Constant references to the horrible traffic in Bombay are not just a matter of fact; they are subtle boasts to Bombay’s city-ness. A city is not really a city unless it has frustrating, incurable traffic jams, yawning sky-scrapers, a ballooning population and a taxing daily life, among other things. Madras has bad traffic in patches, not too many tall buildings, a population which balloons in pockets and situations and a fairly laidback daily life. I wonder what makes Madras a city. I’d ask her but she doesn’t seem to care enough to answer.

What Madras does seem to be proud of are her beaches. And they really are worth the vanity. There are so many beaches, I could pick them to suit—or mould—my moods. Go to Bessie when I’m feeling light-headed, or talkative and friendly, or contemplative. Go to Palavakkam to be seduced. Go to Thiruvanmiyur beach when I feel I need to be alone, to be soothed and reassured. I’m not sure yet what Marina and Neelangkarai will offer me.

Sometime either in December last year or January I was going back home from Koyambedu bus depot. I was in an auto, and it stopped at a signal. It was around half past seven in the evening, and I was foolishly trying to read a book by the streetlight. As I bent the book this way and that, multi-coloured lights began gently streaking my hands. It felt like someone was playing with me: touching and letting me be as the streaks blew across my hand.

The book lay forgotten as I twisted my hands in the lights, feeling the colours wash over my skin. As the auto-anna restarted the engine, I peeked out to find the source of my delight. It was a string of neon-red, blue and green fairy-lights adorning the sign board of a fertility clinic. The clinic was shut but someone had left the lights on. Somehow they had bent and stretched their way inside the auto I was in and lit me up. That was the first time I realised I was in love with Madras.

it's time to move on, dear writer/film-maker

I have a tingling in my elbows. When that happens, it usually means that I can sense what fictional characters are thinking. And something tells me that a certain breed of fictional characters - the ones that aren't really dead or alive - are tired of humans.

Ever since Stephanie Meyer came out with the Twilight series, there have been books, films, more books, more films: in short, an onslaught of fictional paparazzi on vampires, werewolves and their human hybrids. I think the Living Dead, as we shall collectively refer to them now, are a little annoyed with this (very possibly) misinformed representation of them and their lifestyle, particularly food habits.

I think we, as readers, must consider the consequences of encouraging indolent writers or film-makers in this world by consuming their uninspiring explorations into the world of the Living Dead. There can only be so much speculation about a population which, let's face it, we don't really know has decided is alive or not.

Let's turn towards a different species to excavate, create, berate, vegetate on. The secret life of cacti, perhaps? Or the reclusive world of marine invertebrates? How will we ever know what else will catch the attention of young people around the world as unpredictably as the Twilight series did, if we don't let go of the Living Dead? It is time to let them be.

the abuse of anger

What an abusive privilege it is to show anger by yelling at an employee. A sign of authority, a show of ego, an utter masturbation of frustrations which have nothing to do with the real matter at hand. Raising one's voice is quite as hurtful as raising one's hand. What is pain? Is it just the red sting after a slap?

My office is a modest 2BHK apartment in a residential building. There are usually about six people in office. An employee had decided to resign and sent an email about it to my boss today about it. Soon after, she was called into the room where he usually sits, and asked to shut the door. He expressed his shock and anger at her in such a loud voice, it boomed throughout our tiny office like a sudden explosion. It wasn't a solitary exclamation, it was an onslaught. Very soon, it became physically painful to not intervene. I am still ashamed at not going inside the room and asking him to shut the fuck up.

Hearing someone being shouted at in an extremely loud voice is akin to hearing someone's tortured cries of pain. It is frightening. It crumples your insides and you fear for their sanity and unconsciously your own. It is a physical assault, a blow that you cannot quantify, like a relentless, invisible, punching fist. 

It makes you frustrated for being in a working environment where laptops and people are so closely located to each other that it is impossible to have a solitary bad day or a freewheeling gchat with a friend. 

Working in a small company creates the watery illusion of belonging to a family. It's hard to escape this illusion. When the sink floods, you run down to call the building's plumber. When there's a full-day power cut, you pack your laptops and head to your boss's house. You all fit around one table for lunch. You know what to order for breakfast for her at Trichy, Tirunelveli, Erode, Kochi and Vellore respectively. You industriously spring-clean the office the morning of Saraswati Pooja even though you don't really give a shit about Saraswati Pooja. You steal your colleague's favourite chair and try not to laugh as he searches, annoyed, for a chair with just the right height. You take your sick colleague to hospital and force her to go home after the check-up. You tease your boss mercilessly when you spy a hickey on his neck. You carry an extra spectacle case because you know she will definitely forget hers on your trip tonight. You scold people for not putting their shoes in the right place or cleaning up after making maggi. It's not a 'cool' thing to do - it happens because you work with an average of six people in a 2BHK apartment six days a week, 8 hours a day.  

If you are someone's boss, no matter what the size of your company, I believe you do not have the right to shout at your employee. I don't care if you know more about her personal life than other bosses would care to. I don't care if you've offered her help and advice beyond your professional capacity as her senior. You cannot, cannot raise your voice at her, challenge her character, deride her friends and family, dismiss her personal choices. You cannot try to extract information from her roomie behind her back. 

I'm sorry, S. I should have stood up for you the moment he began to hit you with his voice. I should have asked him to fuck off when he approached me for information. I'm sorry I let you down.

If you happen to work in a small office or department, don't let the friendly environment dilute your outrage. Even if he is a great boss, a caring mentor, an interested colleague - if he shouts at you in a manner that hurts, frightens or threatens you, let him know. It is a terrible, burning violation of your self and there is no justification for it.  

arriving

4:23 pm: That feeling of wonder when you know that you have been in two different places in the same day. In the morning you were in one city: an entirely different experience which made a different person out of you. And then you crossed over to another city, setting on its horizon. Changing cities like a chameleon. It takes time to arrive to another place, even if you've been there before. 

question

When it comes to trusting people, is it incorruptibility to not learn from betrayals, or is simply foolishness?