Chennai – My first experience….

"Remember...People of Chennai believe in SWORDS, not WORDS" ...the words of he who shall not be named (no not Voldemort*..Voldemort is fictitious). These words echoed in my head as I got off the train onto platform number 5 at Chennai Central, some 8 months ago. These angry words had come from a person who had lost very badly in a verbal battle (a battle of words), a cornered animal who generally resorted to physical violence but was restrained from doing so because at that time he was in someone elses territory (i.e. mine...we were in Mysore-Karnataka) then.

The events that led to the altercation with that above mentioned individual, are not of any consequence to this passage, but the fear that it instilled within me is indescribable and that is the reason I have included it in the beginning.

The events chronicled below took place (as I mentioned) some 8 months ago. I had just come into Chennai from Mysore where I had done my training for 4 months. I was nervous as hell because to start of with, I was leaving the warmth of the place where I had been brought up in...by warmth here, I’m being VERY metaphorical because when it comes to physical warmth, I had heard gruesome stories about Madras summers. Also, for the first time in 22 years, I was going to stay in a place where most of the languages that I know were not recognized. (For the purpose of academic interest, I know just 2 and a half languages...I wont delve into it as that will be reserved for another story). To add icing to the cake, those words in the first line of this passage(let us call it the "catch phrase"), had been said by a person (Note: MUCH bigger and MUCH stronger than me) and every one of those words had come out through gritted teeth, with smoking nostrils and evil red eyes( a little drama here but come on, I’m Indian you know)...
And since I have introduced the word "territory" sometime back, let me just say that I was now in Lord Voldemort’s(the real one) BACK YARD.



Back to the scene, when I got onto the noisy platform, I was immediately accosted by a BIG BURLY man who was wearing a red turban and a coolie’s** overalls. I really didn’t need a coolie as I was (I’m boasting here) quite capable of carrying my own luggage. But Mr. strong man didn’t think so and after a flurry of guttural verses, he grabbed my bag from me while I very weakly kept saying "no no" like a sissy girl in a room full of chimpanzees.

As I wrestled with the coolie (who insisted on carrying my luggage even after my telling him that his services were not required), the catch phrase floated into my head again and I immediately changed my mind and gave in. Who knows, he might have removed a sickle from under his lungi*** and slashed my neck right??? Well, that just describes the frame of mind that I was in...in one word, JUMPY.



Then at the entrance, I was again bullied by a short, Tamil speaking person (might have been Greek for all I know), evidently a taxi driver who insisted that he would drop me off to my destination (somewhere in Kottarpuram) for 350 rupees only...for academic interest again, I did realize the language to be Greek because his taxi driver counterparts and auto-rickshaw drivers in Bangalore, the city from where I hail from, speak German when it comes to fares. So like a well informed foreigner, I shook my head sternly and said a firm "NO"..."200...take it or leave it". For those who wish to know how the conversation went, here goes...



Taxi Driver: " Yenga pogunum saaar???" ****

(I took it as "How are you sir?")

Me : Im fine Thank you...

Taxi Driver(the creep obviously knew English): "ille saaar...where...go..you?" #

Me(like one true Angrez ka aulad #*): "Kottarpuram…Infosys Guest House" NOTE: FIRST BLUNDER

Taxi Driver(with gleaming eyes) : "waa saar, naa kootitu poren" #**

(by the way he gestured, I assumed that he was a Taxi driver...so I stopped the coolie(the same above mentioned gentleman who was ALL muscle from the neck upward)

Me : " Ye-wo-lo"..(these were one of the very few words I had been taught...my first 3 syllables in Tamil)

Taxi Driver(obviously very confused...slightly alarmed) : "........"

Me(again...raising my voice a bit): "YE-WO-LO…HOW MUCH???"

Taxi Driver(very understanding person): "munnithi imbadhu saar"#*** He said, raising 3 very grimy fingers with the filthiest nails I had seen in my life. That had just sounded like "alpha beta gaama saar" to me...as I said, GREEK

Taxi Driver (again): "Thrii hendreda feefty" (yingleesa to English translation: Three Hundred and fifty)

Me(after taking a start and then regaining composure and balance): "NO"...."200..take it or leave it"...(raising 2 fingers) NOTE: SECOND BLUNDER... in programming languageà FATAL ERROR



The speed at which he accepted the offer was alarming and the gleam on his face was a sight worth paying for. I at once realized that I had created the cardinal blunder of bargaining with a thief. In that brief period of his momentary happiness, I spotted that he had only 4 of his front teeth, all yellow and paan#**** stained. So I straight away inferred that the rest were lost in battle and quickly got into his taxi as he had agreed to my bargain. The catch phrase was still playing along in my head like a broken tape recorder. "Swords not words... Swords not words... Swords not words". It is then when I realized that the coolie was still standing out with my luggage. So I got off and fired another series of "Ye-wo-lo"’s. The coolie seemed to have caught on pretty soon as he very audaciously asked for an exorbitant sum of Rs 150/-



Me : "WHAAAAAAT????" (Forgetting that he "didn’t understand" English)

Coolie: "yenna pannarthu saar? yen kudumbathiley anju peru yenna nambi irukkanga...vazhkai rombo kashtam aidthu...market la arisi oda velai oru kg ku yezhu ruba jasthi aidthu!" ##

As he said this, he had a pathetic look on his face. I have no idea what he blabbered but I was definitely moved. So I became very stern again(yeah right!!!) and told him...

Me: " NO...100...take it or leave it"...(raising one finger)

A similar happy gleam was quickly masked by a hangdog expression and he went on to tell me(as was later translated to me by our wily driver friend) that such big people like us who could afford to go on cars, couldn’t even pay properly for manual labour and what a big shame that was.

So after paying extortion money to the coolie, who as I distinctly remember, did a little gig around the corner, I entered the taxi again. Our driver friend unfortunately, had just got into the mood for a "dumm"##* as he irritably asked me to give him 5 more minutes. Having no idea what I dumm was, I looked on. He lifted the bottom of his lungi from behind him(much to my alarm) , did some tricky looking manouver between his legs and finally tucked it between his big belly and the rest of the lungi at his waist. Then he squatted on the side walk, removed his beedi##** and lit it. Holding it between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, he rested his other hand on his bent knee and took a long drag(with his eyes closed and looking up) The whole series of motions had a striking resemblance to what I had seen somewhere earlier .I wasn’t able to place it. Later on in my short stay at Chennai, I realized that all self respecting auto-drivers/taxi drivers/bus drivers/bus conductors(on the whole, the common man) smoked their tobacco in exactly the same way. It was only a few months later when I saw Rajni Kaanth( a popular Tamil Super Star) doing the exact same thing in some Tamil flick on TV did I realized that they were aping him.

After 5 minutes, he flicked the beedi butt off like a marble(again, JUST like Soofar Staar Rajni) and took the wheel. While he was smoking, I’m sure that he must have been wondering what he would get himself for Christmas with the stash he had just made. He started the car and then opened his mouth which closed as the engine died out some 20 minutes later at the doorstep of my destination. In that short ride to the Guest House, I got a crash course on Tamil culture and about the people and about how bad some of them were(pretty ironic coming from him, that too in English, but I took it all with very casual "Hmmm"'s )



Madras, my dear friends...oops, Chennai(pardon me) was alien to me. More aptly, I was an alien in Chennai. In fact, in one of those friendly bantering sessions, my friends had pulled my leg saying that I was going to the dark side of the Moon.(My apologies Gilmour and group) But as I stayed there, I realized that it was no different from a Bangalore or a Bombay. It was just a big city with many people who go about doing their own chores and worry about their own lives. They were people (just like you and me) who enjoyed their movies(as in the example I portrayed) and liked to eat and drink good things, who laughed at jokes, cried when they were hurt, and finally, who played cricket like all other Indians. It had the most amazing beach I had seen in my life(I’ve seen a whole lot of beaches, trust me) and the best roads in the country. Neither am I paying tribute to the place nor have I been paid to write this. I would just like to say that I learnt a lot more than I thought I had and very grudgingly liked the place more than I thought that I ought to have.

And as the time flew by, the catch phrase became dimmer and dimmer in my mind and I started making a whole lot of friends. As I left Chennai Central 8 months later(around 2 weeks ago), I wiped back a tear but at the same time laughed at my first experience here(mind you, this time I paid only 50 bucks to the coolie and 50 bucks as auto fare…my mother still insists that I got conned :))

Getting back to the catch phrase, I also realized that it was not wholly true. As I mentioned earlier, I made a lot of friends most ironically ones who firmly believed that the PEN was mightier than the sword(infact, one of the chaps I met had written a novel which had cleared the first round in contention for the prestigious booker prize....another was a reporter at a local paper).....



Key

* He who shall not be named….refer to books written on JK Rawlings’ brainchild

** Coolie = Porter

*** Long piece of cloth wrapped around the waist running till the ankles and is the standard garb for many in South India

**** "Where do you want to go sir?"

# "No Sir…where do you want to go"(yingleesa to english translation ofcourse)

#* Son of a Britisher(literal)...in other words, a foreigner

#** "Come Sir, I will take you"

#*** "Three Hundred and fifty Rupees"

#**** Betel leaf

## " What to do sir, I have a family of 5 who depend on me…life is tough.. The price of rice has risen 7 rupees per KG in the market"

##* Cigarette(colloquially)

##** A roll of tobacco in a special type of dried leaf. Very popular among the lower classes in South India