So what if I thought that Chennai was a bad place. I mean it is all you guys fault for telling me this... Yeah Ms. AR I ain't talking about you. You are going to have to forgive me for that ok? Ok ok that is not fair... You can't hold me to a Nalli sari.
So like I was saying... Chennai is good. Well it actually helped that you lowered my expectations so much, so when I actually came to tambi-land it was actually good. Rather is actually good. I mean the language barrier is really bad. I managed to learn to be able to speak a respectable amount of Hindi, only to come here and find out that our dark-skinned, coconut loving brethren consider Tamil to be out national language. I mean they would like it so. Something to do with the Dravidian race. I won't get into those specifics now. But that is the scene. I shudder to think that this country would miss this brilliant engineering mind (Of course I am talking about me! A shameless example of self glorification and promotion ;-) ) as I would not have passed out of school. I remember my language teacher telling my mother (in a very maharashtrian accent), "You see Mrs. G., your son is knaat making anyee ephort. With a leetle more ephort he can do whonders. See his marks in the other phaphers. (Yawn!) Maybe you can tape the lessons… now-a-days all of us that tape-player (What is she saying). Baba re… my children-s play that at a so very high bholume. (She hasn't studied any 'eengleesh'but is trying to shove this down my throat.) They are listenings to this EPH-YUM the whole day. I tell you, I go mad bhen my husbands (how many does she have!!) is not at home. (Get back to the point!) You tape the lessons and you tell him to play it in his two-in-one (yeah right and subject my whole family to 'nidradevichi's aaradhana' like they don't get enough of the stuff from her.) Or if he has the whalkmen, he can leesten to it in that (What did I ever do to her!! Considering leaving home and leaving for foreign soil here. I can imagine myself 'Huckleberry Finn'-style with my belongings in a bedsheet tied to the end of a stick walking away from a burning pyre of my language books. Yeah add 'Bad Boys' to the soundtrack)"
Coming back… (I know I digress a bit ), as degrading as this may sound to the tamilian dudes and dudettes, to me this sounds like my tongue is on a combination of Speed and Ecstasy while my lips are paralyzed and my esophagus is tied down by weights. Or the classic tin paint can with stones and you guide the conversation with a vigorous stirring of these pebbles with a wooden stick. I am trying though, (No of course not... I ain’t stirring anything in a can in front of these "Tamil tigers" - What if some bad word comes out of the can? ) but that is about all… I know that 1=ohne, 2=runde (or something…) and so on… (Well actually that is pretty much all).
I get into a bus, determined to travel cheaply. I tell the conductor 'Abhi-ra-ma-pu-ram' (of course I was reading it out of a paper. You think I would have not taken Biology just for the sake of the long words and remembered that one. No way Jose!) So he says to me “Mudal stop illai adata stop?" And I go like "Huh?" "Abhiramapuram", I say more confidently. I point to myself and repeat very slowly trying out in my best tamilian accent (I figure that adding a few uh and ahs in the word may just do the trick) So it actually comes out as "Abhi-uh-rama-ah-puram-uh" He has this exasperated look on his face and then he says " Adhu Teriyun Paityam. yende stop sollu?". I bet he is swearing at me now. So I look at him and say "ME-ABHIRAMAPURAM-GO" And at the last word I make this plane-taking-off like motion with my right hand. (I suddenly am thinking to myself that this dude isn't Chinese or eastern. Ah screw it!) I don't care" To which he replies, " Valladariya... addi konnupduen.... " People around are smiling. He bares his teeth in a 'funny' way but it looks like he is gonna take a bite out my neck. Guess he is pretty damn sure that I don’t know Tamil. I back off and just give him some money "Take it my good man but don't bite – shoot I mean…" my head is screaming. He gives me a scrap of yellow paper with noodles all over it (Yeah the writing looks like that) and the number 4.50 on it. Yeehaaw!!! I am on my way. Oh-oh! New problems… When do I get off? So I look at the shop boards which, through small mercies that I am very grateful for, have the addresses written in English. There goes Arumbakkam (that took me about half a kilometer to read, yeah roughly about 25 shops to read) I told you I was smart.
So I am standing inside the bus. The bus is divided down the middle into men's and women's zones, the latter's zone being on the left of the bus. Now the seats on that side are empty but no one is sitting down. Well as any self respecting visitor to Rome, I do as they do and not sit there. But this is defying logic. Anyways I somehow find the place and have arrived at my destination, sweating at the thought of going back by bus. Well later may room-mate tells me that had I sat down there, in all probability I would have been beaten up. So much for cosmopolitanism… here in Chennai.
Watch this space for my travails with the Rickshawwalas!
