The sea has always been a great source of inspiration and fascination for me. Pune being a landlocked city surrounded by the gargantuan Sahyadris, the allure for the sea had always seemed greater. In fact, that was the only saving grace I could see in a city like Chennai.
Even so, I returned from my latest expedition to the Konkan coast without the usual blissful smile on my face and my hands ceased to itch to pen poetry. I wonder why?
1. Was I suffering from poet's block? I never penned poetry so regularly anyway.
2. Was I disgruntled about the trip not being a magnificent success? Perhaps!
3. Was I more caught up with more mundane philistine issues to bother about something as "frivolous" as poetry? Frivolous poetry? Is that an oxymoron?
4. Was I getting sea sick? Quite unlikely.
While I forage for answers of this rather preponderant question you can read the whole account on my travelblog.
Friday, March 17, 2006
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36 comments:
Oye, you're not qualified to do Chennai bashing, you don't know anything about the city in the first place x(
Philistine?...
Isn't that the same as decadent...
mundane philistine issues means..
boring crazy party..
hmm..maybe i am wrong...
Philistine is anything that is non-aesthetic, non-cultured, non-artistic, non-creative etc... to my knowledge anyway. I have no idea how a crazy party can be boring, leave alone mundane and philistine :)
Sp,
What?? I don't know anything abt chennai??? Hello I was born there and visited my grandma's place every summer vacation for 12 years. So that's as good (perhaps as bad) as living there for 2 years. C'mon SP tell me something nice about chennai: the humidity and sweat..oooh isn't that great post-workout look without working out at all??? The kuvam river: splendidly sweet smelling river ain't it? H2S H2S everywhere and not a drop of H2O right? (I hope mom never sees this one :D)
And of course the auto drivers wonder if they have any genetic links with the dacoits of Chambal or veerappan for that matter.
The less I speak about the attitude of locals and their wonderfully sophisticated speech the better.
Ramani,
Sp gave the meaning of philistine that I intended to use. I didn't know of any alternative meanings of the word.
Chennai's changed completely in the past 5 years or so. Most buildings are air-conditioned, so you don't have to deal with the heat and the humidity; the roads leap frequently into flyovers decorated by fountains; autos are getting phased out by call-taxis; the locals consist more of educated youth with "hep" lifestyles as the days pass. People do their groceries at Food World or Green Land rather than the koyambedu market; the youngsters hang out at mega malls and food courts and cineplexes and coffee pubs, rather than street-corner bajji kadais; the beaches are fringed by Italian restaurants and Ice cream parlours, though the sundal-vending boys and fake astrologers are still around, albeit in smaller numbers than before. In another 5 years Chennai will be quite a pleasant place, though its not there *yet*.
Hahaha that's actually making it worse not better according to me. There are these noveau rich mamis wearing halter neck blouses and speaking tamizh with an anglicised accent with you and me but "rickshakaran bhashai" with her domestic help. You are talking of upmarket restaurants?? Well who let them grow? The fat-ass mamis who warmed their couches watching tamizh serials and stopped cooking lunches and dinners. And this is supposed to be a big social problem in chennai!! *kk shakes her head*.. tch tch tch
Airconditioned?? Puhleez..being a mech engg you should be telling me how much more electricity that would consume. And what with the power cuts uhahahh..
I see a selective silence on the water issue. Tell me SP, whatever happened to rain water harvesting and all that jazz?
In Chennai either there is too much water or no water. Either we are drowning or drying :)..
Ufff there is no arguing with you when you're set on something... come to Chennai when I'm there and I'll show you around, then you can tell me how awful it is.
SP can i tag along ? I have never been to chennai :)
Is it possible atall that you havent stayed in chennai enough time in continuity to get to know the place ?
Is it possible that you have stayed too much under the watchfull eyes of family (xtended) to really get to know the place and the people ?
Is it possible that your bias when you were young has been set in so much that you can never know the real chennai ?
Quiet possible, I think.
vasu
Ooooh a lot of chennai supporters here!
Without impaling anyone's sentiments, I'd like to say that each one has a strong attachment towards the place where he/she spends his/her childhood and it goes without saying that no matter how good/bad/ugly that place really is, one tends to gloss over its shortcomings.
My derision for Chennai by no means implies that Pune is the ultimate heaven on earth. It probably used to be when my dad settled here, but given today's scenario, he won't even give it a second thought.
Ramani,
Rightly said!!
SP,
C'mon SP you don't believe you can brainwash me do you?
Vc,
Sure Vc go with SP, I won't go there unless you are taking me there for free. And please lets just go to besant nagar beach. I saw it before the tsunami. I wonder what has happened of it.
Vasu,
Hey there!
Well how long do you really need to stay in a place to know it?
Yes I've seen it over a period of 12 years and most recently in 2004.
Under my family's watchful eye? Yes, and how does that change the weather or the water or the stench for that matter?
Bias? Aaah yes, but with my mom around I should have been pro-chennai not anti-!!
Pune is quite a nice place. But, then there is no place like home i.e. Chennai.
@keerthi -
>>Well how long do you really need to stay in a place to know it?
Yes I've seen it over a period of 12 years and most recently in 2004.
Depends. On many factors. I have known people who go for work reasons to chennai fro 3-6 months and I have seen them change their mind from being "totally hate" to "Its not all that bad" to "I like chennai". believe me it does happen.
The thing is this, we all have our own experience. The stuff we hear from other people who say its bad to our. Some stay in mylapore or a traditional part of the city and some plain not having enough time to settle down to get into the rythm of the city.
I dont think koovam is a unique phenomena for chennai. Maybe you have to travel to some parts of the mula-mutha river to check it out.
Many people are difficult to change and convince once their minds are set. You have to experience chennai in a differen setting and context.
Ofcourse the weather. Look no one can change weather ok. If you go up north it will be cold during winter and if you go to the coast it will be humid and hot..
I think a real traveller would not be complaining about weather. They raise above such trivialities. You may not like the coastal weather but pinning it as a bad thing is nothing but living in your biases.
I have changed many people's perception about chennai by telling them to experience it first hand on their own contexts. Most of them have come back with changed attitudes.
I think and believe its easier to change ones' attitude about place and people if we let go of our biases and are willing and open to experience things in a new way.
This is not coming from chennai being my home town. Yes it is, but its not about that. I have travelled and lived in many places in India to realise that, all of them are unique in their own way and if you stay ong enough continueously you will discover aspects of the place and people you never knew existed. Lets say 6 months atleast ?
Most importantly one needs to stop judging a city with some thing else. Each one is different and unique.
Its an attiudinal change that is required.
vasu
maybe you trashing chennai is about rebellion to your mom. Maybe the chennai you see is represented by your mom..
its possible isnt it ?
Staying on your own is way way way different froms staying with family. They are entirely different expereince. I dont know what kind of people you would be exposed to apart from your family (xtended) and cousins. Maybe if you make a few friends and do common things, your perception would change. Feeling a way about a place is about personal experience. Do you give yourself enough opportunity for that ?
Staying as a tourist is way way different from living in a place esp. chennai.
Ans Hi.. its nice talking to you and its quiet a row you have kicked up here.
Just hope you dont take it too personally.
vasu
Vasu,
I don't take any comments on my blog too personally.
When I believe I have a point to make I do.
Yes I agree to a great extent to what you have said. But it has nothing to do with rebelling against my mom because incidently I am very close to my maternal grandmom who lives there.
Nor was there anyone to prejudice my opinion against it. And I am not easily swayed by people's judgements for instance I had colleagues who cribbed about York but I found it a very quaintly beautiful city.
Its not just for vacation that I had been to Chennai but also for work in 2004. I must admit here that I did like the chennai office more than my Pune office. Even so once out of the cocoon of AC it was unbearable.
But I concur with your argument that it is a psychological thing.
Like I said on my travel blog: I had the choice to whole heartedly embrace it....or throw up my hands and crib.
No matter what you cannot prevent human beings from comparing with what they consider a benchmark and it is what constitutes an opinion about a place/person or experience.
Thanx for your insightful comments.
Dude Vasu, its Kirthi and not Keerthi !!
Oh God, now she’ll skin him alive and feed him to the piranha’s ( Vc shudders). SP quick your invisible sweater … wait, if its invisible how can I see it ?..I’ll leave that matter for later…..But how do we know it’s a sweater and not a T shirt which has the line “I’m invisible “ eh ? how how ?
Any way Vasu, what are your thoughts on Bangalore ( Vc crosses his fingers)
Vc,
Stop hiding under the cloak of anonymity. I've stopped correcting people when they mis-spell or mispronounce my name.
What's in a name?
A Kirthi with ee
Won't change me
...Aaah poetry!
I haven't lost thee!
Gee Kirthi, I swear you sounded like a guy when you said you hold no great love for Pune either... I mean, all guys know that by saying that you're saying, "Hey, don't take it personally when I say yours sucks, because mine sucks as well." That takes the sting out of the criticism because it means there was no bias and no targeted derision.
On the other hand, all girls know that in saying that you haven't backed down an inch from your original stance, so it doesn't really make a difference, in their opinion. If anything, that makes it worse, because you're sounding like a misanthrope!
WHAT?? Whatever that means SP.
Now where did the gender stuff get into this..go back to sleep SP. Misanthrope?? Human hater?? Why? Where did this come from? Ok lets form a complex equation : stick in some triple integrals and imaginary numbers like eleventeen (courtesy hobbes) and solve this. Ok now I need to go to sleep :D
I wanted to scream out " Beach is not the only nice thing about chennai "!!..But on seeing the more than adequate representation out there... decide to be silent !!;) Prob the reason your fingers didn't itch to write was coz you probably exhausted it all in that leeeeeeeeenngthy travelblog of urs ;)
@kirthi - Sorry for the spelling errors and other gramatical errors. You see, I was dyslexic kid. Too dumb and slow and mostly the world just moved in slow motion. Anyways, I do think you can have an opinion about a place. You are free to like it or not. When you say "I dont like chennai", its different. But " In fact, that was the only saving grace I could see in a city like Chennai." means entirely different. I just wanted to find out if you had really lived in chennai in continuity and exposed yourself well enough before coming to such a conclusion. Why ? because there are tons of nobodies living up north who take one look at the railway station in central and say "Chennai sucks, look at central station". Hello all railway stations in India suck dont they ? Anyways thats about it. More than correcting you here and now, I thought maybe the next time you go to chennai you will do this exercise "What is unique and great about chennai ?". Very similar to the summer essays we used to submit in school about what we did during the holidays. Let me give you a start. Next time you go to chennai, spend a day at the JKrishnamurthy foundation in greames road. This is one of my favourite and treasured spots in chennai. Hope it helps you too.
@SJ - I think bangalore is a great city. Not from an IT guy's standpoint. I dont have anything to do with IT anymore. I am talking about the namma bangalore. The kanada bangalore. The halli mane, Ragi mudde and saru, the Karnataka State fisheries corporation canteen in cubbon park, the hustle and bustle of balepet, kumbarapet, chickpet. Its a photographer's delight. Offlate there has been resurgance of this aspect of bangalore and its extremely needed to balance the koramangala/electronic city crowd with the other lesser mortals. Moreover I am not too observant of the petty problems of the city like traffic, roads or water etc. Thats not how I judge a city. Those are given characteristics of a city. I look at how positive people are and am genuinely interested to observe their culture, food, values etc. When in pune, I gorge on the misal, usal, at padhuka chowk and the muska bun at lucky's. When in TN I swear by kothu parota of the kayalankadai. When in calcutta I live on hilsa... get the drift... ? A traveller doesent look at what is not there in a place but stays long enough to find whats unique and the spirit of the place. ITs a mindset difference.
btw, just a small query to kirthi. Have you ever been to the alwar kadai on luz ? one big dump of books and a scavenger's paradise ? I hear its no longer there. But have you even seen it ? I have been to this guy's house and found some really really rare treasures. Just out of curiosity.
@deepti - there is as people say a big differene between a tourist and a traveller. Not that there is anything wrong being a tourist. But its not the same thing as a traveller. The difference is going to baga/calangute and saying I have been to goa and actually scouring the thousands of tourist spots to find that one gem of a perfect beach.
vasu
eh ??
Kirthi,
Ok, I guess misanthrope was not the right word. Cynic is probably closer to what I was trying to say. But tell you what, show that comment to some guys and they'll explain it to you :D
Vasu,
Er... I take it that bangalore stuff was in reply to Vc's request. That was Vc, and I am SP. I don't know who is SJ here...
As for the "petty things", I guess a person's liking for a city is the way one feels after taking into account the million things one is immersed in during the time spent there. Different things affect different people differently; if weather bothers Kirthi a lot, she has the right to hate the city based on that. Accordingly, I was trying to tell Kirthi that even with respect to the things she mentioned, Chennai is hardly a bad place.
sorry... got confused with all those two letter acronymns going around.. :)
VC - Are you really a Venture capitalist ? maybe I will require your help...:D
vasu
Deepti,
Oh and part two is still pending!!
Thanx for dropping by.
Vasu,
Look at it from a more pragmatic perspective. It seems all idealistic when we talk about "embracing the culture of a place" and looking for good things. Its a whole different mindset when you are visiting a place as a tourist and staying there for a good period of time.
As a tourist you are more than willing to overlook some shortcomings in keeping with the "larger" aim of having a good time.
However, when you want to "live" somewhere you cannot keep pretending that everything is hunky dory all the time. You are bound to look at the basics like infrastructure and infrastructure definitely is not a subjective opinion. It is like a boolean operator: either you have it or you don't.
Vc,
Since when did you become a venture capitalist? Aren't you planning to call your son VC++?
Thank you Sp for explaining who Kk SP Vc and SJ were.. i was confused for a couple of hour's.. I thought I was SJ. eewwww.. and Vasu,I am no venture capitalist ( see i can't even spell properly) and kirthi don't you dare call my son vc++ ...pattar pattar..
C'mon Vc It's perfect to the t.
SJ == sarfira joker..excellent that fits as well!!
Where's the 't' in Sarfira Joker?
[prashanth] I was referring to Kirthi's word usage! Drawing an analogy!
Well I think, yo have given me sufficient impetus to blog about something whcich has been lying dormant inside of me...
What is a bad place to live ? Every city has its own rythms and way of running. Chennai starts early and sleeps by 9.00 you dint have sufficient night life and wine shops used to be too seedy for someone to go have a gulp, some banana and oorgai.. This was how it was for ages. Now with advent of IT, BPO and the new age, tons of glitzy bars have sprung up. Bangalore has been different right from the start about night life. Pecos, guzzlers et al.
I think comparing the two is not exactly the right thing. Chennai and tamil culture is quiet different from a bengali culture. As different from chalk and cheese. Tamil culture is about decisive action. Voiceferous and people's movements. Bengali culture is more intellectual, suave and introspective. I think they are various facets about the diversity in our country.
If you have a preset list of likes dislikes too ossified to change, then the zone of living is limited. The demerits spring up faster than the merits and many times its clouded.
I am not saying chennai is a great city and you need to change your mind. But I am just saying, maybe you can just leave aside a couple of irritants and look at whats different.
Believe me, I have stayed long enough in lot of places inside and outside of India to realise that life is great if I can blend into the city... feel its pulse..
Just my 2 cents. Maybe you can quietly try it and see if the image of chennai actually can change in your mind. If it does change, blog about it. I promise I wont gloat and say "I told you so ?".
For starters, why dont you visit Jiddu's home in Greams road next time you visit chennai.. Take a right on chamiers road onto greams road. Go past Saibaba temple, go over the buckingham canal bridge and under the MRTS line, go straight ahead and you will find it onto your left.
It is definitely a serene palce.. Do I hear an yes ??
:)
vasu
Sp,
There is a "t" in perfect :D
Ramani,
Eh? what was that? I've lost you there :(
Vasu,
Err I think you got that tamil-bengali comparison a little wrong way around..I think the bongs are more vociferous what with their "comrade"ship and Marxist ideas and the tams are a little quieter in general...but I am just nitpicking.
Again you've missed the moot point of thinking pragmatically about settling in a particular city for a good reason. Glitzy bars and a great night life don't mean infrastructure they are just add-ons to make the city look hip n happening and largely pretentious and unlike most other members of my ilk, I do not believe it adds any real value to one's lifestyle except for making prices (both real estate and other commodities) in the city go shooting through the roof and in general give the impression that the city is inhabited by some inebriated fools.
All the hip n happening cities now look like clones of each other.
But I digress..
Dealing with places is like dealing with people: we get a first impression, we probably reserve our judgement for a while and as time progresses we get a real feel of what the person/place is and that's when we make a judgement. We just don't go around embracing every other person we meet (at least I don't). Just as people, some places automatically send you vibes that make you feel good about residing there and some places simply don't.
So what were we talking about?? Sp do you have any idea what kk and Vasu( the terrible, wow even he has a 't') are talking about. Hey Ramani your grandpa post was too good..
http://bornalibran.blogspot.com/ check this blog out ..
:)
have u ever been to nanded n visited the gurudwara thr??
its tooooooooo sahi...
worth a repay of time if u spend some to go to that place.
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