It was the city that not just gave wings to my dreams but also taught me how to fly. It was the first city I resided in, away from the sleepiness of the hamlet I still call ‘home’. Its been two months since my departure and enough time has elapsed, to reflect on it.
One must give it to Chennai for her courage to hold on to her identity. She was the dischordant note that refused to join the choir, when her Dravidian cousins recited unfamiliar Hindi tunes. She hosted the anti-Hindi agitations and puked the Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan pill shoved down her throat. To those who cited the rule of higher numbers her son MGR replied, “if numerical majority is your logic (to fix Hindi as the national language), then not the pea-cock but the crow should be our national bird.”
Since Aryan Sanskrit was the language of the Gods, and Hindi its derivative, she turned her back on the Gods too, “Raman kadavool alle alla (Rama is not God),” she cried.
When bollywood mocked the “Madrasi” she stirred the Tamil pride, “Tamizhanennu solleda, thalai nivarnnu nilleda ( say you are a tamilian, hold your head upright).”
She has a fetish for the camera, chennaiites are never too busy to pose for a photograph and harbour the hope that they will one day make it to the front page.
Her loyalty is notorious. She cannot contain her childish anger when Rajnikant dies even if its just on the screen, much like the emotional out-pour when news of MGR’s death broke out. She has built colossal monuments in memory of Annadurai that even the tsunami could not bring down.
She is the tolerant one in a nation of animosity; the muezzins call at day break, the Basillica at Santhome, her thousand temples and as many deities strewn across her length and breath, from street corners to railway platforms, speak much of her welcoming arms. Muslim households share borders with Hindu shrines as I have seen at Canal road, Indiranagar, where I was put up.
Once a child who indulged in lavishes, her mass agricultural produce funded her temples, the devadasi culture and her dances. Modernity has stripped her of feudal excesses, yet Tamils never hesitate to ask, “Saptengala“.
She has fostered the Kannadigan Periyar and the Malayalee MGR as her own children. Her generosity is as capacious as the sea by her side. This extends to her movie industry, India’s second largest, as Chennai has welcomed a host of artists and directors who migrated from neighbouring Kerala. Among them, Yesudas whose live concert I had the honour to witness.
She is the city of academics; Loyola, MCC, MSSRF, Roja Muthiah, MIDS and Presidency satisfy many a knowledge-thirsty as does the IIT that preceded her IT parks and manufacturing hubs.
Though she has giant intellectuals to her credit- in art, literature, mathematics and science- the Tamil fetish is for fair-skinned cine stars. For Khushboo, her children built temples and accorded divine status. Yet Chennai showed that even the Gods could not alter her moral codes.
More than a city or a metro, she is an over-grown village that retains much of her conservative past. Her women cycle with turmeric-smeared faces and sarees or scooter in purdahs, their piety being defined by their men. Her rural past explains her obsession with chastity.
Her wine shops are abundant and fuel much of the music in dappankuthu. She celeberates even funerals with the synchronised beating of the drum and crackers.
Many worlds rub shoulders here; the Brahminical who spent their nights in awe of margazhi and Carnatic in contrast to the Dalits’ drunken dappankuthu dancing, the rich who while away at Cafe Coffee Days or Spencers against the teeming millions who throng the markets at T Nagar, her migrants who gulp beneath wineshop-shelters and the elite who sip and dance to a different tune at her ‘night’ clubs, Landmark that sells hologramed books in air-conditioned stores at city center and pondi bazaar that pirates even Windows 7.
Unlike Bombay that never sleeps, Chennai’s stamina wears out fast in the scorching heat of day. She does not complain to the south-west monsoon that bypasses her. The sea-breeze at Besant nagar and Marina are balms for her toiling masses.
Her slums have densities that put to shame black-holes. Her rivers, among them Cooum, are their life-lines. Her trains, oblivous to the floods of November, ‘fly’ above her head and halts even before it starts. Her autowalas severely tax the rich.
‘The Hindu’,the grandma of Chennai, watches over her every move. Even the legislations are made under its nose.
Chennai is the city of contrasts; the city of sunshine and sudden showers, the city that mourns and drums, the city of chastity and cine-stars, a city that beacons and makes you want to cry as you bid farewell. The city that leaves the chant of “Vazhga Tamizh (Long live Tamil) ” ringing in your ears long after it is heard no more.
Pramod Mathew Mathew 