The Homecoming

I returned for a long overdue holiday to the city I still inadvertently call home, although it’s been 15 years since I spent more than 2 days at a time there. This time I was on a holiday with no agenda and was all set to go on a trip down memory lane. I was curious to find out if my favourite haunts from the past had managed to hold their own in a decade that had put India on the global map for all the right reasons.

The first thing I notice about Chennai is the number of flyovers that have sprung up all over the city, each having brought along with it a slew of new vehicles and fresh traffic jams - yet another city has fallen prey to the perils of progress and development, I presume.

The next thing I notice is the familiar sight of the larger than life cut outs of movie stars and politicians all over the city. It is a sight so uniquely Chennai, and one that never fails to bring a smile to my face, just as it never fails to baffle a first time visitor. It is a comforting reminder that over the years, Madras may have become Chennai, but some things would just never change. Thalaivar, Amma, Superstar, Kalaignar, Thalapathy and numerous other ordinary mortals with extraordinary titles would jostle and find their place amidst the flyovers and sea of vehicles.

I hail an auto rickshaw to take me around my old haunts, but not before I am forced into a mutually abusive altercation in fluid Tamil (enough to make a truck driver swoon). The autos in this city don’t carry meters any more and the fare is based completely on the auto driver’s audacity and/or the passenger’s desperation level.

My three wheeled transportation for the day takes me past my favourite video cassette renting parlour but I notice with a tinge of sadness that the place is now selling mobile phones and accessories. Further down the road, my friendly neighbourhood grocery store of 25 years has been replaced with a steel and glass structure, bearing the familiar red and yellow signage of a national supermarket chain. This chain alone is responsible for wiping out half the mom and pop stores from the map of urban India. Everything about this place is templated – the layout, the display, the uniformed staff with their mechanical greeting and impersonal plastic smile.

I recall with nostalgia my friendly grocer, who, in the good old days knew not only me, my brother and my dog by first name, but also what brand of soap we bought, how many kgs of rice we consumed or even which teen age boy fancied me. I saw him then as an overtly curious painful intrusion on my privacy, but realise now that what we were getting back then was personalised service at its best and a dose of free gossip for those interested.

I passed the post-office, a huge landmark then, but now a desolate structure, visited only by retired people collecting their pension. It was just another run-down green building next to the swanky new mall, the newest attraction in the neighbourhood. As I moved on, I couldn't help but wonder how the postal department managed to stay afloat and pay salaries in these times.

I notice there are more internet browsing centres in Chennai than commuters on a peak hour Mumbai local. Pizza joints and swanky coffee shops had sprouted like mushrooms on a rainy day all over the city. Thankfully, the traditional udipi hotels and tiffin bhavans were doing sell-out business too. The humble Tamilian has decided to eat and spend with a never seen before vengeance. In fact, he was no longer willing to even make his own idli batter at home, a chore that used to consume 6/7th of a tamil housewife’s life in those days. Today the batter is out-sourced from the convenience store across the road and all the spare time is spent watching back-to-back soaps on any of the 20 different Tamil channels, or better still in the gleaming malls that lures families in with the promise of fun, food, films and fashion for one and all.

As I soak in the sights, sounds and smells of an i-age chennai, I am interrupted by a text message from my newly-tech-enabled mother, wanting to know if I would be home for dinner, because dad was going to order Pizzas, coke and brownies to celebrate our little family reunion. Wow! Whatever happened to the good ol days, when celebration meant that the usual meal of sambar and curd rice was finished off with home made payasam. After dinner, my father reminds me that we are scheduled to chat with my NRI brother on Skype, the internet-phone that enables us to make long distance calls for a lark. I must confess, never having using anything but graham bell’s invention for communication, I felt like someone from The Flintstones in front of my tech-talking jargon spewing parents.

I came to Madras wanting to catch up from where I had left off, but the Madras of my childhood is history. It exists no more. The genie has been let out of the proverbial bottle and has taken the entire city including my parental home into its vicious grip!

I had a lot of preparation to do before my next trip home!