Chennaivaasi book pdf

The difficulty, of course, being that perverse. Fate invariably ties up your individual luck with the last kind.

The road I use most often, something like twice every day, is a series of potholes, dug up for some mysterious maintenance or augmentation, that get filled up like a chain of interrelated and mutually feeding reservoirs at the first and smallest semblance of rain.

Walking on these roads of the lesser kind is as good for one's calves, knees and thigh-muscles as a multi-gym. To avoid the pits on that road, you have to be a tip-toeing Anna Pavlova. To save your skin from the wasp-like motor-cyclists who squeeze their way into that narrowest of narrow roads, you have to be a Pele. Compulsive pedestrians like I co-exist with the rubbish that our use-and-throw times generate — thermocol packing from TV sets, a range of plastic carry bags, small and large, white, black, blue, often after many re-cyclings, containing kitchen refuse, food leftovers, medical waste, sanitary pads, used condoms, plastic gulp-size coffee cups, aluminium foil packets, gutka saches, cosmetic packing, chewed and half-chewed by stray dogs and cattle, or scattered by the remarkable ragpickers looking for 'better' stuff.

Like it or not, this is our terra firma. We cannot blame the conservancy department of our Corporation for this. We are the authors of our rubbish, we Chennaivaasi-s. We Chennaivaasi-s, who love listening to the Suprabhatam by early light and watch MasterChef late at night, we foul what we own and scowl at those who clean the stuff for not doing so better, faster, so that we can feel and breathe easy.

We must face the hard fact that the lives we lead and the homes we live in, with their aromas of rare foods and the scents of prayer, the extraordinary books we have inherited and the music we have been blessed with, the luxury of gossip we indulge in and the gift of higher speculation we think we are adepts in, and the journeys we make, mostly in airconditioned cars, gliding over and past what we do not want to touch, are little bubbles, tiny eruptions, in a sludge of squelching squalid squalor which we have created.

Believe it or not, with great subtlety and finess, unlike me, Tirumurti leads us into and out of those scenes. Add to this the fact that like in most Indian cities water in Chennai is in short supply, electricity erratic and traffic a veritable Godavari in spate. You could well be asked, "Would you still want to live here?

And that would not be only because we cannot disown blood relations, whatever be their looks. Nor because daughters-in-law keep coming to flatten ears and shorten noses. Chennaivaasi-s are about brains all right. But their brains feel and their hearts think. That is 'why'. The more so in Chennai because Chennai defines for most of its residents a certain given role, a script, a status.

There has to be that core, that still centre, for everything else to grow around it, contrastive, contrarian, controversial. In Tiruvanmiyur, the suburb of Chennai where I live, street-calls virtually set the day. Next to my copy of The Hindu , they are the core of my start-of-day. Ara-k-keerai, mola-k-keerai, paala-k-keerai, mana-k-keerai, vaazhakkaa, vaazha-p-poo, vaazha-ththandoy. Are you clear? Molecular, Polycular, many-a-clear, Are you clear, Very-c-clear, very pooh, pooh-pooh, Clearay-c-clear, hey hoy!

In marked contrast is a demure little man, who comes not above but with a bicycle, peddling a single stock-in-trade. This is the finely ground rice-flour with which hearths are decorated. This wizened gentleman walks along with his bicycle on the backseat of which sits a sack with its finely-powdered ware and an iron measuring-cup, saying but not shouting.

Phonologically this call bespeaks brevity, appropriate to a single-product announce-ment. Musicologically, its swings between two nishaad -s, corresponding to a very sober judge saying 'Order, Order! The gulf between the big and the wealthy on the one hand and, on the other hand, their opposite numbers are no less in Chennaivaasi-s than elsewhere. And yet there is a certain ease of relationship, a resilience between them. I come across this mix on the Tiruvanmiyur beach-front a refreshing coming together where I go for a walk almost every day.

It is not my intention to eavesdrop but I cannot help conversations wafting my way during my daily walk by the Tiruvanmiyur beach-front. The other day a group of women wearing keds came up with one of them saying — veettile irrukka mudiyale, maatu-ponnu tollai thaanga mudiyale Almost immediately after them came another group of women, all barefoot, with one of them telling the others — verey enna velai namakku: perukkuruthu, tudaikkarathu, toikkarathu, araikkurathu, samaikkurathu She did not add another chore they do with elan — kolam podurathu.

In how many cities anywhere in the world are house-fronts washed and swept and decorated with the most incredibly simple and complex patterns as in our city? A short and narrow street by the name, Tiruvalluvar Street in Tiruvanmiyur had, by a straight count, 91 motor cycles parked in front of its little street houses; it also had almost as many kolams drawn in front of each vaasal , the surest symbol of a mature culture in graceful repose.

Chennai vaasam is a fascination. If the noise of traffic and of raucous music blaring from speeding vehicles assails the ear-drums, where in the world, not excluding Vienna, can you have the chance to hear not just in the great halls of music but at street-temples Vijay Sive render an Ahiri with the delicacy of a twilight before moonrise or T. Krishna offer the emotionally wrenching Brindavana Saranga with the tremulous passion of a divine supplication or a tanam delivered by Sanjay Subramaniam with the aortic pulsation of the city's most robust heart?

And where, after they have done, can you hear the listeners melt away discussing the recitals' finer points, their 'hits' and 'near-misses', their flourishes, their glides, the dizzy peaks of their scale, their deep plumbs? The dissection is surgical. After all, we are the nation's musical and medical capital. We are also more split up as a people than other contemporary city-dwellers, one thing at morn, another at eve, one thing at home, another outside, neither traditional nor modern, hugging continuity, begging change.

Unable to shake off astrology, but glued to cutting-edge cyber-technology, chained to Rahu and linked to Google, Wikipedia and Microsoft, addicted to Ariyakudi and M. Ramanathan but open to a whirl with A. Rahman, are we hypocritical? Are we self-deceiving? Are we deluded? We are adapters — reluctant but highly successful adapters. While the young have greater opportunities in Chennai, and a 'Chennai Superkings' cricket team with a great hoop-la around it has now been formed, conservatism his never stopped Chennaivaasis from being liberal.

Chennaivaasis show more equanimity in dealing with their daily lives; ostentation is much higher in other metros. In the final analysis, it is people who make a city what it is. You could be living in highly developed cities like Geneva and Manhattan and not know who your neighbours are, but live in the Palestinian territory of Gaza and you will enjoy the warmth of the people around you, he says of a place he recalls with affection.

And talking of the Chennai he flies in and out of nowadays, he mentions a locality in Nungambakkam named Tirumurti Nagar after his grandfather, the famous Dr. He himself lived for 20 years near Kasturi Ranga Road, off Dr. Since then it has been only occasional visits. The city is one where cows hold sway on the arterial Anna Salai Mount Road and looming cinema cutouts tell their own story.

Moore Market has been destroyed by a fire, only two English dailies are published in the city, the grandeur of the social dos are measured by the names of the kalyana mandapams they are held in. Going back in history, even Robert Clive is visualised looking northwards at what must have been Madras Chennai three centuries earlier.

Making a fine art of having fresh filter coffee in tumblers, consultations with astrologers, offering prayers at the Kapaleeswarar temple and the Anjaneya temple on Royapettah High Road, following superstitions and raising a toast to the Chennai beach are recurring incidents in both books.

There are occasions in the books where an eye is kept out for both sets of Hindu 'Bad Time' Rahukalam and Yamagandam. Another common thread running through Clive Avenue and Chennaivaasi is that the protagonists of both stories return from the US. If it is 'Clive Avenue', the road where it all happens, it is Sundari , the ancestral house in the case of Chennaivaasi.

In Clive Avenue , the hero Rajan agrees to look for a bride from within his TamBrahm community whereas, in Chennaivaasi , the hero Ravi comes back with his Jewish American girlfriend Deborah, determined to marry her. The families in both books are close-knit, and the extended circle of uncles, aunts, neighbours, friends, domestic help and members of the community make their voices heard in direct proportion to their importance in the stories.

Tirumurti's women are strong characters. First, it is 'Paati' in Clive Avenue. An educated woman commanding a sense of respect and affection from the family and friends, at one point she shocks her own son and daughter-in-law with her liberal point of view. Then there's a TamBrahm girl-seeing ceremony where Rajan meets Gayathri who turns out to be the artist type.

When the two go out to the Park Sheraton for their first outing, she surprises the US-educated Rajan when she orders chicken tikka and has a smoke. Later, she shows a proclivity for drinking and dancing with her male friends at the disco. In Chennaivaasi , Deborah is rooted in her strong Jewish upbringing but goes the extra mile to learn the ways of the traditions of the TamBrahm community. Twice she kneels down to do the Tamil traditional namaskaram in front of her parents-in-law.

Then there is Kamala athai , who welcomes Ravi and Deborah into her house, and does her best to make Deborah feel at home in a TamBrahm family. Deborah's maidservant Chinamma, a refugee from Burma, is another strong-willed woman, who takes the initiative to help her mistress when she is in trouble and, eventually, succeeds.

While Madras Chennai is the constant factor in both books, there are bits of the US and Paris in Clive Avenue that figure in the exchange between Rajan and his childhood friend and neighbour Dominique. The author also gives his take on life in Delhi as compared to Chennai. The canvas of Chennaivaasi is much larger. Deborah's mother describes her visit to Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Being a voracious reader since his boyhood days, reading authors like Narayan and Ernest Hemingway has contributed to his craft. He counts among the many books that have been an education Arundhati Roy's debut novel God of Small Things and Rohinton Mistry's novels and anthology of short stories based in Mumbai.

The Tamil voice, he says, has not been adequately heard. In helping to make that voice heard, Tirumurti permeates both books with a strong flavour of the city.