Chennai Tripaa ?

I had absolutely no pursuit of what we call as "work" after my appraisal getting screwed up irrationally this year, leave alone the effort of going on an outhouse project away from family and friends. But the meek pleasure of not facing the unwanted stress along with unwanted faces in the office helped me perk up to agree for a month's project at Chennai. My friends from Chennai had come at the airport to receive me.
While we were getting out of the airport, the handle of my trolley could not control it's excitement and came off straight into my friend's hand. It was a good beginning. We had a superb dinner that night. That's when I discovered the first good non-veg restaurant in Chennai. I had my colleague from Bangalore staying in the same guest house. We started our work from the next day at office, which involved, his second laptop (since the beginning of the project) breathing last. With no choice left, he had to use my laptop for his work. There was nothing apart from the 12 hours of work in the weekdays. Although Kumar (my colleague) was initially very reserved and serious kind of person (he portrayed himself likewise :) ) , we got along well very quickly since no person can be silent for long once he or she is with me ;)

The care taker (Raju) of the guest house was a brainy person. What a consistent cook he was! Whatever he cooked tasted the same everyday. Some dal, rice boiled and kept aside for four hours, sour curd, rotis like what the prisoners must be having in lock-ups and some vegetable dish. We had declared an award for the person who points out the difference between the current day's and the other day's side dish apart from it's appearance ! We got confident enough about his excellent cooking skills and started discovering few good hotels around to have food over there or order it.
The haste in the morning though left us with very little choice than to have Raju's breakfast everyday. This ended up in having some salt less thing stuffed with only potatoes named as aloo parathas or sour uttappams garnished with nothing except carrot slices or cold maggi noodles with large sized beans in it. Raju was a firm believer of the principle that water is a universal solvent. Hence he used to colorize water with tea or coffee powder and present it as tea or coffee solution to us. There were few accompaniments like pickle, sugar, salt which he used to place in a cupboard cum ant house behind the dining table. I used to warn him thousand times about the ants but he paid no heed to it.
Once we were having something in the name of aloo parathas when everyone asked Raju to get the pickle. This fellow placed the bowl of leftover pickle whose top layer was dried up completely. He needed no scientific reasons to prove that there are no ants in it and it's pure veg. I scolded him for this on which he said, " There can be no ants in it. I place the sugar bowl next to the pickle bowl. Ants must in the sugar bowl." Any comments?
I got acquainted with lots of people during the course of month. One of them was European old Uncle Vic Warden who came to our guest house in the first week. (He did not like being called "uncle" though age is something which you cannot really hide, at least not when you are 66!) Being from construction stream, he had visited almost 46 countries all over and hence had a lot to share out of his experience. You then are left with no choice than to listen to the non-stop stories at London, Vietnam, Africa and on and on. But his zeal for work at this age and enthusiasm at par was always a great inspiration for us.
Whenever the "foolproof" plans of my friends use to materialize, we used to meet for dinner or lunch and had a great time. I had a memorable visit at Tirupathi because of Arun (thanks da :) )
Ranjith and Thulasi also helped and supported me throughout the trip to find places and all.

What I found most funny over there was the language business ( My sincere apologies to all Tamil people reading this blog :) ) We call a regular vegetable potato as "urlakalangal" in Tamil. Check out! your potatoes may be burnt on the stove by the time you finish saying it. Banana is " Valyaya Payam" and while saying the "lya" in the middle, the rule is that your tongue must be bent in 90 degrees angle backwards and touch the upper part of your inner mouth surface. ( I still can't pronounce this word! period!)
The English over there was equally humorous. For people here, maximum times, OK does not come as OK alone, it is OK va. Da, Ma ,Pa, Va are the most often used syllables over there. I always used to tell my colleague when we had food, we shall have soda and after that poda.( we shall leave :) ) The 5 seconds pause at "ca" in "because" used to assure people there that they speak correct English. Tamilinglish (blend of Tamil and English) also had a rule of suffixing "aa" after each last word of a sentence. The Stationa pronounced by auto wala on first day when I asked him "beach station" helped me discover this. I am sure you got the title of this blog by now.
Once I had been to a restaurant with my friends where there was some bollywood theme. The walls were covered with all middle aged film posters. The one in front of us read "Teesri Ankh"
Arun's Hindi got overwhelmed to ask me " Sumedha, teesri ankh means? Third eyeaa? " (remember da :) )
The one month's period was fun filled completely and everything was good in Chennai apart from the overheated atmosphere. Had a good time and returned to enjoy Mumbai rains.

The endaa :)