The Fabled Land Of Chennai

Wow this post has been procrastinator's hell to make my sincere and considerable apologies for getting it done this late but hey better late than never right? Heh.

Well, this was it. This was going to be the place where I would spend the next three years of my life at for better or worse.

I took in my surroundings for a bit.

Perambur station isn't a particularly big station by any means, certainly not big compared to Chennai Central which is the main railway station in Chennai. There were little chits of paper scattered on the ground near me, the place felt like everything had a slightly dirty appearance, not as intense to alert passers-by but enough to attract the attention of people who looked closely.

We passed a digital clock hanging from the roof and I noticed from the corner of my eye that it read 9:20 AM or some similar time like that in big red numbers.

As we took the stairs up and out of the station, it felt like a completely new world opened up before me. That sounds like a very cliché statement to make but I doubt any other phrase would do as much justice to that feeling of stepping into something new.

Once the glare cleared off my anti-glare classes(working perfectly as usual) I was witness to a scene that I would soon become accustomed to, a sight of an inundated space. 

There were people everywhere, people of all kinds, doing all sorts of things. A portly looking man hauled a large trolley bag with him towards the street outside the station, a pair of children talked gaily while their mother tried to navigate this storm of human bodies and luggage.

The people that stood out most to me were the auto-drivers.

Much like sharks circling their prey, they stood outside the station, resting against pillars with keen eyes to sight potential passengers. They were loud, pushy and eager to start their mornings off with some less than fair fares from customers who didn't know any better.

One such auto driver came to us with such suddenness and poise that one might have mistaken him for a ballet dancer, weaving through the crowd to reach his destination.

In rapid Tamil he asked us where we wanted to go, my father had barely opened his mouth to say the destination when he'd already lifted our luggage off to his auto. I was taken aback, this man's confidence would put bull fighters to shame and I stood in awe for a bit before I had to keep my pace with my father who was now already negotiating a fare with the auto-driver.

The auto-driver demanded 250Rs(I'll  save you the trouble of wondering whether that's fair or not, it really isn't. My father kept on pushing for 200Rs which wasn't exactly a fair price for the short distance that we had to travel, but it was a hell of a lot better than 250.

The auto-driver gave a non-committal jerk of his head to my father's repeated attempts and loaded the luggage, started the auto quickly and urged his in, never slowing his speech nor pace.

We exchanged a look of resignation as we climbed into the auto that sped us away into the heart of Chennai. 

I remember the already existing level of noise suddenly take on an even greater intensity as we were now on the road. An army of auto-rickshaws and bikes seemed to be surrounding us on all sides and there was barely any space between each vehicle making it feel more congested than wedding lunches back home. 

On several occasions I was sure that an accident or some great calamity would occur but then at the last moment crisis would be averted and the parties involved would go on their own way as if nothing of particular importance happened. Somehow life moved on, somehow the traffic kept moving as slow as it was.

Among the all the din, I heard the auto-driver ask, where exactly we wanted to get off(of course the time I didn't understand what he said) and I looked towards my father. My father straightened himself up and leaned a bit closer to the auto-driver struggling to be heard over all the horns and the rumble of the auto's engine as he told the auto driver where we wanted to go in broken tamil.

The auto driver apparently wasn't satisfied with the level of detail and he kept on asking for more precise details. My father was now talking in a strange mish-mash of broken tamil and hindi.

Now one thing of particular note I'd like to point out is that the auto-drivers in Chennai also sound like they are on the verge of a mental breakdown, ready to snap and drive their auto off a bridge. Perhaps this is their regular way of speech or perhaps it was an attempt at intimidation in which case it was definitely working on me.

Finally we arrived at our relative's house and I felt relieved but the auto-driver had one more challenge for us. As my father counted out 200 rupees and held it towards the auto-driver he blankly stared at the money and waited. I remembered his dismissal of our negotiation and wondered if this was going to cause trouble. Fortunately my father thought better of it and forked over an extra 50Rs and grumbled about it to me as he signed his name at the guest register and as we made our way to the elevator. 

The interior of the flat lobby seemed like it had been a few weeks since it had been cleaned and a generally unpleasant smell seemed to linger, it didn't really have any characteristic features of its own, it was just there. A lot of mud had been tracked in no doubt by people who had returned after the morning's rains. 

The elevator was unlike any elevator I had seen. It had this iron gate and second that door needed to be pulled open to even enter it in the first place, you have to close this door and gate again to even to start to go up again. If you didn't close both the gate and the second door the elevator would refuse to budge at all. which sounds like a pretty crucial design flaw. If someone forgot to close the door or even closed the door but left it open a crack, the rest of the floors wouldn't be able to even use the elevator- it sounded like an easy way to make everyone in the building your mortal enemies.

After this entire exercise of hauling our luggage in and outside the elevator we finally reached my relative's home. 

We quickly had a breakfast of Masala dosa that I stuffed my face with not realising how hungry I was and washed it down with a glass of tea. We freshened ourselves up and left for the college to sort out my hostel admissions. We called another auto and told him to take us to Loyola College.

We sped through the city...oh wait no I'm mistaken- crawled through the city would be more apt in this situation. You see, in Chennai right around 10 AM in the morning it is peak traffic rush as a legion of two wheelers and autos flood the roads. It really is a marvel that anyone manages to reach anyplace with all this traffic let alone reach their destination on time and yet just as I mentioned before, somehow we eventually reached our destination. 

The college's main entrance seemed modest enough and would be of mild interest to a person who'd pass before it on their way to the city but as we entered I had to do a double take.

There were huge trees stretching out from both sides of the path, their canopies giving shade to those walking under them, a large white building was the first thing that came to one's sight as they enter the college. With arches and long corridors stretching through it, I could see the classrooms darkened now, not yet ready for their first day of classes.

I also saw a huge church also white in colour, built in the gothic style of architecture, it felt so out of place because just moments back I was in the din and sights of a metropolitan city but now it felt like I had been. With tall pointed spires seemingly touching the blue of the sky and what felt like a million tiny little details in and around it, I was yet again by the sheer size of the buildings.

We somehow got lost inside in the campus within a few minutes, such was the sheer size of it, but eventually we managed to find the college hostel and applied for a room in the hostel. As it turned out though, all the rooms in the new hostel blocks had already been booked and occupied and the only rooms available were in the common block which is the original hostel block of the hostel and therefore couldn't provide a lot of amenities, For example they couldn't install fans inside each room and instead required us to bring our own table fans. Living in Chennai with table fans as my only source of temperature control? Clearly Loyola's hostel authorities were stand-up comedians of some sort. 

We were perplexed on what to do, and what out next step forward should be. This would throw a wrench into whatever plans we had meticulously thought of, instead we'd have to make alternative arrangements quick as my first class would start with a few hours.

We somehow managed to find out an apartment nearby that 7 other Malayalis were staying in. It was a far cry from the hostel experience I was expecting but I figured that it was yet another unexpected event in what was turning out to be a very eventful week and decided to go with the flow of things.

We went by auto to take a look at the place and it was pretty good all things considered plus the presence of 7 other Malayalis was a big factor in me liking the place(although I might kind of regret that now and then :D) 

While I do intend on describing my roommates, I think I'll save it for a later post(with their express permission of course). Suffice it to say that they were very welcoming and tried their best to ease me into life here. 

My first few days in Chennai were... rough. 

Firstly. Loyola has this demented orientation period that lasted for five days, "What did this orientation period consist of?" one may ask, they basically praised themselves incessantly pointing out their achievements and reputation and praised for us making "the right choice". All of this self-flattery did nothing to calm my fears and instead created new ones.  If they are so intent on trying to sell themselves to us even after we joined for admission, it stands to reason that they had something that they wanted to deviate our attention from or hide from us.

My father returned back to Kerala the evening that he dropped me off at the apartment and even as I saw him descend down the stairs and out of sight, I felt something getting stuck in my throat. Outwardly I wasn't very emotional or anything but it felt like all of a sudden it was a great struggle to even swallow, swallow what? I still don't know.

After that, every hour I spent here felt more and more difficult, while I WAS with people from my native land they all had vastly different personalities from me(at least that's what I thought then), they had also stayed away from their homes for long periods before too, so this change didn't affect them as much it affected me. 

I knew that it wasn't reasonable to expect  to stay at my home till the end of my days, I knew that someday I'd have to leave my home and seek my fortunes- make a home for myself but it felt so much more difficult now that I was living it as a reality. 

I trudged through those initial five days with great difficulty, self-doubt crept in, Was I making the right decision by coming to Chennai? Was I doing the right thing studying English? I craved something familiar, my home that I had considered mind-numbingly dull till then, my previous school that I didn't care for much either and even entrance coaching felt like it would be better than my situation at that point. Why? Why was I willing to be miserable by putting myself through Medical coaching again? The answer is familiarity. It was something that I had gotten used to and could count on to stay the same for a good two years, so when it suddenly changed to something that was on the other side of the spectrum, I was rattled to say the least.

However the breaking point for me struck on the third day, or was it the second? I was getting some things ready for college when I came across a green shirt that seemed a bit too big for me. When I checked the size tag on it, sure enough it was my father's. I decided to call him and tell him just in case he was searching for it.

When he picked up the phone I told him about the shirt and he told me that it was fine and that I could bring it along with me when I came back home for holidays. Suddenly something happened to me, my voice broke and tears started streaming down my face, I wasn't really aware of it myself for a few moments. I tried my hardest to stop so that my father wouldn't notice and get worried but it didn't stop until I ended the call. I felt ashamed, embarrassed even that here I was, a young adult- no not even a young adult I was about to become a legal adult in a few months and here I was, acting no better than a child being sent to school for the first time. I chastised myself and told myself to be accountable for myself.

It didn't last, the moment I got a shred of privacy, I broke down. I cried, harder than I had in a long while.

Here's a fun fact: Most of the times you cry, it is completely fine to do so. Crying is probably one of the best ways to let out your emotions rather than bottle it up and possibly undergoing a mental breakdown. Crying doesn't make you any less a man, in fact someone who isn't insecure about crying in times of great duress is probably more manly than any other. I think it's because I finally cried that day that I got the strength to keep on going at Loyola and make something of myself. 

Soon enough though, classes started and I started feeling a lot better, for once I actually liked what I studied, a luxury that many aren't afforded and one that I greatly value. I even like History Of English Literature which is considered the most difficult paper in our first semester and is really more history than English. The professors were pretty great too and steadily my initially fears about choosing the wrong subject started to fade away, I won't lie I'm still concerned for the future, but I figure that incessantly worrying about the future is just as likely to ruin at as it may save it. As long as I'm doing something that I have genuine interest in, I think I'll be just fine.

Since my apartment is a bit of a ways from the college we usually need some sort of transportation to get there. It is possible to walk to college both ways but with how the Chennai heat is, we'd probably arrive sweating buckets. 

Enter the humble share auto: 

Now here was an alien concept, vehicles that were more akin to vans than autos ply routes throughout the city all day. They have regular stops at certain destinations...I just realised that I just described a bus, I suppose that is what a share auto is- a glorified mini-bus. A great number of people depend on these share autos for their daily commute and we are no exception.

Tell me that doesn't look like a kidnapper's van

This is another model of a share auto, and no the number of people in it is not hyperbole

We usually have to stuff ourselves in tight to get to college in time, but it gets the job done and more importantly it gets the job done cheap. 10 rupees one way.

That's another thing that has drastically changed about the way I live, I now understand more acutely than ever about how easy it is to burn through cash especially in a city where every corner has a thousand options inviting you to spend without any particular reason. You have to keep your expenses in check or else you'll find yourself asking your parents for more money frequently, which lets be honest is embarrassing and feels near parasitic in behaviour. True, you probably expended the same amount of money when you were staying at your home but back then you probably weren't all that concerned because most people don't have a direct involvement in expenses at that period of time.

I found myself trying to cut corners to save money and eating lesser and lesser if only to save another 50 rupees which to the ordinary person might not seem like all that much money but to the college student was as good as an inheritance, I started to really empathize with that oft heard of archetype of a starving college student who survives on instant ramen and other cheap but nutritional as dirt foods. Eventually though I had the epiphany that if I just shitty food all the time or even worse, no food I was more likely to wind up in the hospital, and if I winded up in the hospital I was definitely going to spend way more than 50 rupees.

So I spend now...reasonably...I think.

On the matter of food, I found myself missing the food that I used to get back at home. The mess that serves us "Kerala food" here should be taken to court for false advertising. Breakfast is a lost cause so I've just stopped that meal option from them, lunch is alright, if sub-par sometimes(Sundays we're usually served Biriyani or something to that effect usually, so that is a saving grace). It doesn't help that good food also costs more so it has been a struggle to find a footing food-wise but as the days have passed it has become more and more easier to deal with.

At first it was difficult for me to really sync in with my roommates, they're all people who had grown up in Kerala whereas I was the "snooty snobby kid" from the Gulf. Of course they never used that as a negative nor made me feel any worser for the wear due to it but I felt it a lot of the time in that first week or so. 

I felt like an outsider most of the time and steadily familiar feelings of social awkwardness started to creep back in, I'd plug my earphones in on the walk back to the apartment after college lest my roommates would make fun of me and my home. They probably meant it in jest and I didn't ever sense any actual mean-spiritedness but I wasn't used to people speaking poorly of my hometown, add to this the fact that I had waited most of my childhood to finally live in a place I could call my own before being swept off to Chennai of all places and it was a bit hard to not take it to heart. 

Eventually though I started to realise that this would just make me end up in the same place I was in by the end of 12th grade, alone with not many connections nor people I could count on. So I stood up for myself and my home. I don't know if me standing up made a difference or not but since then my roommates have a decidedly decent relationship, apparently relationships are made stronger when you shit-talk the other party. 

My Tamil is still pretty awful but it is miles ahead of what it was when I first came to Chennai, I can speak enough to get by with most day to day interactions.  

I've watched more movies in these past two months or so than I have in the past three years. Tamilians are fanatics for movies and while I don't find the same enthusiasm in watching movies, their joy and passion for it is contagious. 

Of course Chennai isn't all movie stars and glamour, Chennai can be pretty terrible given the right conditions which actually present themselves on a fairly regular basis. 

Everything should be expected to be dirty to some extent: the rivers are black in colour(apocalyptic, I know), the roads while not as liberal with potholes as the ones back home still can't be considered very well constructed. Despite all the waste management solutions that the metropolitan city offers, everyone still finds it mighty convenient to use the streets as their personal waste disposal unit indiscriminately, leading the streets to reek with the stench of rotting waste.  The stray dogs here while relatively humble in comparison to the strays back home make it up by relieving themselves at the most inconvenient places. One might think that they are actually TRYING to get people to step on it.

The weather is perpetually at this state of, " I can't decide what I want to be"  so it is either humid or humid-sunny or humid-rainy.

Oh the rain! The rain is one of the most wretched things that could occur in this city, the sewage and drainage systems here are woefully inadequate which results in floods popping up even if it rains for half an hour, the government has pledged to solve this by installing better drainage systems but considering its our government that has said this, I think we can expect it to still be around by the time I graduate.  Oh and remember all the filth that I described earlier, canine excreta and all? Well all of that is slopped up by this rainwater evolving it into my personal nightmare of filthy tetanus causing rainwater. 

That is not to say that this is the condition in every part of Chennai, the more affluent places like Anna Nagar and Harris Road are often pretty decent to live in with a not-so-decent price tag. They have all the positives of living in Chennai without all the distasteful side effects. 

So, this is where I am right now, in Chennai a land, which for all its faults and problems I have steadily started getting used to and dare I say have gained familiarity with.