MY LOVE- HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH CHENNAI.

This Blogger is a new entrant to the long list of migrants into Chennai's explosive demographic structure. He became one such migrant not because he liked such an option but because he was forced to become one. The fast growing IT explosion in the counrty has percolated even into choice of one's type of living and the habitat one prefers to settle.

Having run two-and-half scores plus years from the day he fell from his mother's womb to this mother earth, whether such a run was ran by this blogger on his own choice or by the sheer necessity of having born into this world, he is now under compulsion to migrate to Chennai to join his bachelor son, who is an IT specialist.

One month has since elapsed that this Blogger is still trying to achieve a semblence of settling at Chennai, with all the vagaries of metropolitan existence (beware not living in the real sense) looming large all around. This Blogger, of course, is not a new comer to Chennai. Having been with a Public sector enterprise as an Executive at various levels almost for two-and -half decades at a stretch, he was a frequent visitor to Chennai on his official business. But such sojourns were replete with flying machines to Chennai for travel, near- star-level hotels to dine and office locations to conduct his official business. Occasional evenings during such sojourns went with reciprocatory exchanges of cheers among friends, while champaigne bottles popped up.

Back to the present story, settling business in Chennai for this Blogger is most unsettling. The reasons are multifarious. Having been born into a middle-class family in a rural setting in quiet Nilgiris hills, (conscience says, Nilgiris is not quiet and serene like those days. Nilgiris, more specifically its official headquarters Ooty, has become a casualty in the hands of commercial exploits and Real Estate terrorism emanating from far and wide, all over the country) and having had the ooportunity and pleasure (?) to serve a Government undertaking in Ooty itself, this Blogger was blessed to secure a 'liveable' life, backed by dust-less wind for inhaling, mother Nature painted lush-green environment in the residential area and a small tea-garden devolved upon him on the demise of his father, to nurture and secure a semblence of earning . (What an irony! death also records profit and loss account that lays bare the sadness he/she brings to his/her family as loss and the savings he/she leaves to his family, kith and kin as pfofit. Thanks to Tamil poet Kanna dasan: for him, life is business. In the business of life, birth is revune; death is expenditure.)
As I am proceeding to to tell my 'settling' business in Chennai, the bird in my inner conscience calls its ceaseless warning that it is 12 O' clock and it is time for power- cut being imposed by the Government and consequentially, I must wind-up this stray thoughts business for the time being and to resume later. Bye.

30 Sept.,2008 (2.30 P.M)
The two-hour power cut that led me to short-cuicuit recording my stray thoughts today morning did not sap my energy. Though the noon was burning under the sweltering heat, it did not bother me much. While blogging in the morning, I was morolising on birth and death and was dragging Poet Kannadasan to drive home my point of view. My middle-class attitude and my family's agrarian background did not allow me to take the untrodden path of business line; nor was I equipped with minimum financial soundness to try my destiny in business and therefore life's mundane pleasures were at the mercy of the pittance of salary that I was drawing. But the benevolent Company that I was working for, was gracious enough to sanction me a housing loan. When my colleagues were frantically craving for buying small plots of land for constructing their houses through the loan facilitiy in the Ooty town, an inner voice cautioned me that I should not opt for building a house within the city limits of Ooty. Instead, it guided me to construct a small house in a place where Mother Nature should have sprayed the tint of green more for topography and landscape where I am going to live. My first choice fell on the Ketti valley. It is one of the biggest natural valley in the world, I am told. Tennyson appears to have extolled its charm in one of his finest songs. The valley is fortified in all sides by peaks and mountains. Clouds in their passage, take time off from sending their steely wires of rain to mother earth and will rest on the bossoms of peaks and mountains in the valley. Summer will be agog with bursting of blooms everyhwere.

My garden adjecent to my little house will always be splashed with colourful flowers. Zinnias display their multi-coloured hues in bunches. Dhalias deepen the back-ground setting for the garden. Flocks in multiple hues parade like little children in school sports. Painted gorgeously with violet tint, Bhohenvillas will bloom always in the hedges of the compound of the house. Lilacs will always be bloomed in the door yard (Reminds me of Walt Witman, the poet of poets.) Alista Mary pop-up in bunches, keeping their rose and yellow splashed faces of flowers on dark green and lengthy stalks. Daisies dressed in white will always be ready for swaying drill to the commands of occaional rustle of wind. Greenish looking mountain range at the back drop will complete the pefect ambience to the whole setting. Bees from the mountain rocks will be permanent visitors to my garden. Blooms in my garden in summer seasons will be additional treat to these murmering bees. Ineberiated by extra-sucking of honey from the yellowish anthers of the blooms, they at times fail to go back to their honey-comb to serve and protect the queen bee.Honey suckles in flocks, wearing purple-blue feathery dress, will be frequent visitors to my garden for sucking nector through their lengthy beaks.

My small home library occupying the western side of my drawing room allows limitless fragrance from the master creations of writers as the flower garden that lies fruther west of the Library room. Tolstoy's timeless creations occupy considerable space in the wooden racks. Works of Dostovosky, Chekov, Maxim Garky parade alongwith Tolstoy's works. Hardy's novels, works of D.H.Lawrence, Herman Melville, Hemingway, Marquez, Henry James to name a few are adding delight to me and my small library every time I enter in. Works in the Drama genre by such authors like Arthur Miller, Tennesse Williams and others decorate my Library cuboards. Works of Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Becket, Oscar Wilde, Amitava Ghosh, Mahakavi Bharathi, Sundara Ramaswamy, Dan Brown, Arumdathi Roy and others enlighten me whenever and wherever I am inclined to read.

But then, demands of family members are different. Their demands are more urgent and relevent than my being delighted by Hardys and Hemingways. Though earning relatively good wages by virtue of his being an IT specialist, my son requires the presence of my wife and me at Chennai to take care of him, feed him with homely food and to spend time with him while not on call from his duty. Thus, I am here in Chennai leaving behind me in the hills my Hardys and Hemingways and the delightful garden of blooms. I miss my honey suckles, murmuring bees and the late night conversation of chirping crickets. Somewhere in my deep thought, conscience told me that Chennai will be a concrete jungle devoid of green cover and therefore I must have atleast one grown-up plant in the newly rented house in Chennai. While packing some limted house hold goods in the truck, I saw to it that my "money plant" (Neither do I have money nor do I know the botanical name of the plant ) also got transported to Chennai. Though on board the truck, the plant showed signs of wilting and unhappiness, it got revived when once I poured fresh blood of water, on its being intalled in our new Chennai residence.

The first few days of my so called 'living' in Chennai were interpresed with routine and mundane job of buying of house- hold provisions, ordering treated drinking water in cans (Alas, no one in the Nilgiris seems to be selling drinking water or running an exclusive business in water selling), meeting old friends, engaging in forced sleep to avoid the trouble of burning under the sweltering heat during imminent and daily power- cuts, reading the "Hindu" in between lines, occasional blogging in my son's personal Computer

As I see, Chennai has become a burning cauldron to the level of reaching the Hadron colloider that reserch into Big Bang and Black holes. Caught in its gravitational pull are things vary and unrelishable. The City is caught in the vortex of global warming by its own making. The City seems to be not worrying about raising and sustaining green belts, unlike in places like Bangalore or Pune. As I move around, I could see imposing High way over bridges, darkening every inch of the space available. Garbage heaps, unclosed cable-laying trenches, splattered used-polythene bags, jarring and never ending music of the mosquitos, hellish vehicular traffic etc. etc. have become silent killers.

I have been craving to visit a library daily, if availble near by . I am not able to find one till date. For a person who had emigrated from a cool and clean place like Nilgiris and for person who is in the evning of his life, Chennai is definitely a chllenge to achieve a semblence of 'living'.
But this Blogger is unable to comprehend as to why no one bothers to raise green cover all over Chennai. Civic sense, it is hoped, would not have shrunk to that level of atomic proportion, to erase totally from their mind the definite need to raise tree-corridors and develop green belts. Can't those in the corridors of power do some thing about keeping the City clean, devoid of thrown-away used polythene bags and dirt heaps of garbage. Can't the enlightened citizens of Chennai extend deep thought and give re-look into the real meaning of development and do something about infusing fresh blood into making Chennai bristle with greenary, interpressed with splashes of flower gardens ? Untill my next blogging- discourse, it is 'BYE' from Chandru.