Normally I don’t comment on macro
issues – you will never find my blogs on politics or gossip or celebrities or
movies or sports. I strictly keep it personal to the experience I face in my
days. I realized this intuitively even as I began writing these blogs in 2006
that an individual experiencing the flow of life makes for endless
possibilities for engaging tales. But this is about two cities, I am no
historian or a sociologist to make a study with statistical tools but let me talk
about my experience. Both these cities have such contrasting personalities.
Chennai
is 100% unadulterated pure hell. It is the most negative city in the planet. If
I have to describe this city in three words, they would be SELF-RIGHTEOUS,
SELF-CENTERED and hence SELF-DEFEATING. It unfortunately borrows its character from a typical tambrahm who is an intellectual animal but
toxic-ally selfish. Chennaiites cannot see beyond their nose for a tunnel vision of “me,
myself and my family”. The rest of the universe is of no consequence as long as I earn enough to pay my bills, my wife cooks decent food in the kitchen and
lights up my nights and children score enough marks to scrap through in the
annual exams. Why do I feel so negatively for a city that has been
home to me for three decades? The city does not
involve me in its run despite my genius writing skills and fairly decent person
(no one will ever accuse me of selfishness or self-aggrandizements). Not one person has realized my pain of being
abandoned during festivals for three decades despite living in the most elite
part of town. .
Mumbai
is a contrast. I went for a stock trading class for a week in June, 2019 with a
bias that this is the most mechanical and heartless city for human relations. I
couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead I found the city with a work culture
that is staggering – each one is perpetually on the move for his work. This is
one city where the poor don’t bemoan their fate, they sell hand kerchief and
socks on the pavements with a zest and confidence that is unbelievable. One
feels this fast pace of life in the air, something or the other is cooking in this place
and mostly for the good. Behind the veneer of mechanical efficiency, people care
– you go to a restaurant couple of times and the waiters begin to smile at you.
The best of Mumbai is “it’s the only city that recognizes some special quality”
in me. In my Futures class in August 2019, I had couple of classmates saying, “Sathya,
you are just 50. Move into the city and the city will find something suitable
for your talents.”
Even
in stock market trading I find classmates from Mumbai willing to share their knowledge
willingly unlike a Chennaiite who will hold it back. Chennai looks at both
friends and strangers with a suspicious streak as though they are eyeing to grab their ugly obese wives draped in sarees or stab them in the back at work. We
have zilch co-operation, this is one city where your neighbor would say, “I saw
your house being robbed. But I did not raise a cry for my husband was sleeping
and I did not wish to disturb him.” We are that foolish as to score self-goals
with righteous indignation.
If
I have a measure of stock trading success in 2020, I will be the owner of a
villa in a distant Kumbakonam, 325 km from this shithole. My sole demand in life is a meager - please get me admitted to critical care in a hospital when I have a cardiac
arrest, cremate my body when the white sheets are drawn and disperse my assets
to the list of charities. Such a small gesture is beyond anyone in Chennai.
There is greater probability of such a caring hole in a Maharashtra town or a
Bangalore. My disgust is so much that I
would love to see this city drown in the Bay of Bengal much like Kannagi
burning the city of Madurai when her husband was unjustly hanged.
If
you ask me the definition of a heaven, I would say: any place where you find a
little understanding and some bonding. By that definition Chennai is hell
surely.
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