Chennai Vs Mumbai

#159

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.

Pangs of settling in

#158

I don’t know why I write these blogs. Maybe a flicker of a distant thought that someday someone will read these pages and confer me greatness – Tchaikovsky or even the greatest Mozart became famous posthumously. But this year, my resolve, is less personal, less self-centered.   

            I came from Dindigul on 6/1 and I had a huge laundry list of tasks in front of me. Within two days I had setup the modular computer table, re-assembled the sofa-set (I saved Rs. 3000 asking the deckup carpenter to help after he pieced the table together), got the MI person wall-mounting the smart TV, set up the kitchen, replaced a cylinder tube, got a Hathway broadband for a staggering efficiency. I looked at myself with wonder, even God would not have been so resourceful, a quality I never associate myself with. To my self-image – often erroneous for I estimate my worth a lot less than reality beckons- I am a theorists and a supreme thinker. I take as much as 3-4 days rumination even on a petty thing like a haircut simply because I don’t want an extra ounce of work for my poor knees.

            Within a short time, I became a regular Swiggy customer – I found myself fleeced Rs. 50-60 for every delivery though they saved my knees a whale of a trouble. In the new house I found myself consuming less calories for I was eating a lot less. Bemoan the guy who depends on Chennai restaurants for four squares a day!!! Slowly I start making coffees and teas, another day even upma but something is missing. Besant nagar is as much a professional whore of a metro but I got used to it. Each time I stepped out of my abode (you are supposed to chuckle here) I ran into familiar faces for half-raised greetings and eye-contact. Here no one knows me. This is paradise compared to buses zipping down Seventh Avenue in front of my house, here I spot couple of cows grazing in the fields for a complete contrast. The best of Besant nagar was everything was within my walking range, here it’s 500 metres to ECR and my knees curse me in the vilest words the dictionary can afford. Besant nagar is a whore but it felt nice on the system, Palvakkam is a heaven that needs getting used to.

            I am a poor reader; I have long stopped buying books. Then last month I ordered 4-5 books on Amazon for a solar eclipse rarity. The books came and promptly went to the shelves. Now I opened Philip Freeman’s “Alexander the Great” and it caught me by the scruff of the neck. I just love everything about ATG.  Nature does not produce a ATG than once in a 5000 or 10000 years; he is Bhima, Arjuna, Duryodhana, Sakuni and Karna combined except real in flesh and blood. I venerate Buddha through every cell of the body but my heart and soul belongs to Alexander the Great. In the one week in the new house I could not have found a greater inspiration than the battle exploits of this extraordinary man 2300 years ago.

            I met two people this week who deserve a special mention. Dinesh was the Hathway executive and at 23, he looks the best salesman I have come across. Yesterday Ashok came to configure my desktop for the Wifi. I have known him for a decade as he said, “Sathya Sir, anytime you have a heart-attack I will drop everything and attend to you.” Such nobleness, I am indebted more than words.

            I am 50 now, I have lived alone for 13 years without a minuscule of support. I never doubt my resilience or survival instinct, I see myself in the class of a Hercules, Achilles and ATG for my inward journey was no less breathtaking in scope as their war exploits. But if God were to appear and ask for a boon from me, I will say, “Bring it on old man. Take me away for a well-deserved respite.” 

            HDFC is the worst possible bank in India. My housing loan is now more than 4 weeks old by which I time I got my apartment registered with my own funds. After sleeping for 5 weeks those guys tell me, “Now that you have registered property, there is no point in a housing loan. But we will consider you for a mortgage loan.” I need 25 lacs with the urgency of a next breath; I need this money for trading and a part-payment for Kumbakonam property. I am annoyed, exasperated, intensely irritated and frustrated and throw in all the synonyms. 

            Yesterday I saw QUEEN and Kangana was outstanding. I felt she has earned the right to put a foot in her mouth each time she opens it. Which reminds of a drink I had with Ranga at Maris and he says, “Sathya, we have two orifices; anterior and another in the rear. People who speak without thinking is farting; there is no question of a volition here. Sadly most people in our age use the anterior for a propaganda and posterior for speaking.” Ranga comes with such priceless insights, I learn as much in his company than what life throws at me almost each moment. I will end the ramble with this tailpiece: Viji’s husband, my brother-in-law, invited me for a Pongal lunch that I gently declined saying, “An electrician has promised to come tomorrow. It’s a new house you see, so I very sorry to miss this feast," for a white lie. The invite is as much a wonder as the hanging gardens of Babylon or those pyramids in Egypt for my folks wake-up after 32 years. There is one thing about Alexander I envy; in those days men slit others throat at the slightest provocation while here I am in 2020 who can’t even slap a fellow human being.  
              Welcome to 2020, I am as cynical as ever and my writing as potent too. This year looks a make or break, I will make it even if I have to beg, borrow or steal or even kill. Finally I am learning. Thanks to Alexander the Great.