M ouna Raagam recently turned 30. Driven by all the talk about the movie, I plugged on a pair of earphones to listen to a track titled ‘Mouna raagam extraordinary title bgm’ on YouTube. And then it all came rushing back — music is a potent trigger for memories. The movie introduced a new city to me during my teen years — I stared open-mouthed at a sun-kissed beach on the screen (Elliot’s); at a long corridor with a brick parapet, into which sunlight fell like a silk veil (Presidency College); at a library so magnificent that one had to climb up narrow ladders to reach the ceiling-high shelves (Madras Literary Society)... Madras they called it. The city had all these gorgeous places. Imagine how it must be to live there... I went on in this fashion, when I landed there one day.
I got a job in Chennai — one that involved journeying through the very city and writing about it. I couldn’t believe my luck. There’s a Tamil proverb that goes ‘Karumbu thinna kooliya?’ which translates to ‘Being paid to eat sugarcane?’ I’ve been doing this for three years now. I take the Beach Road (Kamarajar Salai) to work and get to see the colours of the sea every day. Even today, when I wait at a traffic signal on my scooter at Kamarajar Salai and happen to look towards the beach, I’m startled by what I see.
Chennai, the city of dreams, happened to me, and I’m grateful to my stars for that. A lot of people from less-chaotic small towns wrinkle their noses at the mention of the city — ‘It’s so polluted’; ‘The traffic is unbearable’; ‘People don’t even know who their neighbours are’. To them, I’d like to say, ‘You’re not looking deep enough.’
We have been celebrating the city through the week — there were talks (on Chennai and cricket, personalities, street names, ancient temple games, heritage, language, folklore, cultural history of colonial Madras and more), presentations, exhibitions (including those on ancient temples, cuisine, localities such as Anna Nagar, and photos of IIT-Madras), games, play sessions, competitions, panel discussions, heritage, food, and photo walks, movie-screenings... each event throwing light on a different aspect of the city. In all, there were over 100 events, with many more to take place over the weekend. Why is this city being celebrated to such an extent? What’s the big deal with it anyway?
The answer can be a clichéd ‘Chennai is South India’s cultural capital; a historic city that was once occupied by the Portuguese and then the Dutch; the British’s administrative centre; a place that played an important part in the Freedom Movement; the city that nurtures Tamil cinema...’
But the truth is, Chennai is special because it is a chaotic mess — of hundreds of people packed tight in the suburban trains, heading to work in the mornings; of thousands of autos with grouchy but hard-working drivers ferrying people on far-from-perfect roads; of buses bursting with gangly boys who sing their way to college; of seaside fish markets with heady smells and headier characters; of Jayalalithaa and Rajinikanth cut-outs and first-day-first-show paal abishegams ; of swanky glass-fronted buildings and speeding luxury cars; of unending film discussions by starry-eyed assistant directors in Triplicane mansions; of kuppams where men sing gaana songs as they lie on straw mats outside their huts at night; of women boxers in Vyasarpadi, who practise despite not having the means to enter tournaments; of dreamers walking aimlessly by the Marina...
Chennai is all this and much more.
