It happens only in Chennai

Singaporean Wong Pei Ting navigates her way around the city's quirks

October 17, 2014 05:11 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:30 pm IST

Word play: Rooms or loos? Photo: Wong Pei Ting

Word play: Rooms or loos? Photo: Wong Pei Ting

Sound horn

Judging from its iconic yellow background, accompanying circle, flower, and bird motifs, and the sheer number of automobiles that carry them, Sound Horn must be a popular car horn brand. Only brand names get plastered over cars from where I come from – they are never a kind reminder for drivers to drive properly.

Worse, ‘Stop Sound Horn’ gives the idea that the vehicle is on a protest against the ‘Sound Horn multi-billion corporation’ that I suspect existed, especially when some vehicles had it below a ‘One Family One Child’ slogan.

Mah

It had been a challenge making out the intonations of Tamil and requires quite a bit of reconfiguration. ‘Mama’, which is how I call my mother, now means uncle. ‘Ama’, which is how I call my grandmother, means yes.

‘Va mah’ means come. Amma means mother. When people tell me, ‘Va Ma’ in the market, I wonder why they are calling me mother! A local friend clarified that they were just asking me to come to them.

Tolet bills

When nature calls, I have a fostered idea of why ‘Stick No Bills’ notices are everywhere. Public toilets are hard to find in Chennai, and these bills that I see in every nook and cranny provide such false hopes. Turns out, the accompanying number will lead you to a property-service provider, and not directions to the nearest toilet. And if I fall for ‘Tolet’, I can’t imagine how misled the opposite gender is with these ‘sex’ posters plastered around town that will reveal its proportionally-minute imprint of ‘problems’ when you take a closer look.

Green Gram

“Can you get me some green gram,” asked my house mate one day. I didn’t know how to react – back in Singapore, I’d be subjected to capital punishment for possession of ‘gram’. However, at the store, I found green gram quite effortlessly. They also had red and yellow versions. Turns out that all my house mate wanted was common green beans. And here I thought she was referring to weed!

Fractioned unit numbers

I was prepared for the Indians’ love affair with acronyms, but the rampant use of fractions caught me off guard. One day, I came across the fraction ‘3/8’ painted on the door post, and chuckled at how Platform Nine and Three Quarters in the Harry Potter chronicle should be rather unoriginal to the Chennai-ites. The second day, I saw 52/39, and scenes of the wizardry world played out in my mind as I stood before the ‘portal’ – the odder the fraction, the more convoluted the world within is, my theory goes. The third day, I spotted ‘New 2 Old 2’ and then realised…. that they refer to new and old house numbers. 

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