A Breast and Chicken Debacle

It was not as bad as Homer got it

Every once in a while we end up doing or saying something stupid that will haunt you for life or at least the foreseeable future. This is the very short story of my 'slip of the tongue' moment that ended up putting me in some of the most embarrassing moments of this year.

It was on the day one of my team mates, quiet an elderly fellow at that decided to treat us for the valuable years he has burned away at our office. Needless to say that this sudden gesture of generosity had more to do with relentless nagging than a compulsive need for expensive celebrations. It was on this forsaken day that the blunder than that became my Homer Simpson moment occurred.

We were leisurely sitting in one of Chennai's finest Italian restaurants ( I intentionally am leaving out the name lest the management decides to throw me out the next time I step in) when in the process of giving our order my colleague ( not the same as the poor soul who had to pay the bill) asked me what I would like and I answered him casually

"Anything with chicken breasts is fine by me"

And with an unmissable spontaneity he started laughing and I realised I missed the words  "chicken"

The rest is history that I am trying hard to forget and harder to make others forget ( with remarkably low success )

Understanding Chennai

Chennai is not a city of joy, nor is she haunted by the phantoms of melancholia. Chennai is neither plain nor placid, She has a sense of vigor and liveliness inside of her. I find it particularly hard to attribute any specific emotion to her, not because she is devoid of emotions but because she shows it all without prejudice. She has no sorrow flowing right across her heart, nor is she known for the grant patios of procrastination. What she is and what she has always been is that she is real.

Chennai is as real as it will ever get, unlike many of her friends she upholds no pretense, she wears no facade and she embodies no plasticity. Her denizens are like she is, simple and real. In every alley that dots her backyard, is an women who scrounges for her children, a man who struggles to make the ends meet. She is not the adobe of the ultra rich but the tree under whose shades sleeps the normal man. One can see in the dried up eyes on the sun scorched faces of Chennai the harsh realities of life.

While in her backyard you may not find the soft spoken, civilized beings of Vienna, nor will you find coat donned bosses of New York who looks at all life with no emotion but disgust. But here you wind find simpletons, workers and laborers, You will see the educated educators or the men of service, and mostly servants of one of its many civil bodies. I pose not to say that they are humble and well behaved, but I insist that they are real and depict on their faces real emotions both good and evil.

Scratched across her face is a very thick line, bloated and black that separates the cities tiny rich community from the vast poor ones. This is the story of any of India's mammoth cities but here you will not find imitators who try to scale the big divide with fanciful appearance, Here you wont find people pretending to be anything other than what they are, except may be a micro minority that is still yet to find its place in this discomforted city. The leisure of Chennai lies in understanding the reality of who you are and when that itself is in great doubt she can at times be alien and at others discomforting. The rich of Chennai lies in its own world and the other  is seldom seen in its vastness. They may be playing pretense and that they only exists here and the others simply don't bother, they show a kind of indifference that is graceful in a way. They just the let them be and let themselves be.

If you venture to reach out and touch the heart of Chennai, you wont hear the calm serene musicals of the beating heart but a rather hurried and uneven one of a struggling heart. She would bleed under your touch and you would feel the warmth of blood flowing through your hands. The harshness of Chennai is not exactly in the hot and humid climate of Chennai but in the hard and unforgiving realities of life that dot her face. Yet she is not a sad and devastating city, she is happy as life is. In her trains you will find fathers playing with their sons, seated on the steel floors. In her streets you will find mothers feeding their daughters while making a dainty living at her numerous street shops.

I think I have been in Chennai long enough to feel the pulse of Chennai. long enough to understand her amazing eccentricities. All one have to do to understand the realities of Chennai is to look beyond the scorching sun, the humid air and the coarse water. When you are ready to do that she herself prepares to give you a couple of hard lessons, lessons about the realities of life. It is a sin to be blind when you can see, to be deaf when you can hear and to be unkind when confronted with great human tragedy. I am fascinated by the nudity of Chennai, her realities are never hidden they are visible and plain, most importantly she is real. May be that's why I have been slowly falling in love with her.

Image Courtesy : Well-Bred Kannan

My Little New Nest

Amazingly cute isn't it?

We have even got a nice balcony with flowers blooming there and one with a nice set of swings

 The only bad thing is I have to share it with +priyanshu raj and +Pushkar Maid  :'(

When it Rained in Chennai

It was raining in Chennai, At least in the part of Chennai where he was living. At first he sensed the day getting darker slowly and steadily. At first he thought it was another ruse played by the rain gods but this time around the things were different. The day got steadily darker and then there was the ominous stillness that always and inexplicably came before the rain. The twilight when the peacocks dance and the birds rush to their nests. The magnificent drum-roll that accompanies any beautiful rain. Then he could hear the soft sound of little rain drops kissing the ground.

He made himself a cup of coffee, slowly pouring it out into a mug like he had all of eternity to do that. He walked to the open balcony of his apartment. He could see that it had started raining harder and steadier. Little droplets were falling from the sun shade as a bunch of little marching soldiers. The outside was hazy and the balcony was partly splashed wet by the rain. He leaned over the railings, his nose almost touching the falling rain. He could smell in the earth that was just been showered upon, the air was thick with the fragrance of dry earth. He sipped the coffee and as the hot liquid game him a shiver down his body as it slowly went down. He closed his eyes and inhaled in the world around him and slowly opened his eyes to the heavens.

The dark clouds were rolling in, thick like a woolen blanket. The sky no longer belonged to Chennai but this sky belonged in his memories. He could see in the sepia his life in another city, his home. He could remember vividly how the rain clouds marched in like Alexander’s great army. The torrential downpour that drenched the land around him poured down his mind. He could feel the coldness of the showers and the amazement with his being was cleansed manifested as a small smile that spread across his face.

He remembered the years of his childhood, the endless days he spent watching the monsoon, the thunder and the lightning playing around like two long lost brothers in their reunion.  He remembered the streams that flowed near his house that was up to the brim and spilling from the sides. He remembered the birds that nested in the mango tree in his house; he remembered how she would hide herself in the thick canopy and how she dodged the falling waters. He remembered the wet trees and the green grass. He remembered the cows and the wet muddy trails that led in the plantations. He remembered his mother and she would get him a cup of tea when it was raining and how they would sip it together and watch the rain perched on their balcony.

He was I and being in Chennai for some time now, I miss the land where I was born and where I was raised. These memories rushed to me in a surge of emotions and nostalgia. I wonder how much more my life revolves around the beautiful monsoons of Kerala.