“Recently I went to the Karbagambal Mess in Mylapore, yet again. The food you get there is tasty and the Badam halwa literally melts in your mouth.

However, I have one major issue with this mess. They make good money and usually you have to wait for while to get a seat. I agree that it is a very old place. But what is stopping them from revamping the place? The tables and vessels are dirty. Less said about the wash basin and the area around it, the better! Not just Karpagambal Mess, many other old restaurants too are in such unclean state. People will believe when they are told that a restaurant is old. They don’t need rusty plates and tumblers to prove it.

But then irrespective of the old and dirty atmosphere, people flock to the Karpagambal Mess. So why would the owner revamp it?”

The pranks of the drunkard.

“Pushpeshu Jaathi
Purusheshu Vishnu
Naareeshu Ramba
Nagareshu Kanchi …”

17th December at the Alliance Française saw the enactment of a play by Theatre Nisha, rather different from the usual - chiefly, perhaps because it had been written in the 7th century AD.

Written in Sanskrit by the Pallava Emperor Mahendra Pallavar of Kanchi, the play is a spoof of the religious and political tendencies of a Tamil Nadu that existed more than 1500 years ago. Jainism and Buddhism ruled the roost then; Saivism and Vaishnavism were generally relegated to the backseat, as Kapalikas with skull necklaces around their necks and fearful sacrifices had created a distorted picture of what Hinduism really was about.
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Please listen.

As it is we have enough accusations about our lack of driving sense and of how we tend to drive in the middle of the road, more interested in the conversation with our pillion rider than in the honk of that idiot driving behind us. Some even say we can’t make out right from left and what not! But, these are things uppity men say. Have we ever minded that? But, when other women start asking you to please listen, you better.

I am very concerned that you don’t wobble your way to death bang in the middle of Chennai’s chaotic roads. You don’t realize how terrified I get when I see you ahead of me, all responsible and neat, yet with that precious handbag of yours sitting on your right shoulder and said shoulder raised in order to prevent handbag from falling, while you negotiate the villians on the road. And when that errant biker from a side lane zips past and you have to brake suddenly in order to save yourself, there you are, with both legs firmly on the road while the right shoulder is still making sure the handbag doesn’t fall. I mean, life is precious, but the handbag with its old bills, cards and frills, safety pins, headache pills is more than precious no?

So, this new year, why don’t you get yourself a handbag with long straps that can be slung across comfortably? Maybe you can fix a special compartment to lock your handbag while you ride your bike. And, while we are on checklists, why don’t you consider appropriate heels for your ride? I certainly don’t want to see that lovely ankle twisted because the heel upset your balance. Thanks dear, I hope you have a good year, and remember, you don’t have to follow all that you hear.

I really am not sure, who started this trend of restaurant guys wearing caps and apron. Pizza corner? Whoever it is, was not a permanent resident of chennai. But the cap/apron thing seems to have caught up with almost every major restaurant/coffee shop. Now they have these polythene gloves as well. And this is the fad in some vegetable shops like ‘Kovai pazhamudhir solai’.

But if you observe, in typical chennai climate wearing a cap all through the business hours is not easy. It gets hot, and the guys invariably end up scratching their heads, or wipe out the sweat because of wearing the cap. And how do they do that? With a gloved hand. Now, their hand is safeguarded from all the dust/sweat and pollution but what about the food they serve?

It would make sense to think of the local climate conditions, before deciding on the uniform/attire of the restuarant employees!

M. G. Ramachandran, known as MGR, died on Christmas Eve, 1987. He had been an extremely popular filmstar, and then politician; he was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu when he died. He was elderly and his health had been failing for some time, but his death caused an enormous outpouring of emotion in Tamil Nadu.

I was working at the American Consulate in Chennai at that time. Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, the Consul General (CG) called me and said that he had heard that MGR had died. He said that I should try to get in to the office as soon as possible, because we were afraid that there might be some kind of unrest in the city.
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As this year draws to a close, the Metblog team wanted to rewind and take a look, again, at some of our best posts. While we will do that over the next 4-5 days (maybe more), I want to ask you, the readers, this. What di you think has been our best posts over the last 8 months? What are the posts you really liked, which ones did you think could have been better? And, what do you think we should do in the coming year?

That Chennai’s traffic is chaotic is indisputable. But these are problems of any growing metropolis of any Asian country that is growing at an incredible pace. While people living here for a long time may have accepted the chaos as a fact of life and may at best try to find some semblence of order within it, having returned from the US, I find myself always mentally comparing traffic regulation systems between the two places and thinking of what can be improved here.

When I grew up in Chennai, there were not as many automatic traffic lights (signals) as there are now and anyway there were not as many vehicles either. The one thing that I remember clearly is that the green-amber-red sequence worked both ways. So, while waiting at the signal, one would see the light go from red to amber and then to green. I did not even think about these things until I got to the US and after seeing the red change to green over there, started wondering what was the logic for our own lights to change to amber from red. After all, vehicles at a red light are stationary and they don’t need the amber to provide any lead time to start unlike in the other scenario, when green changes to amber before red to signal to speeding vehicles that are coming towards the intersection to slow down in preparation to stop (based on their own judgement call of their chances of crossing the intersection safely). That is a basic measure of safety in urban traffic regulation systems.
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The last time I spotted an auto with ‘Six Face’ proudly emblazoned across the back, many doubted that it was actually ‘Arumugam’. So this time when I spotted another auto (no eyes, you notice?) with ‘Six Face’ on it parked at the side of the road, I pulled up behind him to ascertain what it was. The driver’s name was Mohan I found, so I asked him why the six face at the back? “Addhu owner payaru, saar.” So I verified, “Avaroda payar Arumugamma?” Back came the answer, “Aama saar”. So there you have it folks. Expect to see more of the same- Six Face, Seven Hills…..

Turns out the previous ‘Where in Madras’ question wasn’t as hard as I thought it was. Everybody who commented, knew where Dams Road was. Damn! Anantha got it right first. Others weren’t that far behind, though. Great going, folks.

Anyway, here’s this week’s question. A visual round. Identify the location this shot was taken in. Extra credit for identifying other landmarks near this place.