deponti

Though the small streets and the lanes he goes,
His voice echoing around.
He calls aloud, this sharpener of knives:
They hear him, the mothers, the sisters, the wives:
Each busy housewife knows
That he'll set the wheel on the ground:
The sparks will fly as he steps on the pedal:
Sharper and sharper gets the now-shiny metal:
He pockets the small sums that he's paid,
Perhaps drinks a cup of tea that someone's made...
Then he's off again, with his clarion call,
Whoever needs his work...he goes to serve them all.


I heard his "clarion call" (in Chennai, what he calls is, "katthi shAAAAAAAANAAAAA!") and rushed out on to the balcony to photograph his retreating form...my sis in law didn't want any knives sharpened that day!

How many of us can so easily get Gold Medals or afford a Rolex?




( some more gems )

Most of all, I loved this sign, which unwittingly gave the message that it IS wiser to wear a helmet... and itsalouwelylife asked if "glass change" meant currency coins that made of glass!

In the heart of

Mylapore

past

Luz


connecting North Mada (mAdA) Street and

Katcheri Road

is a small street...lane...called "Maddala )Narayanan Street" (maddaLa nArAyaNan)

Who Maddala Narayanan was, history does not see fit to record (at least, I couldn't find traces on the internet!)..."maddaLam" being a variation of the percussion instrument, the


Mridangam

the instrument being more used for harikathA and yakshagAnA....

but for a long time, many musicians resided on this street or its surrounding areas.

There are still some music shops here, where one can buy veeNAs, tablAs, or repair various instruments...

But MY song, today, is about the small jewellers' shops that also sit on this street, and this particular one:




Can you see the shop there? Yes, it's that tiny little...well, literally window of opportunity that's open next to the motorcycle!

In this shop, for at least thirty years (to my certain recollection) sits Sri T G Purushottaman Achari.

( More about this, with little digressions )

Well...in my grandmother's day, the jeweller would probably have been called home, where he would have spent the entire day on the "thiNNai" (the front porch) in the shade of a neem tree or two, setting and repairing jewellery....my generation went to him to get our work done...who knows how the next few generations (I certainly don't envisage women giving up jewellery in the next few thousands of years!) will manage?

What is this slow carb rice and how is it different from regular rice? If I eat my regular rice very slowly, will it become slow carb rice?

What's the bet that this rice is twice as expensive as regular rice?

I had showed you Romance Tailors in Mylapore:




But who will actually DO the romancing? Here's who






"Gents specialist" doesn't mean they are gay, but that they are men's tailors....

But, if you happen to think that to err is human, there's a place for you, too, in Bangalore, where you can stay in comfort:




If you don't like that, you can take this auto and growl...





I am feeling rather growly myself, and going "grrrrr" at all the things I see going badly around me...

I wish I had a Chennai magazine like Citizen Matters to post to...but I don't, so my blog will have to do.

Motorists, though the privileged lot in terms of affordability, can also get royally harassed at times...and by people who consider the public road somehow their own domain....I am talking about the security personnel of the various buildings on the road.

Today, after dropping my sister in law at Apollo Hospital, I went looking for a space to park the car, and came to 1st Street, Cenotaph Road, where the


Japanese Consulate

is:



( the incident )


The minute we get into a uniform, we LOVE to harass our fellow-citizens in any way we can. It's a mindset...a way of life. I am sure the Consul does not know what is going on outside his building.

People like me, who know our rights, try to fight back...often unsuccessfully. Others are cowed down by the uniform and meekly obey. Others...powerful people themselves...ignoore all the rules. If I had been a politcal person, the same guard would have, obsequiously, have allowed me to park.


It's disgusting....and it's not restricted to Chennai alone.

kadambarid married

Prabhu Ramachandran

yesterday....





Here's wishinng them long years of happiness together!

In Chennai...

One, the Corporation building:



And two, the Central Railway Station:





There are many, many more...some are falling to ruins...

One, while waiting at Central Station, Chennai:





I can just imagine the criminal innocently sitting in front of the camera which, of course, knows immediately that this person is a criminal, and starts watching him...


The next delightful thing was in my coach.



It says, "Hammer for breaking the window glass during emergency".

Now to find a hammer to break the glass of the window in which this hammer is kept...


And the last...make no mistake, there will be no teetotallers on this train...

We want to find our way through a city? We buy maps, we look up Google maps, or... we ask for directions. Especially in India, we do this as we stand...or park...in the middle of the road, generally getting the person with the lowest IQ in the area, who either gapes at us or confidently gives us wrong directions.

But our politicians have better methods.


On my way back from the walk, I noticed these rounds on the side of the road:




I was curious, and when I found this man making those rounds by tapping a basket full of lime powder on to the road




I asked him what he was doing. "The CM and another leader are coming this way," he explained.


Here's one of several posters of the CM (of Tamil Nadu)...with the usual paeans of praise:



(this one says, "Oh, Kalaignar (artiste) who gave us the meal scheme, welcome, welcome!"...referring to the noon meal scheme for children in Corporation schools, perhaps)

Here are some flags of the

DMK
with the leader's face on them:




....for a wonderful exposition on how to make a political poster in Tamil Nadu, visit

this blog entry by Krish Ashok

The other leader is G K Vasan, the son of Karuppiah Mooppanar. (his photo, too, is up there in the second photograph.)

And the round markings? When the driver of the leading car in the political convoy sees them, he (you think there will ever be a she-driver in a Tamil Nadu politcal party convoy?) knows where to turn off the main road!

Isn't that a great navigational method? I would be rushing, right now, to buy my "chunA" powder and my basket, but I don't have someone from the Chennai Corporation to do this for me, alas...

I also found a police car



and some police (or some other enforcement agency) officers going around, checking the route:



No, I didn't talk to them for fear of being told,

I can't take photographs

The man making the rounds (I carefully didn't ask his name) has been working for the past 26 years, he said, and was doing his duty diligently, on a wet and chilly (for Chennai, 25 deg is chilly!) morning.

The occasion...was the 80th birthday of Mr.Mukta Srinivasan, the well-known film producer.

So all you techies with those fancy GPS gadgets....all you need to do is become a politician in Tamil Nadu...navigation is a piece of cake...and several round markings!

Apparently the lime powder also acts as a kind of anti-bacterial agent, and is often sprinkled on garbage heaps. So there's multi-tasking for you!

Today, I was photographing the I.G's Office building to add to my walk collection. one of the women constables (or inspectors, I don't know her rank) came up behind me as I continued my walk, and kept insisting that I should not take photographs of the building.

I found this utterly ridiculous. The building is in an open space, and there are literally thousands of people going past in their cars who can take photographs. Any of the pedestrians with a mobile camera can take pictures too. But since I had an identifiable camera, I was targetted.

Worse, when I said that I was taking photographs for myself, the lady said nothing more and let me go. In case I had been a terrorist, I would have said exactly the same thing, and would have got away with whatever it was that the authorities are scared of.

So what on earth is this stupid policy of always going around telling the public that they can't do something, which the authority in question has NO way of enforcing? Why do we seem to live in the British Raj still, in so many ways, where it's always an authority vs. general public attitude? Why do we still have obsolete, futile rules which it takes the lower orders all their time and energy to try and (unsuccessfully) enforce? It seems to be harassment for harassment's sake.


I also fail to understand in what way my photograph would have posed a danger to the building or the people within, that an image from Google Earth would not.

"You can't do X, you can't do Y" is the anthem song of our bureaucracy,government, culture, and police....when are we ever going to get rid of this mindset?

Happiness...is getting something to eat when one is hungry.






Unhappiness..is not being able to eat.





I wonder how that crow manages with that broken beak...certainly the bird looked woebegone in the rain.

Very long post, read only if you have some leisure.

I do love my country, which often has its flag represented in unique ways:



And I like walking through its cities.

Each city in India is quite distinct from the other; not for us the bland homogeneity of a skyscraper downtown and sprawling suburbs...I find Indian cities totally fascinating.

Like all Indian cities, the architecture in Chennai is an often astonishing mixture of old and new idioms, which are radically different from each other. It's fascinating to watch...and there are also the this-es, the thats, and the others as I walk. I decided to take my MLC for a walk, too...and we went together, through a few roads in

Mylapore (town of the peacock), now called Thirumylai or the place of the divine peacock

( walk with me through Mylapore )

Think about the beauty of seeing a small temple, that's traditionally built under a spreading young

Peepal Tree



...and make my way home....


Some more on Mylapore

the walk without photographs

Mylapore Tank


New Year in Nageshwara Rao Park

Chennai vignettes

Mylapore Tank

And if you STILL have patience for more,

here !

You know you've spent too long abroad, when....you sit in Chennai and find yourself trying to calculate what time it is in Bangalore!




I tried out

tree-climbing


...and a couple of days ago, I snapped this:





It struck me forcibly that what was just a pastime for me, and a sport for others, was a livelihood for some people. (You can see that the man in the photograph above is using a sealant on the windows.)

This morning, when I opened

The Hindu

I found

this article by Liffy Thomas

Talk about high living....these people, like Microsoft, make their money from...Windows!

and we have a new proverb...people who live in glass houses, need their windows cleaned.

The Marina Beach in Chennai

is one of the public open-air spots in the city that gets a lovely sea breeze in the afternoons, and is a popular spot to visit.


It has a line of statues, that the wiki link above lists; and here's the sunrise on the statue of


Kamarajar (kAmarAjar)






The beach faces east, and sunrises are beautiful...when there's a sunrise, can thoughts of asakiyume be far behind? :)

Here's the "Gandhi silai" (statue of Gandhi) that stands at the junciton of the Beach road and Radhakrishnan Road:









True to his reputation for simplicity, Gandhi walks, while all around him, the rich park their cars to come and walk, too...!

I will be documenting that morning walk of mine...yes, I did take along MLC2 yesterday.

But some things are even more eye-catching than others...


As I turn from Santhome High Road on the Marina, into Radhakrishnan sAlai (erstwhile Edward Elliotts Road), I find that I am suddenly in New York!

( see New York in Chennai )


Well, I was not in a militant mood, I was...affable...!




In Tamizh, the sign says "appapuL" (in Tamizh, "f" sound is written,somewhat awkwardly, with a "therefore" sign written before the "p" consonant...but that wasn't the case here). So, I was appapul instead of affable.



I do enjoy taking my MLC along!


It's beginning to pour with rain again...I'm going to enjoy going to get some vegetables now...

....what about onions, ask the Jains....

One of the things I have been introduced to lately, is

Wheat Grass

and wheat grass juice....

I am hoping that this has a very beneficial effect as an ill person has this every day with two spoons of

honey

I have learnt how to grow this on the balcony; soak the wheat grains overnight, let them drain in a cloth until they sprout, and then scatter them in a pot which has mud and fertilizer....


Here, you can see the various stages of its growth:




The wiki says spinach is just as good, but the green of that grass is definitely soothing to the eye as well!

The weather finally let up a bit today, and I went for an hour's walk; went down to Luz, down Katcheri Road (or Cutchery Road), down Santhome High Road to the Marina, along it and back through Sir Radhakrishnan (earlier Edward Elliotts) Road.

Didn't take a camera, but the images are vivid....

Newspaper vendors, with piles of the day's papers, busy putting in the advertising leaflets, and sorting them out for quick delivery.

Large piles of milk sachets...also being taken for delivery, or being sold as they are, on the pavement.

Several people who are still fast asleep in shop doorways or on the footpath. Some are just waking up, and retying their lungies.

Tea-shops along the way, already bustling with activity; knots of people standing around, eating small biscuits and sipping tea.

Stray dogs everywhere, approaching hopefully, but yet too scared of having a stone chucked at them.

Walkers and joggers in their "uniforms" (branded tees, branded running slacks, branded shoes, and sometimes caps....also branded...) walking or trotting along, also with umbrellas.

Beggars who share the road and footpath with these walkers, yet occupy a different planet.

A tourist taxi that has "Do Before Die" painted on its side. (I wish I had brought my camera after all.)


Women making kOlams along the pavements in front of their homes.

The cars of the rich, parked along the Marina (to have a healthy walk, it's necessary to pollute the atmosphere in your car.)

The autos, getting down to the first demand and bargain for fare, of the day.

Push-carts and "fish carts" (they are "mini carts", which got abbreviated to "min carts"...and "meen" is Tamizh for "fish", so then they became "fish carts"!) and pedal carts with vegetables on them...beginning the day's sales.

Dirty roads and footpaths, with LOTS of plastic and trash.

Puddles that I step over, skirt, or step gingerly through.

The realization that pedestrians have NO rights here. Footpaths are often just that...a FOOT in height from the road level, and difficult to get on, or off.....on the Santhome High Road stretch, often so narrow as to be unusable....

A lone raptor (NOT a Black or a Brahminy Kite, but too far away for id) flapping its wings slowly, fading into the sky.

The glass architecture on Radhakrishnan Road. Some old, gracious buildings, in bad shape.

Grey, leaden sky, not warm at all...but still, humid and sticky.

Traffic increasing as I walk towards home.

Pot-bellied police constables, who, to their credit, are alertly on duty on the roads.

Flower-sellers already displaying their wares...garlands and lengths of jasmine carefully preserved from yesterday.

The realization, once again, of how much I like walking....I am happy, content....and I head for home, coffee, and the day's newspapers.

It was raining in Bangalore. It is raining in Chennai. Well, it held off long enough for me to take a long walk last evening, but this morning it's pouring again.

Here's an image I liked, from the Nandi Hills trip, of Garima holding out her hand to feel the raindrops...







Off to do various duties now...back later, when I can...