Chennai - the ugly

For the longest time now, I have wondered why it is so hard to provide clean toilets/wash rooms in Chennai. When you enter the Chennai International Airport, the first thing that greets you is the unpleasant smell wafting in from the toilets. Woe betide any person who actually wants to use these toilets. One look at the toilets and you will decide that a bladder burst is probably preferable to going through the horror of using them.

Now, if this phenomenon was universal in India, I might have chalked it to some unique Indian characteristic. However, toilets in the Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad airports seem to be well-maintained and in good condition. Why then, is it so hard to maintain similar standards in Chennai?

This phenomenon is not restricted to the Chennai airport. The other day, we went to Mayajaal, advertised as one of the "hang-out" places. The toilets there were again cringe-worthy. I am sure the story repeats itself in most commercial establishments in Chennai, that is, if they provide toilets in the first place.

In the US, I have been spoiled by the abundance of clean restrooms (most of the time), no matter where I go. Thus, I did not use to think twice before gulping down humongous quantities of water or coffee or chai before setting out somewhere. I need to curb this habit now.

I do not think that Chennai-ites have a sloppy standard of hygiene and thus are okay with the anything goes attitude. Then, why? I am unable to solve the mystery of the near unusable toilets.

Forget flyovers, the green-Chennai initiative and widespread use of cellphones. As far as I am concerned, Chennai's first step towards shining would be to provide something as basic as toilets in a decent state.

Update (August 14, 2010): I went to the Sathyam cinema complex today. I am thrilled to report that the bathrooms there were spotless and extremely well-maintained. Like my sister said, maybe I just had the bad fortune to visit the most ill-maintained wash-rooms in Chennai first!

Food in Chennai

Kellogg mango flavored cereal
I spotted this in the local grocery store and was thrilled. I expected something along the lines of Kellogg Special K strawberry cereal, only with real mango pieces instead of strawberry. Unfortunately, this cereal has a suspiciously bright dark- yellow color and tastes like regular corn-flakes soaked in mango Rasna. Sigh.

Guava
I *love* the guava fruit. Back in the bay area, I found guavas only in a bruised state and priced exorbitantly. Here, it is not only unblemished and delicious but is also priced sweetly. Is there any harm in scarfing down 5 guavas a day?

Groceries
To my pleasant surprise, things like tofu and mozzarella cheese are very readily available in all stores. Also, the number of ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat items available is staggering. Ready-made chappathi, idli-batter, idiappam? Yes, yes and yes. A great number of food delivery options are available as well. One thing is for sure. As long as you have the money, you can eat your fill without ever putting a toe outside the home.

Mom's cooking, Dad's feeding
It is taking a great amount of effort to not wolf down mounds of food at every meal time (and every in-between snack-time). I have now banned my parents from buying snacks from outside. That is not stopping them from plying my plate with home-made stuff like vadas and fried fish. Parents, I tell you!! I love them :-).

Bidding adieu to my noble steed

One of the hardest things for me to leave behind during our move was my beloved car, my trusty steed of the past six years. True to the Honda brand, the car was very low maintenance, highly reliable and ran like a charm. Considering that I tend to view cars primarily as a means to transport me from place A to place B without any hassle, this car had been my almost perfect dream car. So ya, having to sell it was a major downer.

Our ad on Craigslist evoked several responses. As luck would have it, we zeroed in on a Tamil buyer. This acted as a palliative in several ways: a) Somehow, the buyer being Tamilian assured us that the car would be taken care of well (this is regionalism - but delusions are comforting). b) My car is already familiar with Tamil being spoken in it (I can be weird that way). c) I had a slightly higher chance of visiting the car if I made a visit to the US.

Soon we found that the buyer, K, was a first time car-buyer in the US. He was also younger than us by a few years. Both these facts put S and me in the the position of advisers. K, a nice chap, was only too eager to lap up any and all the advice thrown his way. So we gave him gyan on maintenance, tires and insurance. I had deja-vu as K asked many of the same questions that I had had when buying my car. In turn, K let us have the car right until the day before we left.

The last time I drove the car was a couple of hours before K arrived to pick it up.
As I turned off the engine for the last time, I literally kissed the car good bye and patted it for its faithful service of all these years.

When K showed up, we handed all the car-keys and the maintenance records to him. Both S and me assured him that he would have a ton of fun with the car. We then threw a barrage of information at him: how to adjust the mirrors, how to get to the expressway, how to drive safe and so on. K dutifully nodded his head.

Finally, he reversed the car, made a right turn and the car disappeared from view. As we walked back to our apartment, I told S that perhaps we had thrown a wee too much advice at K. I was beginning to feel like we were K's surrogate parents. S laughed and protested.

After 20 minutes, the phone rang. It was K. S and I anxiously looked at each other and exclaimed "Oh no, I hope K did not get into any trouble.". S answered the phone. He spoke to K and after he hung up, S looked at me and burst out laughing.

Apparently K had called to say that he had reached home safe and sound. Ha - so K had felt our surrogate-parenty concern enough to let us know of his safe arrival! I *knew* it!

Arrived

The check-in bags had finally been packed and fastened shut. The hand baggages weighed a ton. The last of the trash had been thrown away. Our apartment, my home of the past five years looked empty, save for the five boxes of stuff to be donated. We were set.

Our friend arrived with his SUV. Soon, every last piece of luggage was loaded onto the vehicle. S and me returned upstairs to bade one last farewell to our home. Our eyes met. Though we had barely had had time to even think about missing anything till then, for a brief instant, all the memories built up in the home flashed before us. I felt a lurch in my stomach. Then, it was time for goodbye.

The ride to the airport was smooth. At the airport, our cosiderably weighty luggage got through without any penalties. S and I grinned in relief though the grins drooped a bit when we had to lug our hand baggage to the gate. Oh well, in case we ever had to backpack a house, we were getting good training.

Once we sat in the flight, I waited for take off. When the aircraft's wheels left the ground, we would have officially left the USA. That would be a poignant moment.

I woke up with a start - I had dozed off. Boy, had the last stretch of winding up been tiring! The plane was still. I turned to S and asked why the plane was taking so long to take off. S replied that we had taken off a while ago. I had slept right through the take off!! So much for poignancy!

***

Chennai is great. It is just more than a day since we landed. We are being pampered and are being treated like royalty. For the first time since I moved to the US, I don't have to count the days till I had to leave India again. It is a curiously heady feeling.

I know I will miss the US in a lot of little and a few big ways. I know I will probably be frustrated, annoyed and will have some regrets once the honeymoon period gets over and real life starts happening.

Still, here feels like home and I am lovin' it.

Moving to India

Moving between houses is a pain by itself. But moving across countries takes the definition of pain to a whole new level. The number of tasks that need to be taken care of range from closing myriad gas, electricity, internet, bank, telephone.... accounts and selling every last stick of furniture you have to figuring out how to handle any leftover things once you have actually moved out of the country. Not fun at all, I tell ya.

My stress levels have held steady at the red-danger zone for over a month now. We started executing our move in right earnest from the middle of June. While it seemed a bit early at the time, looking back, it gave us time to take things a wee bit easier than we would otherwise have been able to.

Since then, everyday has brought along its own set of tasks: posting furniture listings on Craigslist , setting up account closing dates , sorting out stuff that needs to be tossed/donated or packed and so on. The last activity is the one which has taken the lion's share of our time. I am now ready to run at the sight of any box. Besides, nowadays, everytime I need to pack something, my brain slows down so much in protest that I can actually see things happening in slow-motion. Only two more days, Archu, only two more days.

My biggest consolation is, once we get back to India, our support system is so well-entrenched that many of the settling in tasks can be delegated or at least be moved along with generous doses of help.

On the work front, things have worked out awesomely well. I can't believe the number of hoops my manager and my company has jumped through to make sure that I can continue working for them from India as well. I must tell ya, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I am valuable enough to be worth making all that effort for. My ego has gotten boosted by several hundred points.

Curiously enough, in spite of all the moving work that we are doing, I still feel like we are going on vacation rather than moving back permanently. I guess three months in Chennai would cure me of that notion.

I will keep you folks posted as we go through the process.

Home sweet home

The first reaction I got from most fellow Indians when I told them that I was moving back to India was the last one I expected: envy. Most of them sighed and said they wished they could go back home as well.

Thinking back, I guess it is a predictable reaction from most first generation Indians who arrived in the US thinking that they would go back to India in a couple of years. In reality, two years became three, three became five, five became ten and suddenly, the roots had grown so deep that acceptance slowly started to creep in that perhaps US was home now. Still, that does not stop residual guilt from popping up when someone else is implementing their original plan. There, that is my Freudian analysis for today.

Coming back to me, next week this time, S and me will be on a flight back to India, going back to home sweet home: Chennai, India. It took me time to get used to the idea that I will be leaving the country I have lived in for almost 9 years now for good. The bay area, especially, boasts the privilege of hosting me for 7 years continually, a privilege which no other city has had in all my years of existence. I will miss the city, its weather, its parks, its community recreation center, its roads and most of all, the lovely city library.

Still, the idea of being among family and friends, celebrating all the major festivals with pomp, not missing out on the various functions, eating delicious food, having a very well-entrenched support system and finally going HOME is very intoxicating. Both of us are very much looking forward to it.

India, here we come :-D!

The aim game

I have written about my not-so-happy bowling experiences before. Little wonder then, when we had to choose an activity for a team-outing at work, I steered clear of Bowling and Bocche ball (which sounded like it involved plenty of aiming as well) and voted for Laser-tag and Go-karting instead.

Most of the rest of the team voted for Go-karting as well. We picked a location which offered Go-karting as well as mini-golf. Now, while mini-golf involves aiming as well, during my previous mini-golf outings, while nowhere near the best, I had at least fared average, on par with most of the other participants. So I was not unduly worried about winding up as the mini-golf idiot.

Last Friday, after a hearty lunch at a Thai place, we decided to begin our outing with a round of mini-golf. Two teams were formed. We began playing. Plenty of good-natured laughter ensued when for some people, the ball merrily went over, around, beside, across but not into the hole. Oh goodie, if I was going to make a fool of myself, I at least had company. Hurrah!

Then my turn came, I hit the ball and to my pleasant surprise, it went right into the hole in a decent number of strokes, without much detouring. Nice!

We continued playing. Lady Luck, who had favored me for the first hole, continued to sit on my shoulder. At every hole, my ball went precisely where I wanted it to go, stopped at convenient places and never once overshot its intended position. Of course, there were other good players as well - but I could not believe that I could actually count myself among them.

Finally, it was time to tally up the scores. My team had won - yaaay!

And *drum rolls*: I was the one with the best individual score! Among 10 other people. Wonders will never ever cease. I had actually managed to play an aiming game well. Woohoo!

I acted totally cool like I was a born mini-golf pro around my colleagues. However, once I got home, I crowed to S about my "achievement" only about two dozen times over the past weekend. Now, he is just about ready to swing a mini-golf club at me the next time I go, "Guess who had the best score at mini-golf".

Funny how little things can bring big cheap thrills.

Movies watched

Are we there yet? This movie is reason# 1926 as to why one should not pick up random movies from the library simply based on the positive jacket blurbs. Seriously, any person who thinks that kids acting like selfish, insane, sadistic demons are cute need to have their head examined. Even more unbelievable, at the end of the movie, the hero actually decides that he wants these kids kids in his life. As Obelix says, "Tap, tap, tap". In the same situation, I would have probably taken a vow of celibacy for the rest of my life just to eliminate any possibility that I would ever be responsible for bringing such horrible kids into the world.
******

Raavanan Oh God, I hate Aishwarya Rai. She of the open-mouthed, wide-eyed, "Look, I am so paavum" plastic face. I marvel at how the world conspires to make a bad actress worse:
A. dress her up in weirdo deeeeeep necked costumes.
B. Make her mouth dialogs which will never come naturally out of any person's mouth (congratulations Suhasini Maniratnam - your husband must really love you if he voluntarily agreed to let you pen dialogs for this movie)
C. Find a dubbing artiste who has a voice even more annoying than her original voice.

Some things even Maniratnam cannot save. I take back all the positive Ash-Rai comments I made post Guru-watching. I did not like the movie as a whole much either. The locales were stunning but the story jumped around randomly. Mainly, the whole movie was just sooooo boring (this, from a person who ardently watched all the episodes of Ramayan on TV).
******

I rummaged my head hard. I cannot think of any good movies I watched recently just so that I can round out this post. So unfortunately, yet another whine post this is.

For want of a mango...

Last weekend, I spotted an awesome sale on Manila mangoes at the Indian grocery store. Deciding to buy them was a no-brainer. S and me are die-hard mango-lovers. To our pleasant surprise, while nowhere close in taste to the divine banganapalli (sorry Alphonso lovers, banganapalli is the king of mangoes according to me), the mangoes were still pretty tasty. Needless to say, within a week, the substantial collection of mangoes we had brought home dwindled rapidly to zero.

This weekend, we went to the Indian store again, hoping to buy another box of mangoes. To our dismay, the store was out of Manila mangoes. Sigh! We did the rest of our shopping and were ready to go home when S said, "Hey, let's check out the other Indian grocery store nearby. Maybe they have Manila mangoes". We drove the short distance to the other store. I was too lazy to get out of the car, so S volunteered to go check by himself.

Within a couple of minutes, I got a call from S. He excitedly said, "Hey, they have Manila mangoes here. Come on to the store." So I grabbed my hand-bag, got out of the car, locked my door and was about to walk to the store when I spotted that the car-door was unlocked on S's side. How careless, I thought and very responsibly, opened the door, pushed down the lock and slammed it shut. In the split second before the car-door locked, I thought, "Oh, does S have the keys". SLAM. Oh well, too late.

I ran to the store and breathlessly asked S if he had the car keys. He stared at me and said that he had dropped the car-keys onto his car-seat right in front of me. Had he? Ooopz! Ladies and gentlemen, applause please: we were locked out of our car.

But - S in the presence of mangoes is a S engergized. He thrust a box of carefully selected mangoes into my hands and said, "Pay for them and wait near the car - I will go home and get the spare set of keys". Uh S, I don't want to stand in front of the car with a case of mangoes while it took you God-knows-how-long time to cover the 1.5 miles distance to our house and back. I would rather do the trip home with you. S brushed aside my arguments and I dutifully paid for the mangoes while S set off home.

I then settled myself down on the side-walk in front of our car with the box of mangoes beside me. All I needed was to coo a bit and I would have looked like a street mango-hawker. The next step obviously was to pull out my cell-phone to catch up with a friend. After a bit, I lost my awkwardness at my care-of-platform status and was yacking away busily when I saw someone running towards me. I looked up and saw in amazement that it was S! Hey, it had hardly been 10 minutes since he had left. I know he is super-fit and everything but covering 3 miles in 10 minutes seemed to be a sprint worthy of the Olympics!

He opened the car with the spare-key and we set off home. On the way, the secret of his speed came out. He had asked and gotten a ride from a Tamil couple who had been sweet enough to drive in the direction opposite to their home so that S could drop by our apartment and pick up the keys! Ah, okay, so I was not married to a sprinter after all :-D.

We reached home without any further incident. But the icing on the cake came when we parked and were unloading the groceries. S suddenly looked at me and said, "Don't you have a spare key for the car on the key-chain with the apartment keys?". And it all came rushing back to me. Anticipating this exact scenario, about a month or so ago, S had threaded one of the spare car keys onto my apartment-keys key-chain. So, all along, I had had a spare car-key right inside the hand-bag I was carrying. Too bad neither of us remembered that. Brilliant or what?

Picture from here.

Smart phone

I am not much of a gadget-geek. As long as a gadget does what it is primarily meant to do, I do not care for bells and whistles that come attached to it. Thus, for the longest time, my cell-phone did exactly one thing and did it well: it was an excellent mobile phone. It had a great signal, clear un-garbled voice and good battery life. It had neither a camera nor a mp3 player. In other words, it belonged in a cell-phone museum. But I was extremely pleased with it.

AT&T finally got fed up and sent me an ultimatum asking me to upgrade my phone - they were no longer going to even support the technology my phone was on. Sigh! Oh well - I upgraded to another phone with good reviews for voice-quality and battery life. The camera and mp3 player on it were basically a joke though. No problem, I use my canon and my ipod for those purposes anyhow!

Last year, I bought an iPhone for S as a gift. S is not much of an Apple fan though and re-gifted the phone to me after a couple of months of use. I was annoyed at having to give up my beloved no bells and whistles phone. But hey, you don't keep an iPhone lying around with no one using it.

Thus, I started using the iPhone. Initially, what I loved about it was the in-built GPS. It worked so well when we concocted plans on-the-go to visit a previously non-visited destination - just google the address and feed it to the map application - nice! The next draw was the availability of so many good apps for free. I went into app-overload mode for a couple of weeks. Then I began loving the ability to check weather/stocks/email anytime, anywhere.

iPhone, how do I use thee? Let me count the ways:

1. I set the alarm for the morning wake up call and also use the snooze function extensively.
2. I set up appointments and reminders on the calendar.
3. As soon as I wake up, still lying down, I check personal email on it - reading email from family is a nice way to begin the day.
4. Checking and replying to work emails when I am supposed to be on-call off-hours is such a cinch.
5. I love,love,love the maps and GPS functionality.
6. I make shopping lists on it.
7. LoseIt is an awesome app for tracking calories.
8. I carry it to work-meetings and fiddle with it when things go too off-topic (no one knows that you are not using the phone to check work emails >B-))
9. I use it to listen to music.
10. Occasionally it has served as a stand-in camera when I miss bringing along the real camera.
11. Locating restaurants in a new area is so easy.
12. So is browsing for vetti things like what the "Congress-created dust bowl" sign you spotted on the highway means.

Oh, I could go on and on and on. I realize now: A smart-phone is one of those things that you do not miss having in your life till you have owned one.

However, I do have a gripe - the iPhone mostly does not have a strong enough signal and the voice quality sucks. Really, would that be too much of a requirement to ask of an i-PHONE?