Cycling in Chennai

 Rode a cycle after almost 13 years. The one before 13 years was also a just few 100 meters. There was a cycle which was collecting dust and I gave it to service and he charged me a bumper. It was almost like servicing a two wheeler. He had changed two tires and tubes. The service charge alone was 700 Rs.

I was actually worried about cycling back home as there is a subway and some years back I was not able cycle the uphill part of the subway. The other scary part was people constantly honking behind us. I was looking for a rear view mirror habitually and there was none.

Whenever I had to turn I was looking for the indicator switch and few times I tried to accelerate by throttling the right handle.

So it took me sometime to adjust to basic cycle.

The good part is I was able to do the slope easily than I had feared. So its a little comfort that there is some fitness left in me.

But riding cycle in Chennai roads would not be a pleasant experience.

Petrol Bunk Cheating

 In Chennai Petrol Bunks are a place where you can get duped easily. I have been duped at least 3 times which I am aware of. Today I asked for 200 Rs of Petrol and gave Rs 500. The guy started rambling everyone is giving 500 and don't I have change etc etc. He gave me back Rs 400 in different denomination. I was so distracted by this time I tried to put that 400 in my pocket. He told "Sir, There is 400 Rs in that". Then I realized I am only supposed to get back Rs 300. So gave him back 100. Then he again started pouring petrol for 100. I asked him did he put only for 100 earlier and he confirmed yes. He very well knew I asked for 200 Rs worth Petrol but he distracted me so much now I realize in total he must have delivered only Petrol worth Rs 100. But there is no way I can prove this as I didn't check the first time if he actually delivered Petrol for Rs 100.

Most of the techniques are distraction techniques. They ask you some weird question about the vehicle, they play around with the change so you don't actually is looking at what is happening in the meter. 

I do not think anything can be trusted any more.

Tryst with BSNL

Telephones have always fascinated me. Especially the one with older model dial pad. I used to love even the dial tone. We had our own landline very late compared to my friends and neighbors. Whenever I got a chance to be alone with a telephone I used to play with the dial pad. I used to dial random numbers and cut them without answering. I used to get such opportunities whenever I visited my Dad's office during Saturdays or when I visited some of my rich friends.

Those days the telephones used to smell differently. There used to be a scent which was used over the telephones which gave that scent. Sometimes I remember it was even used as an alternate to body perfume.

Before we received our own we used to receive calls at our neighbors and they will give us a shout that we have a call. We will feel sorry that we are causing trouble to them but we had no other choice. Also we should be conscious of the time we speak.

When my parents applied for one I was elated. The process was to apply with the telephones department by paying a deposit and you had to wait till they provide you with one. We received it in 1999 and I was already an year out of college. 

By the time we received ours the dial pad had changed to modern button based one. But still I loved it. We had our own landline and was happy that I can fill the telephone column in all application forms.

Over the period Chennai Telephones had undergone so many changes. I used BSNL for my internet connection as well. The service level continued to deteriorate and sometimes can frustrate you beyond what you can take.

Today I surrendered my almost 22 year number. I didn't want to do that but the phone was out of order for 2 months and they didn't care to fix it. I was left with no other choice other than to close it. The process was pretty simple than expected. They didn't ask me anything. It was as if they were just waiting for me to come with closure request.

The memories of BSNL and our number will always remain with me.

A brief history of Palavanthangal Gate

 I was searching for some old snaps of Palavanthangal (Pazhavanthangal) before the subway was built. But google didn't share any results. I myself do not remember taking any photographs of the old Palavanthangal. So all I have now is whatever image of the railway gate (which was there before the subway was built)  is etched in my mind.

I am someone who like to time travel to the past using my mind to reminisce the old days. Today my thoughts went back the days before the subway was built and the days when it was being built.

We settled very close to the station around 1984 and our residence was on the GST road side and not on the Nanganallur side. So technically our area was called Meenambakkam while the landmark near by to our house is always mentioned as Palavanthangal subway. Obviously I cannot write anything about how this place was before 1984. I wanted to capture as much as I can remember about the time between the railway gate got converted into a subway.

As my school was in Kodambakkam there was not a single day during my childhood that I did not see the railway gate junction. Everyday morning we used to hurry to Palavanthangal station and take the then meter gauge train to Kodambakkam.   

We were living near Saidapet railways station and it was a very busy place even in those times. Our house in Palavanthangal was getting constructed and my mother used to take me along with her to visit the construction during some evenings. For someone coming from a concrete jungle Saidapet Palavanthangal had the charm of a rural area. It had newly constructed houses lot of greeneries. Even the well in Palavanthangal looked different from the well we had in Saidapet. It looked almost untouched by human invaders. After visiting the construction when we return my mother used to take to a Hotel which was very close to the railway station. The hotel was called "Hotel Asoka" and it was situated on the left hand side when you walk towards Vembuliyamman Koil. Remember there was no subway it was just a normal street. My favorite used to be Bonda and Rosemilk. 

Since this railway gate was the only connection between GST Road and Nanganallur (Thillai Ganga Nagar Subway didn't exist then) there used to be huge traffic near the gate. Whenever the gates were closed traffic used to pile up. Also the gate was very close to the track of the train towards beach and it will be difficult to see if a train is indeed coming. So many times have crossed the closed gate by pushing the cycle through it.

Dr. Saravanan had his clinic where the ICICI ATM (close to Umar Biryani) is currently situated. Amudha Medicals was right next to his clinic and Anandhi medicals (Current Bakery Garden group) used to be on the opposite side of the road. Both these medical shops exists today at near by locations. Dr. Saravanan still practices as Jai Scans. Visited the doctos clinic so many times. Then he moved his clinic little further where current Amudha Medicals exists. Near by the Amudha medicals we used to have Bata showroom from where we used to buy all our school shoes and near to that there was a fancy items shop.

Anandhi store, Kali store they continue to exist from those days carrying forward the legacy. Kali store has moved little further while Anandhi store was there at the same place if my memory is right.

Near Anandhi medicals there was a bakery called "Jacintha Bakery". My dad used to take us there and we used to buy all our snacks there. Many types of biscuits, chips, bread, bun butter jam used to be available there. Close to that we used to have a newspaper shop and Soda shop. Drinking Paneer Soda in this shop in a steel tumbler during summer used to be like the best drink.

There used to be a Video cassette lending library very close the gate.

Selvam sweet shop, the tea shop, ground nut shop near by the station still exist. 

On the road which runs parallel to the track we used to have a rental cycle shop and thats were we used to rent the small cycles for an hour. Even though the cycles will be in bad shape that was the only way for us to ride a cycle and we used to love it.

The Sakthi Fast Food, Umar Biryani, Bakery Garden, ATMs never used to be there.

The place has been transformed into a totally different place once we had the subway. 

Since we used to live on the GST road side we had our own Nathan store for our provision needs. 

As and when I remember more details I will keep updating this post.

Frustrated

Can you go and place cut outs or banners in the side of any road in London, New York or Los Angeles? No you cannot. You will be immediately booked.

There is one country in the world which gives that total freedom which no other country provides. Yes that is India.

But the interesting thing is whenever a mishap happens the officials will give a statement saying they didn't give permission for erecting that banner. There cannot be a much more incompetent statement than that.

In a day we can see so many banners for how many of them did the officials give permission or the erectors took permission? Zilch. Now how many people have been booked for not getting permission to erect banners? Zilch. As long as everything goes without any issues anything is fine in this country. When something bad happens these guys shirk their responsibility and say they did not give permission.

I would say these officials who didn't take action against people violating the law are bigger culprits than the offenders. These guys should be punished severely than the culprits. If only these idiots had enforced the law people will try to abide by the law.

Though "திருடனாய் பார்த்து திருந்தாவிட்டால்" logic is there policing is equally or more important for giving a reason for the robber to change.

Life has no value here in India. All over this blog you will see the same frustration. I would love to see those officials booked.

Besant Nagar Beach

Just visited Besant Nagar beach yesterday and I could see some difference in the way the wave was hitting the shore. Normally the shore will be slanted towards the sea. The waves will hit the shore and then go back as quickly as it came. But I could see the bed had become flatter and the water stagnates. Even if there is no wave there is some amount of water that is present like a lake. This was something weird has I have never seen it in Marina or in Elliots. Kovalam has a flatter bed compared to the city beaches but it was really weird to see the flat bed yesterday.

Fools

When it rains in Chennai the same roads which we took in the morning easily can become traps in the evening. Driving through the same road day and again you become so familiar with the potholes as if they are your fingerprints. During return with water logging the same roads may look like lake Mekong.

But that is not the thing that I wanted to highlight. When there is water stagnant in the road and we are riding a bike, we are familiar with situations where carwalas speeding past us without caring about splashing water all over us. But when the same is done by someone who is also riding a bike what can we call them? Chennai is filled with such fools all over. 

Bhogi

While we were young Bhogi used to be more special than Pongal. The preparation for Bhogi starts few days earlier in terms of buying the best drum. Especially the Saidapet market area used to have so many varieties in drums right from the original "clay skin drum" to latest plastic ones.

Once you buy the clay skin drum the next job is to have a proper drum beating stick. It will be mostly a stick from broomstick with a ball of tar placed at the top. We used to search for tar melt it and them put it as a cap at the end of the stick. With the right size your drum will generate great noise.

Will the drum in hand we will be running around making a hell of noise.

Then comes the actual burning and heating your drum over the roaring fire and tuning it is a pleasant experience.

As we grew it became more about staying awake the entire night for Bhogi but getting permission from parents was difficult owing to the weather. Still we used to stay awake late and get up early. The thicker the fog the more happy we were. There were times when we had used "thennai olai" as material for compound wall and during Bhogi people will take away those things.

Looking at the fog outside I feel the burning factor of Bhogi remains the same but whether this generation kids will get to see the Bhogi we did remains a question.

The Dhalapathy song made Bhogi even more attractive.

Hail TNEB 2

Hail TNEB post here

Nothing has changed still they continue the maintenance with utmost care 8 hrs a day. It will be good if we can get a record of activities they do during this 8 hours power cut.

Other government agencies should learn from TNEB on customer care.

One Way

A road is marked as one way. I go in wrong direction in that road. I will be caught by the police and punished for rule violation.

A road is marked as one way. A police vehicle is parked and police looks upon when people go in wrong direction. They don't take any action. Now shouldn't they be punished for breaking their rule which is to catch those breaking the laws?

In India laws are made by police and not by constitution. The ones made by constitution are just in papers.

Punctured

One of the worst nightmares that can come true is your bike getting punctured when you are on the way to work. If it is in Chennai then it is special.

As per murphys law your bike always get punctured at a place where there wont be any sign of puncture shop in the neat vicinity. It has happened to me umpteen times and every time I had to talk quite some distance to find a shop.

Another specialty is the guy will never come to the place where the bike is. He will always ask you to bring the bike. Pushing the bike with punctured wheel will only do more damage and that is what they expect. Even if you are ready to cough up more money they don't budge.

The first answer you get is the puncture can't be repaired and we have to go for new tube. Important reason is the mouth and the puncture hole is worse because you pushed it all the way to shop at his request.

Noahs Ark

Is it time for Noah's Ark in Chennai? It is raining like never before. It's been raining without break for almost 18 hrs and this is after the pounding Chennai received right before Diwali. After a long time saw Palavanthangal subway filled with water and the traffic cut off. Had a horrible experience of travelling 2 kms in 1hr on Friday but today's weather makes Friday's weather look like a walk in the sun.

Never before I have wished for rains to stop but this time I wish the pounding stops. Nature is scary.

Confusion

There are lot of things to write about but at the same time there is nothing much to write about. Whatever I am going to say has already been said and its difficult to be non repetitive.

How can there be a post without my favorite topic Chennai. It just drizzled in Chennai and Chennai transforms into Venice. For the water starved Chennaites rains brings misery instead of cheer. When you wake up and notice its raining outside you can already feel that sick feeling in your stomach.

Traffic comes to standstill and roads have potholes that can trip T-Rex.

On Kochadaiiyaan teaser, to be frank I never had any hopes that this movie will even see daylight. I still feel the same as we haven't been shown anything significant. There can be two reasons why nothing is being revealed. One the film has really come out magnificently and they genuinely want to maintain secrecy, two there is no movie except for 2 or 3 stills and 10 sec teaser. It's time to see some really good movie from Rajinikanth which hasn't been happening for sometime.

Chennai updates

For the past few days its been raining during evenings in Chennai. The day time temperature has also reduced drastically. This is not usual.for a city like Chennai. The only complaint I have is the roads are a total mess and it is very difficult to drive through. But for a water starved city like Chennai I think its better to welcome the rains than complaining.

Mumbai

Roamed around Mumbai almost after almost 28 years. Though I visited Mumbai in early 2000 it cannot be counted as it was just a stopover before catching a connecting flight.

Mumbai looks like a giant when compared to Chennai. The place is bursting at its seams with people. The city looks very active and it was really fun to roam around the city.

Mumbai is far ahead of Chennai in Infrastructure. In Chennai for so many years we have only LIC but every other building in Mumbai is a LIC.

The variety of food available there is awesome. It can be called a true cosmopolitan city.

Gloomy Chennai

Chennai is at its gloomiest best. Feeling like being in London. It was cloudy and windy for the past few days and today rain has caught up with the wind. Chennai has had shortfall in rain this season hoping for a miracle to avoid water scarcity.

Rewatched "About Schmidt" couple of days back. The opening scene is one of the best scenes to embrace movie world. It conveys so many things. It can also be related to the scene where Meg Ryan closes her shop for the last time in "You've Got a Mail".

Raj Video Vision

I was longing for buying some good Tamil Movie DVD/Bluray. But due to lack of shops my wish never got fulfilled. Earlier Landmark used to have lot of collection but slowly it dwindled. Moser Baer had huge collection but we dont see Moser Baer in the racks.

Last week me and my friend decided to hit the Raj Video Vision store in Anna Salai. I didnt have much hopes as I always felt Raj lacks quality be it Television or Home Video. But the stores look and the collection I saw there completely floored me. I was like a kid in a candy store. But still experience helped me in just choosing 3 movies. So I chose Tenali, Punnagai Mannan and Madras to Pondichery/Adutha Veetu Penn combo. Total came to 407 Rs. I was happy.

At home I inserted Tenali into my player and after whirring for few minutes it said No Disc. Tried with another player same result. So Tenali went to dustbin. Tried Punnagai Mannan it played but they had added rain effect for the entire movie so you will see so many lines which will give you a feeling it is even raining inside the house. Finally the two in one combo both have been directly transfered from Video Cassette to DVD that too from a well used Cassette.

I dont know how this store is surviving for so many year by selling such low quality discs.

School Bus

After the unfortunate event that took the life of a small kid everyone in chennai is in overdrive. They will be like this for a week and go back to their original life style. The problem doesnt lie with that specific school bus or that specific inspector who gave FC for that bus.

The immediate order that came out from government is all school buses should be reinspected. One can only laugh at such amatuerish statements. What about the safety of people travelling in vehicles other than school buses? What about the safety of people travelling in unevenly constructed roads?

Sometime back a kid died after skidding on top of construction material which was put out in the road. They issued an order saying whoever puts construction material in road will be fined or arrested. But it will be difficult to find a road in chennai without construction materials occupying almost half the road.

I have written many times in this blog that human life has very little value in India. The government always washes its hands saying it cannot do anything or does certain things without commitment just to appease the people at that moment.

We have to take care of ourselves in this country where the roads are filled with idiots and the governing authority and the controlling authority (police) are the biggest idiots of them all.

City of woes

Chennai should be called as city of woes. The problems in this city just keeps getting worse. Both nature and man play havoc in this city.

Power cut still continues ..
Temparatures hovers above 40 deg celsius for days .. one of the worst summer I have seen .. not a single drop of rain ..
Water scarcity ..
Petrol scarcity .. in a city where buying petrol during normal days itself is a challenge the past one week has been nightmare. It looks like doomsday where people are running around killing each other for water and petrol.
Petrol price hike ..
Cheating petrol pump guys ..
Bus fare hike ..
Electricity tariff hike ..

This city is just destined for disaster.

Laugh out loud

Today I read an article in The Hindu and had a hearty laugh. The point is the article was written with such serious committment. The article says that they are going to introduce ITMS in Chennai. Wow thats really wonderful to start with. The proposed cost for implementation is 150 crores. I can see your imagination running wild and you will be merging the photopraghs of Chennai and London hoping for the better.

But hold on, the moment you expand ITMS you will erase all those imagination and go back to your work. ITMS means Integrated traffic management system. Excellent whoever coined this term deserves a pat in their arse. The article has very high ambition and goes like there will be green channels for ambulances within Chennai so that they wont get struck in traffic. The moment I read that I assumed that they might talking about something like dedicated bus line, which in itself was a non starter. But no its just not about dedicated lane for ambulance you have an Italian Job in your hand. Yes, it seems there will be cameras in all signals and it will find out if an ambulance is stuck in traffic and will immediately change the signal to green. Yes sir this system is being proposed in Chennai not in some futuristic city. When you read such an article you can only laugh through your ass and move on.

But at the end of this project there will be some filthy rich people.