I had been to Chennai in 1997 for a week long school tour and now i am back in 2006 to make my life here... And till now I have been listening to all bad/horrifying stories about Chennai... which had made me to believe that words 'Chennai' and 'Change' are deadly opposite to each other.
It was really heart breaking when I heard that I had go to Chennai as part of my work and after coming here it took me nearly 30-40 days to realize that I have to be part of this city to make my life. Until then Chennai for me was just the home where I stay, office and the bus stand/railway station to go to Mysore/Bangalore...!!. But once I realized that I have to stay here for few months or more to make my life I started exploring Chennai and found that words 'Chennai' and 'change' were quite relative to each other.
Before coming I had heard all these things about Chennai... the people are rude, they don’t care for other state people, they cheat, people are movie crazy, actors & politicians are like demi gods for them, only Tamil & Tamil everywhere, temperature is hot, hotter & hottest... so on and on. And what I have experienced so far is all these allegations are true only to a certain extent and the rest are false.
May be few years back these allegations were completely true but certainly now Chennai has changed. If you look at people they may look they are harsh... rude... but unless you poke nose into their business they won’t matter. The people who we have interacted so far like shop keepers, auto drivers, servants & others have been pretty okay. Yes auto people demand exorbitant rates but we can negotiate, there I saw the major change that is these people trying to talk in bits & pieces of English, Hindi... and trying to explain with sign languages. Of course there are few fanatics who believe in only Tamil but they can be neglected as they don’t matter in our daily affairs.
The next thing that they are movie crazy is absolutely true. We went to multiplex- Sathyam cinemas for night 10.30 show and what really amazed me is all 8 screens were almost running full house. The change I noticed was there was 2 Hindi, 2 English, a Telugu film being played with other 3 being Tamil. So it is not just Tamil. I was told that in Chennai you don’t find good looking people...hmm... but what I saw in Spencer’s shopping mall, Sathyam multiplex, beaches of Besant Nagar, Trivanmiyur, ECR is totally different which made few of us say " Chennai is not that bad...", it may not be a ocean like Bangalore but still here u find rivers & lakes often… Ha… ha...!!
The other major noticeable change is majority of Billboards, sign boards, hoardings are all in English. Well finally Chennai has woken up Globalization, which means more of diversity is seen now which is a welcome change.
Yes there few things which still suck like hot, hotter, hottest weather which is a major problem but nothing can be done about it, the transportation system with old and over crowded buses, slow moving traffic which makes traveling a night mare, though there are local trains which are not very convenient and now Metro is proposed. The major drawback is Chennai doest have a metro nightlife which usually people from other cities find hard to cope up. There are hangouts but not really a metro culture. Well people also need to change their attitude in a big way… at this point of time all I can say is “Chennai is changing” so are the people !!
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