APPLES AND AAPPAMS

Apples need no introduction.  Alas, Aappams do. Aappam is a breakfast staple in the southern tip of India and is presently having a dream run amongst the younger crowd. Aappam is a sort of a thin crepe made with rice-based batter. It is made by pouring the batter inside a wok and twirling the latter such that the batter sticks to the sides in a thin film.  The French call it an Indian Crepe although Crepe should be French Aappam. The fact is that they stole the idea from us - including the twirl - when they were in Pondicherry.

The people from the north of India are generally starved of good, light, tasty food and are partial to greasy, heavy stuff until they discovered a world of southern cuisine beyond Dosas. The French did not steal the last-named from us mainly because they could not distinguish a flat, two-dimensional Dosa from a three dimensional Aappam which takes the shape of the wok in which it is made. Too much wine in tropics does that to you.

There was a significant influx of young northerners into Chennai from the early part of this century, thanks to the general lawlessness up north and the lucrative jobs available in the IT sector here. These hordes pouring into Chennai met good food for the first time resulting in long-forgotten traditional south Indian cuisine being dug up and served. New-found popularity of Aappam is the result of this collision of northern deprivation with southern culinary tradition.

When I was in school Aappams were identified with the Anglo-Indian community. So much so that they were derogatorily referred to as "Aaps", short for "Appams". This was in reference to their habit of not admitting to eating aappams for breakfast, claiming instead that they had "ham and bacon".  We never tired of asking what those boys had for breakfast and the answer would be anything English, but an aappam. The Tamils too ate aappams for breakfast or dinner but were not chary of admitting it. Many an Anglo Indian was raised on good old fashioned aappams and stew until they all upped and went "home" to Australia. My neighbour's mother was an exception and went to Sidcup near London where she assiduously avoided the sun (lest she tanned which would be like returning to her old life) and avoided any references to her early life  in India. Apparently Anglo Indians and aappams did not mix.

Aappam is having a second wind, so to speak. It is all the rage in Chennai now. The restaurants in the Taj hotel group serve aappams but then they cost you an arm and a leg there. Besides their gravies are limited to a watery and weak stew. For a robust "ishtew" with spices and pungency you've got to try aappams from the  numerous small aappam shops in Chennai. They serve a variety of aappams for the vegans, the vegetarians, and for those who like their meat in various forms and flavours.  These establishments, often likened to holes in the wall, display considerable knowledge of marketing principles and bring consumers' latent wants out into the open and then satisfy them but not before converting the wants into needs. Kotler himself couldn't have done it better.

There is a chain of establishments in Chennai devoted to the humble aappam. The chain is named after a mythological figure who was reportedly a wizard in the kitchen. You could avail of a huge variety of aappams and an even wider array of sauces to go with them. What amazes me more than the sheer range of aappams and stews is  the process of ordering them. A young lady, usually  from the North eastern part of India, takes your orders on an Apple iPod and wirelessly sends it off to the kitchen for execution. In the background the consumption of raw material is reconciled with the orders and the day's take at the cash till. It's all accomplished by a so-called "app" running on the Apple device. A happy and unique marriage of traditional food with modern marketing panache and Information technology.

Jargon has it that apples and oranges don't mix.
Evidently Apple and Aappams do.

DIGITAL ALQAEDA

Recently a young man committed suicide when the prosecutor's net was closing in on him. This has set off an extraordinary debate on, among other things, the (American) Legal system, freedom of speech(!!),  ownership, control, and freedom of internet and trite old 60's debate on individual Vs the Establishment. The interesting thing about these debates is that you get to hear only one side: the side of the Digital Elite.They expose, they argue loudly, they condemn chide and they threaten in turns; they are the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all in one. And them being Digital Elite the dissenting voices are not heard - who would want to have a spat with Mike Tyson in the parking lot or with a man carrying an assault rifle with a 100-round magazine?

By all accounts the deceased was a talented young man in the prime of his life and as such it was a tragic waste of a life. It should be considered a waste, even if he hadn't been talented. We lose tens of young people in their late teens every year, unable to cope with the academic and social pressures of the elite institutions into which socio-political engineering parachutes them. They are all tragic and unnecessary deaths which could be avoided if only those responsible had exhibited some wisdom instead of political expediency. Talent alone - or more accurately, the lack of it - does not determine if a death is justified or not. No death, especially at such a young age, is justifiable, whatever the reason.

But the arguments put forward by the Digital Elite  are, to say the least, disingenuous and expose their arrogance and desire to be held to a different - and lower - standard of behaviour. 

The facts of the case are that the deceased young man, Swartz, downloaded millions of documents from two subscription-only databases.The documents are apparently in the public domain and are not the intellectual property of the database owners (MIT and JSTOR). When the prosecutors closed in on him Swartz, fearing sentence as long as 50 years in prison, committed suicide. Even before the case has gone to court the prosecutor has been vilified, the justice system faulted  general threat of retribution made and the deceased sainted.

The entire digital world was immediately up in arms over the incident rounding on the prosecutor in particular and the establishment in general. I wouldn't be surprised if, unable to withstand the intense pressure from the Digital Elite, the prosecutor herself were to commit suicide. I would be equally unsurprised if some of the Digital Elite were to actively seek and work towards such an outcome which they would proceed to justify as a justifiable retribution to avenge a wrong.

The Digital Elite argument is threefold:

1. The rules of normal society do not apply to the Digital Society, especially where it concerns rights and wrongs. Swartz was a digital genius and did not deserve to be treated like a criminal of the garden variety.

2. Swartz has been arguing for freedom on the net. Therefore his act was justified and not criminal.

3. He was anti-establishment and thus deserved a different treatment. One writer went so far as to compare him to Noam Chomsky and Establishment's tolerance of him notwithstanding an uneasy  relationship.

The digital vigilantes have promised to let loose their digital wrath on all and sundry who don't agree with them and have promised specific retribution against MIT. They may also take out (only digitally, I hope) anyone who dares to disagree with them.

What is the merit, if any, in their arguments?

Lets dismiss 4 straight away because it is trite, it is old, has been advanced since 60's and still does not hold water. Simply being anti establishment does not exempt one from the current laws of the land. You will have to change those laws. You are anti-establishment because you are convinced that it is wrong and that conviction arises out of well- reasoned thought. Establishment, having exhausted its reasons, normally reverts to "because  I say so and I am the Establishment" , leading to an impasse.The anti-establishmentarian has no option but to attempt to change the establishment's norms.

Being anti establishment is not a walk in the park; it entails taking on the might of the establishment and all its apparatuses. By nature it is a painful, and one who undertakes it better be ready to be ostracised one way or another and for all manner of minor, major and severe harassments. It is not for the faint of heart. Gandhi took on the colonial establishment and Mandela the apartheid one. They both paid for it  with significant chunks of their lives being taken from them in the form of imprisonments. Even at the height of their struggles neither they nor their supporters cried out for a special or lenient treatment. They paid for their convictions. Do the Digital Elite have what it takes to be anti-establishment? I fear not. Which explains in part their vehemence and anger. Their argument seems to be "we are right and you are wrong". And they carry a very big digital stick which they are not loath to use.

The other three arguments of the Digital Elite have a common and very disturbing underlying theme: "we are the digital elite and the laws of ordinary mortals don't apply to us". The proponents of this line of thought glorify the derring-dos of digital felons who in turn are deified. Stealing may be bad, but digital stealing is nothing short of genius. It seems that the act itself is forgotten if the means are exotic, complicated and requires considerable intelligence. The use of technology seems to cleanse the act of moral turpitude and legal culpability. It is somewhat like saying that one who breaks into your home is a felon; but the guy who cracks the combination of your lock and walks in is a celebrity. By vesting the morality in the tools of the (mis)deed, the Techies are treading on very dangerous ground indeed. A theft should be a theft, period.

A theft is the taking of something that does not belong to you. It does not matter if the person you are taking it from had himself stolen it in the first place. If you were to steal it in order to restore it to its rightful owner, your act is still a theft but the severity is somewhat ameliorated by your intent which is to right an earlier wrong. This latter act can lead to all sorts of moral and judicial complications which is why the simple injunction that "two wrongs dont make a right". If you were socially minded or brave enough to liberate something from someone in order to restore it to its rightful owner, then you should be prepared to pay the price for your act of felony. The problem arises when you punish another man's felony and hold it contemptible and expect to be lionised for your own. This is exactly what the digital elite are doing.

There is another disturbing aspect to the Digital Elites' line of argument. It is a sort of "I am a celebrity, get me out of here" kind of argument. These are claims for immunity on the basis of their elite status. They are so arrogant that they do not even attempt to take a superior moral position, however tenuous, in their defence. The cornerstone of their entire argument is their superior technical abilities. It is as if their technical skills have banished into irrelevance the norms of ordinary discourse. They are not guilty because they say so and they say so because the rules don't apply to them - they are the Digital Elite.

There is a plain and simple lack of balance, moderation and tolerance of dissent and the "other". The world is what the Digital Elite decree it is. Their world view does not provide for dissent, difference or debate or any civilised form of discourse.  Even when they attempt to engage with the world order they so detest, it is always in the shadow of the threat of a digital attack.

Where have we seen this form of behaviour before? The rejection of accepted behaviour, the extreme focus in their cause and lack of balance, an inability to engage with the world and an inability to even see alternate viewpoints let alone accommodate them? A total rejection of due process and instant delivery of justice from the barrel of an AK47?

Doesn't that sound remarkably like Al Qaeda?

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

Like all good people I made my New Year resolutions for the year 2013. I have always made them for decades. I have also, with equal regularity, broken them for years. Like quitting smoking, for instance.  Fifteen years of resolutions to quit didn't help beyond the first weeks of the New Years. Finally my GP's refusal to attend to me unless I quit forced me to give up. I haven't looked back since, a full quarter century later. Dealing with Wine has been a lot easier given the serious mismatch between my preferences (single malt) and local availability (rot gut). Women were never a serious pursuit (I am not saying this to please my family - it is due my Tambram origins and upbringing) and I am not a warbler, even of the bathroom variety.

I am no glutton and am not a party animal. I don't need to make serious lifestyle changes except exercising. I have embraced the last named since the middle of last year and believe it is keeping my bad stuff down and good stuff up - I am too chicken to get them tested.

What I mean is I don't need to make fresh resolutions for living a better life - my Tambram credentials ensure that I cannot lead a more boring - and virtuous - life.

Still I have made some resolutions for the year 2013. These involve the following:

A. Drive like a local which entails

1. Driving around in vehicles with blackened windows notwithstanding its express prohibition by the Supreme Court.
2. Installing and using a multi-tone horn in my car and honking it as often and as long as I possibly can
3. Flying a party flag from the hood of my car to secure immunity from the police
4. Not stopping at red lights in line with principles of Physics which hold that slower speeds increase chances of collisions and slowest speed presents the most risk of collision. 
5.  Lanes are for wimps and the entire road surface is meant to be used. If the only way to take a right turn is from the extreme left lane, so be it. I believe they do this in some states in the USA, only the other way around.

And so on

B. I shall flout all laws and regulations. Those who can flout the law do so. Those who can't, invoke discipline, courtesy and such  nonsense. Discipline and courtesy are for the wimps. We Tamils hail from a proud martial tradition.

C. I shall force my way through queues at cinemas, hospitals, restaurants, railway stations, chemists etc. "They also serve who stand and wait" may be OK for Milton and those who want to serve.. But I want to be served which entails others standing and waiting while I am being served. I shall elbow sharply those who get in my way and stare down anyone who raises an eyebrow.

D. In the time-honoured Chennai tradition I shall share my all with everyone around and that includes my thoughts, family stories, phone conversations etc. This entails expressing thoughts, and conversing on phone at the loudest my larynx can manage. Even in public. Sharing will also involve sharing my garbage as in leaving my garbage in front of the neighbours' homes. My children however will not squat in front of my neighbours' homes - they are too grown up for that. The sharing shall  include one's B.O.

E. To keep the family ties alive I shall visit family often and without prior information. Since life starts early in Chennai these visits shall be early in the day or mid afternoon which for some may be waking and siesta times. Family means never having to say you are coming, to paraphrase Love Story.

F. I shall take an active interest in culture, attending concerts during the Chennai Music Season. This may involve acting knowledgeable in matters musical, discussing the merits or lack thereof of musicians and composers, carrying songbooks to concerts and sharing my knowledge with those around. I shall also endeavour to make notes during concerts which is a highly evolved skill considering that it has to be done in a darkened concert hall while listening to the singer and discussing the finer points of the raga with the neighbour despite his / her obvious lack of enthusiasm for my views.

G. I shall take an active interest in match-making between eligible boys and girls and strive to ensure that Chennai does not fall victim to the kind of "one for four" demographic problem that afflicts China today. In the absence of constant encouragement and nudging young people today tend to forget to have babies.

H. I shall  feign indifference in the affairs of neighbours and goings on in the neighbourhood. This might involve, among others, keeping oneself abreast of their family matters with particular focus on family squabbles, financial affairs, affairs of the heart, spending habits, saving habits (or lack thereof) and generally all matters which enable one to conclude how badly others manage their lives as opposed to how well one does.

In short, I resolve to become 100% Chennai-ite in 2013.

PS: The above list is only indicative and not exhaustive. Others may find obvious omissions in the list and I encourage them to make additions to the list as they deem fit and compose their own resolutions.

DON'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

Long ago, when he was still on top of his game, golfer Seve Ballesteros  used to extol the virtues of American Express cards on TV. He used to end the advert with an exhortation "don't leave home without it" ("donlivhhomewithoutit" in Seve-speak). Years later when my daughter was going abroad alone for the first time she wondered what to pack for the trip. I advised her to not leave home without her Common Sense.  Everything else could be purchased or procured one way or another.

There is this woman in Belgium who evidently has not had the benefit of such wisdom from any quarter.

 Belgium, you may recall, is a very small country and in the time it takes to make your way from Malad to Colaba in Mumbai or Central Station to Singaperumal Koil in Chennai or Gurgaon to the University area in Delhi, you can go round Belgium twice with time for a coffee or beer in between. In the case of going from point A to point B in Bengaluru you could do Belgium twice as many times. Hitler's armoured columns led by Heinz Guderian took a leisurely stroll across Belgium and entered France in the space of a day or so - his tanks were very slow and needed to be fuelled every 40 or 50 miles. English tourists driving to their Continental vacations take an hour or so to cross Belgium and that is when disembarkation queues are especially long.

Belgians come in two flavours  the French speaking Walloons of the South and the Dutch-speaking Flemings of the North. Unlike their cousins the lemmings, the Flemings do not run to the nearest cliff only to jump off it, perhaps because there are no cliffs in Belgium. When stressed, they do run off to a monastery and brew some excellent beer. The Flems  are generally regarded as the  Belgian version of Poles or, if you prefer an Indian comparison, Sardars. While the Flemish painted some great art, they are otherwise not known for their mental acuity. It is surmised that the time spent in Belgium as a miner had something to do with van Gogh cutting his ear off in later life - he didn't realise that the ear he was cutting off in the mirror was his own.

There is this woman in Belgium whose name is not van Gogh nor is she a known relative of van Gogh. She is a 21st century exemplar of the low mental abilities of the Belgians. She started one day from her home in Belgium to go to Brussels, 38 miles away, and ended up 900 miles away in Zagreb in Croatia. She attributed this to meticulously following the instructions of her GPS system.

She seems to have ignored many a warning sign:
Firstly, within a few minutes of her starting her drive she must have crossed a border to France, Luxembourg Germany or Netherlands, depending on which route she took. Border signposts in these countries are all in different languages and even when there is no one at the check posts, traversing them entails driving through in a zigzag at very slow speed. Despite their lack of mental acuity Belgians do not build zigzags in the middle of their highways, a fact that seemed not to have piqued her curiosity.
Secondly, the highways are all well-signposted and are in German / Dutch / French as the case may be. The last time Belgian roads were signposted in German was in 1941 after the aforementioned Herr Guderian took his afternoon stroll.
Thirdly, the road signs on these Autobahns / Autoroutes  point to towns which have not been known to have been part of Belgium in the last five thousand years. Her own destination must have been conspicuous by its absence on these road signs. She said later, "I saw all kinds of traffic signs. First in French, then in German - Cologne, Aachen, Frankfurt," but chose to trust her GPS rather than common sense
. 
Fourthly, crossing  Germany of France would have entailed driving through some thick forests and hills as opposed to the flat Belgian countryside.
Fifthly, she would have had to cross the Alps at some point. While not as great as the Himalayas in height or grandeur, there is no mistaking the Alps for Belgian landscape.
As she was nearing her destination, she must have noticed architecture with more than a passing resemblance to the Islamic style. Far from the Belgian barnyard style.

Above all, 40 miles is at worst one hour's worth of driving as opposed to 900 miles which, assuming your car could sustain the speed would have taken over fifteen. That much of driving involves loo-breaks, coffee breaks and lunch / dinner breaks all of which she appears to have taken without sparing a thought as to why she needed a break for a 40-mile trip.
I know of no car which could take you 900 miles in one tank full of fuel. Jeremy Clarkson reportedly did London -Edinburgh-London on one tank full of diesel in a large car with an even larger fuel tank and that's only 800 miles. At the fuel stop she should have noticed a different price, indicated in a different language, but apparently not.

Her faith in her GPS seems to have been absolute and unshakable to the extent that she did not doubt its directions but floored the pedal instead."I didn't ask myself any questions. I was just distracted, so I kept my foot down".

Clearly she left home without it.

THE MUSIC "SEASON "

November and December months in Chennai are somewhat optimistically known among the native music lovers as "The Season", reminiscent of the summer "seasons" in Hill Stations of the colonial era. Like the those events, the Chennai season is also based on exclusion and exclusivity. The defining requirement is a fair knowledge of Carnatic music or at least a credible pretence of it.

Like the hill stations, the music season too does not take well to democratisation. The influx of hoi polloi and lumpen proletariat have rendered  the queens of the hills overcrowded, dirty, deforested and generally denuded of their original charm. The Chennai season attempts to avoid such democratic disaster by requiring a basic minimum knowledge of Carnatic musical idiom or, as I said earlier, at least a good pretence of it. This arrangement works well.

Those without even a passing familiarity with this form of music prefer decadent film music with its borrowed themes, prettified voices, electronic gimmickry and crude double entendres. They stage their own musical festival, also around the same time. Suffice it to say serious musicians do not perform at those and the audience tend to be of a certain jingoistic socio-political persuasion. These events are known as Tamizh Isai Vizha (Tamil Music Festival) which for the cognoscenti is an oxymoron.

Given that November and December in the South Indian calendar are inauspicious for weddings, many halls are available to host musical concerts.The evenings are pleasant and conducive to dressing up in heavy silk saris. This conjunction of possibilities is the origin of the Madras Music Season. Then Madras became Chennai and I.T. became all the rage making Chennai more prosperous. Suddenly everyone wanted to be part of the cultural scene and rediscover their cultural heritage. The Chennai Music Season was born.

Concerts are sponsored by "sabhas" which literally are gathering of people. There is a clear pecking order amongst the sabhas with the higher echelons patronised, sponsored and bank-rolled by old money. Sabhas run on subscriptions (mostly from pensioners) are "virtual", to use a modern phrase,  hire venues for their concerts and do not give away free passes. They generally claim to be more serious about the music. At the bottom of the musical pyramid, Builders and Developers sponsor many concerts and distribute free VIP Passes to their prospective customers. Much to their chagrin, the recipients discover that every one is a VIP. Such concerts are more about marketing new homes than about music. Still people come attracted by an evening out and snacks and coffee.

Comments like  "nalla irundhadhu" (it was good) are as much about  the music as about the quality of snacks served. The crowd numbers must not be confused with those who actually  listen to the music - many turn up for the food. It is possible to have all three main meals of the day at the sabhas and at a reasonable price too. It is therefore not surprising that Sabhas are also ranked by the quality of food they serve. Caterers use the music season to hone their skills in preparation for the imminent wedding season. For many music lovers the quality of catering is an important determinant in choosing a concert to attend.  Chennai's army of music lovers marches on its palate.

The City sees much influx of people from afar during this season:  people avoiding the northern winter, NRIs making the obligatory visit "back home", Mumbai residents who cant decide between Chennai and Mumbai and Bangaloreans who have no culture to speak of. A recent phenomenon is NRI kids, mostly from America, coming to perform at the Chennai festival. Participation allegedly enhances their chances of an Ivy League admission. A host of Serviced Apartments have sprung up to cater to this trend. Sabah-crawling is known and people are known to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at different sabahs, and teatime snacks at yet another one.

In Madras of yore, the artistes were mostly indigent and the audience were economically better off and it showed in the way they dressed. Today the artistes are much better off and dress accordingly, whereas the audience looks like it has just rolled off  a bed. Most female artists coordinate their outfits with those of their accompanists. Lots of gold ornaments and flowers -also colour coordinated- are in evidence. The dancers, though, for the most part look as if someone painted them instead of the picket fence.

Some of the Madras audience was musically knowledgeable  and the rest polite. Chennai audience comes prepared; seriously prepared. They come armed with little booklets of lyrics and raaga notes. No sooner a new piece is begun, they all assiduously search their little books and lean back with satisfaction when they have identified the song and its technical details. The aficionados hum along at the beginning of each piece and then proceed to shake their heads vigorously in appreciation. Audience appreciation is expressed whenever it is deemed due, even in the middle of a piece; but the artistes do not seem to mind.  The techies and NRIs in the audience can be spotted videographing the concert, despite its express prohibition,  for the benefit of a wider audience on YouTube.

In Madras the concerts served a useful purpose as a marital clearing house where information about "suitable" young men and women was exchanged with a view to striking an "alliance". The parents of the boy and girl were introduced to each other by well-meaning friends or relatives and if they hit it off, the boy got to meet the girl around the sacred fire on the wedding day. In Chennai I have not personally encountered a single such instance despite being the parent of a "most eligible" young man.

People, I guess, are too busy checking out the food to check out boys or girls.

LIVING IN THE PAST

Many years ago Chennai was still Madras and Perambur used to reverberate to the music of Cliff  Richard and the Beatles.  As yet unknown in Madras save for a few die-hard aficionados,   Jethro Tull sang of England

Happy and I'm smiling,

Walk a mile to drink your water.

Walk a mile to drink its water? That is decidedly inadvisable in Chennai, walk or no walk. Some smart people have founded lucrative businesses providing allegedly "clean and safe" water. There is much that can be said against alcohol but it must be admitted that it is a very good disinfectant. It is not surprising that half of Chennai is pickled in the stuff most of the time. For the convenience of commuters making their weary way back home from work, alcohol is even dispensed in 100 ml sachets. No wonder that Water and Alcohol constitute the two most lucrative businesses in Chennai. Chennai also does roaring business in gold but one can not eat or drink it. The yellow metal also appears to be more abundant that aqua in this city.

In Madras we drew water for our daily needs from wells which every house had, or collected it from our taps which not all houses had. We did not pass it through fancy filters, ultraviolet devices or reverse osmosis plants but drank it straight up - I would have said "on the rocks" but for the fact that cooling water with ice was thought to cause cold, sore-throat, fever, and everything this side of AIDS. Nor did we need to disinfect it with  liberal quantities of alcohol. Today we are sold water allegedly sourced from lofty mountains and holy rivers  and reportedly passed through magical machines and purifying processes. None have been near either source except perhaps inside a plastic bottle. Alternatively, they will sell you purifying equipment so fetchingly promoted by yesteryears Bollywood leading ladies and their daughters.

When I was a student in Madras we used to protest against many things, but water was not one of them. Later, when water scarcity became acute, it was even jokingly said that Madras did not have  a water problem for there was no water; there was just The Problem. There was a war in Viet Nam, which was a very popular subject for protests. It was easier to get young people to rally around this issue than even  increases in college fees. Anything and everything was a just cause for a walk down the streets of Madras raising good natured slogans with a lot of gusto, little conviction and  absolutely no rancour at all. They were all jolly picnics albeit a bit hot and sweaty. They provided the much-needed opportunity to spend time in close proximity to girls without the parents suspecting monkey business. An occasional bus or two was burnt, when stones for pelting were hard to come by. The Madras girls did not burn their bras though. 

Once I used to join in 

every boy and girl was my friend. 

Then an ageing actor with a bad lisp who called himself the "Revolutionary Actor"  took an interest in politics. He had neither  revolutionary nor acting credentials, but somehow had a huge fan following, much like a latter-day super-star whose entire stardom was based on an ability to flip a cigarette from its pack with one hand and catch it with his teeth. His on-screen acts consisted mainly of cavorting with young lasses half his age, singing songs with social messages, lisping his way through unmemorable lines and some linguistic jingoism, not to mention beating up forty baddies in one go without breaking into a sweat. His revolution was to stand the then political wisdom on its head and establish movies as the gateway to political power - a case of Life imitating Art. Now we have sixty revolutions per minute, and in the words of Mr. Anderson of the Tull, 

Now there's revolution, but they don't know 

what they're fighting

Despite all of this, I catch myself wanting to sing

You know I'd love to love you,

And above you there's no other.

But with each passing day it gets that much harder. The Tull, however, provide a way out:

Oh no, we won't give in,

Let's go living in the past.

It seems to me to be the only sensible way to live in Chennai.

STREETS OF CHENNAI

In Madras the streets were named after their designated uses, as in Godown Street which was full of "godowns" or warehouses.  Its proximity to the Madras port encourages the conjecture that the cargoes unloaded  from merchant ships were stored in these godowns before being "shipped" off to "mofussil" towns. There was an entire street named for Coral Merchants and another was simply known as flower bazaar.

Some were named for the communities which populated them, as in Armenian street or Beri Chetty street which were homes to merchants hailing from Armenia or the Beri Chetty community. And then there was the time honoured tradition of naming streets after prominent citizens. Theagaraya and Nair roads were named after two stalwarts of the Justice Party (a pro-colonial and anti-Brahmin movement) which went on to morph into the Dravidian social movement  and thence into Dravidian political parties.

Pantheon of Hindu or Christian deities and saints also lent their names to streets, avenues and boulevards. They even named a street after the first person to build a house on it (Chinnaiah street). Then there are the mandatory "mada" streets which are streets forming  rectangles around  temples and /or the temple tanks. I would be remiss if I omitted to mention that streets were also named for popular celluloid heroes of questionable looks and even less talent, names resplendent with the obligatory honorary doctorate and French honours which no one seems to think much of.

Certain Telugu-speaking community of traders was very prominent in the 19th and early 20th century Madras society. They were also very public-spirited and shared their good fortune with the less fortunate of the city. They established and supported charitable hospitals, schools, colleges, and soup kitchens, not to mention temples. Some of their descendants, whose own contributions to the city or its citizenry could be counted on the fingers of a limbless person, claimed the city - unsuccessfully, I might add -  for their fledgling state on the basis of this munificence of their forefathers.

These gentlemen - the temple-builders and soup kitchen supporters,  not their descendants - also gave their names to the city streets. Their names were sometimes used with  the honorific suffix "lu" (pronounced "loo") appended to them; like Govinda Rajulu, Sri Ramulu, and so on. Why some one would  think it an honour to attach a "loo" to their name beats me, but vanity has that effect on people.

Some went so far as to prefix their names with a title suggesting great wealth. For example, one street name read Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road which was quite a mouthful even for us, who are used to bombast and to long names. By the time a person from the North could finish saying the name we could traverse its entire length by foot. The name signifies that the said gentleman was the owner of many cows which in 19th and early 20th century India counted for much. Some mischievously suggest that the prefix portrayed his wife as a cow (go = cow; pathy = husband), but there is no firm basis to this bovine theory which is asinine at best.

Then Madras became Chennai in an act of political hoodwinking  - the fact that Chennai is an abbreviation for "Chenna Pattanam" meaning "the good city" and is of Telugu origin, is lost on the great unwashed who constitute the principal vote bank of the Tamil chauvinists. The government also abolished castes. The abolishment consisted of  banning the use of prefixes, suffixes and honorifics that hinted at caste affiliations. Chettys were dropped from names as were Reddys, Ayyars and Ayyengars. Rangachary Road is now emasculated to Ranga Road as is Pulla Reddy Avenue to Pulla Avenue. But erstwhile Nair Road remained Nair Road presumably as a homage to the origins of the Dravidian movement.

The self-proclaimed atheist government went so far as as to remove the "swamy" from the aforementioned Gopathy Narayanaswamy Chetty Road which now simply reads Gopathy Narayana Road. It is further shortened to GNC Road by the technology-obsessed younger lot. It does not have the same ring to it any more. Roads with female names remain unmolested (something I cannot say for the city's females, though). However there were not many to begin with: in time honoured Tamil tradition, men are deemed more worthy of honour than women.

In an act of political correctness the suffixed "loo" was also dropped from street names. But loos live on in the streets of Chennai.

In fact the streets are the loos.