Chennai Chronicles

I like Chennai! What can I say? Put me in a city with friends, a brilliantly stocked library, a dessert parlour and you've earned a loyal fan for life! Delhi and Bangalore became my soulmates like that as well....and finally, after much prodding and nudging, Chennai has entered the list!

Its been eight years since Chennai became my 'semi-home town', and each trip to the place consists of Fruitshop, The Beach and the library. This time was slightly different. So here's a tribute to the city, and the smart trio (that includes me too) that made history there! :D

I spent three blissful weeks lying around doing the best of nothing and being completely pampered with food and remote control. The porch swing and I became inseparable as I devoured book after book after book until I suffered from an overdose (not that it's a bad thing!) The week in Bangalore whizzed past me like a colourful comet and I had some fun reunions with old friends (including a hilarious lunch with my college gal pals...really, it's amazing how we've stayed so wacky even now!) Then came the weekend when the trio got together.

Their bus journey, I shan't describe since only Sneha can do justice to it on her blog. At least that way, SOMETHING will come on that poor blog. (Oh, off topic, but I'd like to tell you, Sneha, that your blog is rusting. You might want an intramuscular tetanus before you venture near it.) So my job only began with picking them up and bringing them home. And for some strange reason, I feel like narrating the rest point-wise. It just cuts out the fringes and makes everyone's life simpler.

1. The movies we saw. Shopaholic was only seen by me, as the two tried to sleep off their justified 'jet lag'. Bride Wars was nice ok? And totally cry-able. Sorry, but I get a little sentimental when friends give up weddings for each other. Wait till it's your wedding Reenu! The day's not far when you'll need to get your wedding hall waterproofed! :-P and He's Just Not That Into You was slightly confusing since I had not slept too much and the movie had too many characters for me to comprehend. So there went the movies, kaput.

2. The BEACH! Marina beach, not-so-early in the morning reeks of fish, but what's more fun are the characters that hang around there. There was this drunkard who warned us to stay away from the waters since the Tsunami was coming. There was a flasher who decided to sit right in front of us. There were two men who kept talking to the waves and urging them to come to them...and when they heeded, they'd run like sissies (the men, not the waves.) there was also a man who had walked right out of a board meeting and decided he'd play Baywatch for a day. Sigh. Those poor formal clothes. The waves were really high (high tide, new moon day) and the water was refreshingly clean....except for the occasional unidentifiable black objects and coconut husks. Anyhow, clearly we had enjoyed enough to bring back most of the sand! (See Sneha? Now I don't need to pack it in a friend's economics paper to get it for you! :P)

3. The BEACH part II! Elliot's Beach is the most awesomest place in this part of the world. Really! There is no other place I'd have the guts to wear identical shirts with my two wacky friends and go gallivanting on the sea shore acting completely crazy on a Sunday evening. Honestly, we gave Chennai people SO MUCH entertainment that weekend! :D That carousel (ok ok, merry-go-round) ride, the funky fluorescent wands, the loud songs we sang all around Besant Nagar..made the beach part II even better than the first one.

4. The food. When we're around, can food ever be ignored? Not only did we eat some very interesting stuff in the form of that lebanese wrap (guys, please don't ever let me try that again ok? I'm still not too sure about what went in it.), we had a one-by-three Jughead Special that warranted dirty looks from the waiters at Fruitshop. We finally ended it with that late night pizza dinner. Seriously, sometimes I think that waiter still wonders what mistake he made with our bill and why he gave us free overpriced ice creams instead of the usual scoop in a cup! :D And yes, Reenu does eat a lot of food. There, I've said it on cyberspace! :D

5. The Pictures! It was Diwali that they'd come for after all...so the pictures not only were colourful but FUN! The elevator picture that we finally perfected, our star wars themed powerpuff movie starring the wands, the beach and the beach thingamajigs, home and the convocation ceremony! :D The entire trip was chronicled in pictures that spoke more of the fun than this blog. For a change, I managed to send them on time! * Applause *

So anyway, Chennai was fun this time around, being with friends and family. Maybe enduring that 2 hour 30 minute flight in the dangerous skies is always worth it! :)

Colourful Roominations.

My room is pink. I was born into a pink room. When my grandfather was overseeing the construction of the first floor in our house, he decided that a grand-daughter would merit a pink room. A couple of days later, when I was born, the pink was commissioned.

I have very few, but fond birthday memories in that pink room for the first couple of years before we trotted off to Delhi and lived in rented homes (where thankfully no one had an insight to paint the room pink for a prospective girl to stay in!) with off-white colours. It was only when I returned to my pink room did the troubles begin.

My classmates from school would come over for project discussions and what-not, and I would continually be embarrassed at the pinkness of the room. The boy classmates would be stunned to see anything that pink, and the girls probably thanked their parents silently for not being subjected to such a torture. I tried very hard to disguise the colour though. I went through a distract-people-from-room-colour-by-drawing-attention-to-bright-curtains phase, a cover-every-inch-of-visible-room-colour-with-animal-posters phase and finally when nothing worked, I bought myself a can of blue paint (oil paint actually, something I bothered reading only after splashing it around) and began to paint the room, my cupboard and a bookshelf.

The bookshelf and the cupboard were completed in time, but when it came to painting the room, the ADHD in me lost interest and that resulted in a huge square of blue in the middle of a very pink wall. It brought out the pink of the wall, really!

I finally gave up and convinced myself that pink is a fab colour to live with, and I should really focus of enhancing it rather than camouflaging it. (That was because my mother put her foot down refusing to let me try painting it another colour after the blue fiasco.)

Today, the room has finally changed colour. The house was being repainted, and my parents thoughtfully decided I should get my wish and have this room painted a different colour. They chose a beautiful orange cheesecake type colour and really, it looks very delectable. But it's no longer pink, and I actually miss that. I miss seeing my blatant attempts to hide it, those fading scotch tape marks that held my animal posters, that blob of blue (which incidentally took the painters a FULL day to scrape off the wall!), the growing up pictures, birthday poems, Topaz house flags, the loud curtains that tried to steal the limelight and the bed covers (which were also pink!).

Of course, I no longer live in that room, so I should technically not be bothered what colour it is/was, right? But the room represents my childhood, and I have memories related to every little scratch I have made in that pink room. It's now changed colour and matured, maybe so should I.