Prereq: IMAX imagination

“Why are you holding those eggs up in your hand?” I asked my friend while we were riding my scooter back from the store.“I am holding six lives in my hand, much like a revolver. Need to be careful“, he smiled. I was pleasantly surprised. Some tiny spark of an epiphany had shown up after a long time. 

Imagine what holding a loaded gun in your palm would feel like. Most 9mm handguns that are full size would hold between 15 to 17 rounds. All it takes to take a life is one. 17 lives; right there on your palm. Chill down the spine. Latch on your attention to that fleeting feeling and as it dissipates, you might end up in a strange place. A place where you can juxtapose a physical object with the meanings and emotions your brain attaches to it. It is magical to stay there and gaze at the awesomeness that the brain is. How can so many threads of ethical, emotional, logical and moral values be connected to the image of a tool built to do just one simple thing (spit out an iron pellet at incredible speed)? Maybe, in an alternate universe, we could be using it to make extra holes in our belts, for all you know. 

Let’s juggle things a bit and try something different. Place each of your palms on each temple of a person who is comfortable with you doing so (!). What is between your hands now is essentially another you. A complete universe of thoughts, emotions, memories, ideas, knowledge, intelligence etc.; right there between your palms. When you let your brain lose on that thought you’ll probably get a bigger chill down your nerves than you would have expected. These nut-shell human experiences, as I would like to call them, make things that we know into things that we deeply understand. And when you understand something, it is not just a file in your knowledge bank but a spontaneous contributor in your default, everyday thought process. 

If it was up to me to make a new religion, I would make a list of small such rituals that would keep people in touch with the important things of life. Wait, is that why we bend and touch our elders’ feet as a custom here in India?….. (pondering intensifies)

That's it.. I'm calling BS!

The RJ continued, "'Where is the party?' madhiri 'Where is the Vinayaga chathurthi?' nu kondadeerupeenga nu nenaikaren.." ( Translated-jist:"I guess you must have made a party out of Vinayaka Chathurthi - a festival for a specific God in India"). Not much of an epiphany, but this was the tipping point and I just had to vent out all the accumulated frustration on the fake-fun everyone is supposed to be having out here in Chennai.I see remarkably edited Youtube videos telling me Chennai is 'Happy'. I hear radio-jockeys yapping away as if this is the most happening city there is. Facebook postings of music-videos in the name of Madras. Newspaper adverts ballyhooing the 'celebration' of what's "#Chancey-illa" (Trans-jist: Nowhere else but here) about Chennai. Well, here's a fact my select-few, overly-excited fellow city dwellers; some of us read beyond the first page of the newspaper.  And by saying "I've had the most fun ever in Chennai!", I quote no-one, myself included.

Chennai is home to the most bovine of all of humankind. No matter how many daylight injustices happen; no matter how many rights are violated; how un-livable conditions get; how much verbal abuse is dished out, day in and day out life just goes on. We are a society that has lost the sense of the word 'fun'. I recall a conversation I had with a friend and her boyfriend once back in Jersey. They had signed up for a dance class and were asking me to join them. He said, "You can learn how to dance at weddings, it'll be fun!". By reflex I let slip the fact that we don't dance at our weddings around here in South India. The both of them refused to believe me and concluded that I was bluffing to avoid going with them. We Chennai-ites know too well what would happen if we were to dance at an authentic Madrasi wedding. For one, you'd be branded a lunatic and shunned by every respectable member of your family for eternity. A proper wedding down here is a quick marriage ceremony followed by gift-giving and ending in a sumptuous feast. Period."But tamil movies have people dancing around all the time", you may argue. Let me put it this way, we generally associate dancing to movie-heroes and, more recently, reality-TV game shows; but not to anything in the 'real world'. To be a little dramatic, I haven't even once seen the most celebrated 'Saavu koothu' (Trans-jist: A dance supposedly performed by drunkards in front of a corpse while on its way to the crematorium) all these years of my life in Chennai.

Getting back to 'happy-fun-exciting' things, let's not kid ourselves people. Just a silent walk through the heart of the city at rush-hour can give you a whiff of the true picture. You will not spot so far as a tiny smirk on those busy faces. Chennai is hard-working. It's back is bent. Burden is writ large across its wrinkled forehead. A burden that it carries steadily ahead in the face of irresponsible administration not too unheard-of in India. Our average fun-thirsty youth neither has venues (except the movies) nor the social approval to go out and experience something in the equivalent sense of the word 'party'.


P.S: To all those folks doling out 'fun-fun' BS on a daily basis, PLEASE keep it real.