Monday, November 27, 2006

Chennai Rocks!??!

Hey guys….
Its been 3 weeks I have been in Chennai.. so I think I know quite a few things about Chennai now… so just thought of writing it down , in case you are curious to know about one of the most happening places on this earth...
Well... for people who live in Mumbai.. I would like to say that its very much like Mumbai, except a few hundreds of things, which are different from Mumbai… if u try and ignore those things, you will feel like living in our very own Mumbai… but the problem is that, I tried to ignore those things and I was like left to do nothing other than going to office and coming back..

People here have real obsession with their mother tongue… TAMIL… even in Infy here, people talk in their beloved language when they find some alter-ego of their (alter-egos, because I find them all same), irrespective of how formal the discussion is… :) …. It’s really funny how they forget that the people who are not from Tamil Nadu wont even get a single word of this alien language…
The other thing I have concluded is that people here sleep pretty early... roads are deserted after 10 pm… Rarely, you will see some state transport buses running around… auto drivers will ask for night charges after 9.30 pm!!… and on that, arguing with them in language other than Tamil is a task more difficult than passing an Infy training… the auto fare-meters here are there for only cosmetic purpose, not to show fare…
The other funny thing I have noticed is when you ask someone for a direction to a person…. He will look around 360 degrees to search, as if the place has suddenly moved overnight, and would give an expression on his face as if he is calculating some complex mathematical expression to get a solution of some dreadful equation in his mind to figure out where the place exists… and then finally, tired of waiting for answer from him, you ask him ’whether he really knows of that place??’ he would say with a smiling face ‘illai’ (that is ‘No’ in Tamil)…
Then came the turn of radio stations... I was really looking forward to some good music after having a frustrating time from Locals here…but it didn’t change much…. There are 5 radio stations here including radio-mirchi and radio-one…. But all
A$&#*=$ play TAMIL music all day.. only 2 hrs in a day in some radio station which has boring RJ plays Hindi-English music… :-( ….. I was really angry by this time….but then had some positives too, which relieved me a bit….
Beaches here are good… I have rented a house near a beach here.. a bit expensive, but beach is where I can go ALONE, … actually, there are many here who are Non-Tamil (thanks to IT industries :P).. so on weekends its us who roam around here in Chennai at places where you don’t find too many typical Tamils and a place called Spencer plaza/citi centre, where you find some Cosmo crowd … so that’s a solace for us… we get to hear a language other than Dravidian-origin languages here…
Coming to the most important point of Chennai.. my work at Infy… I m in ANA dept .. that’s automobile and aeronautics dept…our client is Boeing.. on the new airplane by Boeing.. B-787 (Dreamliner),which is launched by Boeing against A380(Airbus ka bada wala hawai-jahaaj) … hmmm, sounds great, hey na?.... but it has nothing related to rocket science or similar topics…an Application to help customers of Boeing to get proper instructions on the plane they order , using some weird programming language called Java… that’s all I know about my project… for more information please contact my team leader Subramanian (Tamilian again, but don’t worry he knows English)…..

Well, that’s all... thanks to all people who are still reading this and are awake…. To others ‘GO TO HELL !!! ‘….


Best regards,

Malay Manoj Lakhani
Sof....... professional (too shy to write about my profession )
Infy (also known as an army of IT pros)
Chennai-Mahindra City - which is exactly 0.74964556245 light years away from Chennai .. though my room mate claims it is 0.8139785 light years away ... well, it seems so, as you complete half of your sleep while travelling
cell - +91-9940071502 (that’s my number, if you have any party to attend in Chennai, do let me know... I‘ll attend it on your behalf :) … no need to thank me for that)