Stomaching Greams

In the last eight months that I have spent in Chennai, I have come to acknowledge and appreciate the magic of the spoken language.Long story short- Its thoroughly frustrating to pursue stories in a city which handicaps you with it's alien language. The only other time , I did not have to resort to broken syllables and ambiguous hand movements was when my professor sent me to cover Durga Puja idol-makers. 
 This morning when I landed on Greams Road, I had to double-check to make sure I was seeing correctly. All around me, sign boards of eateries, motels, pharmacies even travel agencies spelled out in  brightly coloured names bengali letters.Often incorrectly though,it was hilarious to see Rainbow Inn Hotel become Rainmow Inn Otel or Bengali Khabar become Bengali Kabab. 
Greams Road is basically an congregation of witty businessman masquerading to be Bengali to play on the sentiments of homesick Bengalis , who play the part of the metaphorical fish out of water too well. 
I walked into Bengali Fun Foodz first and greeted the guy at the counter with a cheerfull "Dada Kemon"(How are you doing Dada). He flashed a grandfatherly smile at me and replied with "bolen ki chai"(tell me what do you want) with a bangladeshi accent. I decided , I needed to put him at ease, so I did what I do best. Started talking about fish. For the next twenty minutes we had a raging debate on whether parshe maach was superior or pabda maach and the logistic of finding good Hilsa in the winters. The rest of the went away in a flurry of note-taking and creeping up to random strangers on the road. Until one caught up to me. As I was conversing with two Oriya boys in their early twenties, one of them stopped me mid-sentence and asked me with beguiling innocence what my cast was. Stupefied, I blankly answered Kshatriya. He smiled, satisfied with the answer. I hurriedly took my leave on the pretext of my cab having arrived. 
What struck me most amusing was that, most of the Bengalis on Greams Road were recovering patients from Apollo Hospital. Yet they had the stomach to digest kachhoris  and jalebis doused in oil and ghee from road-side stalls. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Father's Batchmates

Image
It's Father's Day, and I want to tell you the story of how I found an extended family of sorts with my father's batchmates.  I met my Achhan’s (my father) college batchmates during a reunion they had organised in Kannur, Kerala earlier this year. Amma (my mother), Ammamma (my grandma) and I had been graciously invited despite Achhan having passed away several years ago. I had met a few of them earlier, but I didn't know most of them. I was looking forward to getting to know the people he had studied with, and maybe hear a few stories about him and their college life. I had no idea that a single day would leave a lasting impression on me.  Here's what happened.  A beachside reunion It was the middle of February, just one day after Valentine's Day.  My family and I landed in the middle of the night, and checked into the the beachside resort where everyone else was staying.  In the morning, we were introduced to many of Achhan&
Read more

Halong Bay, Vietnam: Cruising among giants

Image
It was while researching Vietnam that I first heard of Halong Bay. I instantly fell in love with the pictures I saw of the towering karst formations surrounded by sun-kissed turquoise waters. The Halong Bay I saw was quite different. We had booked a tour through one of the local agencies (slightly overpriced as we later found out; do bargain) which included pick-up from Hanoi, all meals, visiting some attractions in the bay and staying overnight on the boat. The weather in the few days before our trip had been terrible - thunderstorms and rain. It was still cloudy when we left. While making our way from Hanoi to Halong, it was positively gloomy. It stopped raining by the time we reached, but the sun still wasn’t in sight. Naturally, I complained about the weather just like the others who were to join us on the boat. It was after getting onto the boat that I realized I would be seeing a side of Halong which the pictures hadn’t prepared me for. Hạ Long means “de
Read more

Rice in my school dabba

Image
Growing up in Chennai, I was always a little ashamed to have rice in my school dabba. Some of my classmates at the posh school I went to turned up their noses at the humble sambar -rice and rasam -rice my mother packed for me. I would go back home and tell my mother this and she would tell me that I shouldn’t care about what others thought of what I ate. But peer pressure is a strong force, stronger than a mother’s advice when you’re six. I like to think I didn’t complain too much, but perhaps my mother picked up on my insecurities. To make me happy, she made me food other than rice. My mother, working as a teacher in a school, found the time to make rotis in the morning when she could’ve simply made rice. The rotis and sabji were packed in a steel dabba that had two tiers. That was another thing that made me different from all the kids who got food in shiny plastic dabbas, symbols of liberalization and modernity that my parents disavowed because they believe
Read more