when i came to chennai, i had a positively biased opinion. i loved their kinda food already, since long ago, n i was enthusiastic about learing the language, getting a feel of the life here and most importantly separate chennai from ‘south india’ as that’s how we maharashtrians classify the three-four states down here..

though lot of people around me, talk strictly in tamil and even if conversation starts in english, after some time, it goes back to the dominated mother tongue… but i’ve made some really good friends at work, who always opened up, and cared and didn’t make m feel i was new… from the maid to the local grocery store owner to autowallahs, and lady who sold flowers, and so on… i’ve constantly made an effort to talk in the their language, learn it, paste printouts on my fridge that translated necessary words for me et al…

there are a couple of incidents here though which shook off the acceptance i was wearing of the city…everyone seems to take the language problem for granted…

one such incident… i went to a jewelry store. a big n professional store. i was selecting some earrings… it’s a well documented fact that women in chennai wear more volume n weight of gold on them than anyone else in the world… so when i was trying earrings, i said, oh these ones are are a bit too large for me, n immediately the shopkeeper was like – you don’t look like you are from chennai… where are you from ? i said mumbai… n there he went … ‘oh no wonder, women customers from mumbai aren’t used to such standards of gold jewelry… looks like there you don’t wear all this’ ouch – it hurt! what did he mean ?? and whatever he meant did he have to say that ??

somewhere in between i also faced problems with my vodafone mobile account (a post in this blog – ‘customer…care??’) and the real reason was that, everyone on the vodafone helpline spoke to me in tamil, the automated menu, customer care agents, who said they knew english but just said blank ‘aahh ??’ to lot of things i was asking…

yesterday was the most frustrating of all… i had to get some important bank stuff done, the bank helpline female sent an officer to do it… the guy on his way called me from his cell phone, but he could not speak/understand ANYTHING other than tamil… did so-claimed ‘globally’ functionaing banks think such ‘officers’ were a good fit ?? whatever… i was trying to fix up some time with him but he got so confused n kept repeating something in tamil, hung up n made his office representative call, who too is a tamil n together both of them created so much confusion, that he visited my office twice, but till the end of the day the task for which he came wasn’t done! we did it today morning, when i just was listening to him blankly and handed over what he wanted, i mean i still don’t know wether he’ll do (and understand) things i wanted!!

i don’t want to get into age old arguments here on why the city never taught its kids the national language atleast…

but i just wanted to say something… people, pls come and have a look at mumbai sometime, attitudes are much more accommodating n progressive.. there ‘are’ lot of varieties of languages, n cultures n people in this world, and making outsiders feel they are, doesn’t help to protect your so called culture, looking at north Indians and exchanging ideas only helps you make chennai some better… times have changed way head of you… wake up !!