Ore Galeej baa!

Welcome to Chennai. Smellcome, rather! I'm a product of Chennai, totally. But of late, there are two things about this city that has been tickling my tolerance very much. So here are those tolerance ticklers (TTs), listed in descending order of their intensity and score in the tickle-o-meter.

No. 1. The horror of spit: (Tickle-o-meter scale - 8.3)



Ah, you see this in all varieties, kinds, colours and is often preceded or accompanied by a range of highly vocalised throat sounds. There are amateur and professional spitters. Professionals are somewhat tolerable, but the amateurs are real killers. They don't streamline their spit like the pros you see. Especially when you travel in a crowded suburban Chennai train, you find these sprayers come out before you in footboard and bless their fellow passengers with a liberal spray of half a litre of a maroon coloured concoction. They miss holi now and again, I guess. In the trains, autos, buses, lifts, stairs, malls, platforms, markets and roads, it is there. It is here, it is there, it is every-bloody-where. Why doesn't the Indian government do us Chennai-ites a favour and name this place the Spiti valley instead of giving the coveted name to that ugly place in the Himalayas? After all, we'd be proud to call ourselves the 'spitites'. If early English rhymers visited present day Chennai, they'd probably come up with a rhyme like this:

Old MacDomer had a Pan Parag,
Eee - I - eee - I - O
After that he had a beeda,
Eee - I - eee - I - O,
With a spit spit here, and a spit spit there,
here a spit, there a spit,
everywhere a spit spit.
Old MacDomer had a Pan Parag,
Eee - I - eee - I - O..........

No. 2. St. Autodriver: (Tickle-o-meter scale - 7.6)



These spiritual people wear khakhi instead of white or saffron and are a product of the Autostand monastery. They are probably the second best known saints in Chennai after St. Thomas. There are five unbreakable vows that the St. Autodirivers follow. These are:

1. Charge five times the actual amount.
2. Never ever run your meter.
3. Scold and ridicule other vehicle-users, in a vulgar way, if possible.
4. Follow Heisenberg's Auto Priciple: Never allow any other vehicle to use the same road at the same time conveniently, when you're driving your auto.
5. Fight for more money once you drop your passenger off.

In keeping with the proud tradition of the Spitites, they also spit at every possible traffic signal. When they follow these rules meticulously, they are raised in the Autostand Monastery's heirarchy as follows:

Autoteur - Beginner
Automoboil - Rising star
Maverickshaw - Top notch - pain in the right place - maverick of the auto stand.

I do strongly recommend these two totally heartening experiences for tourists who visit Chennai for the first time. Don't you dare miss them or mess with them!