Category Archives: Madras

Belated Birthday Wishes, My Madras!

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Dear Madras,

Yes I did want to wish you on your birthday itself. But you don’t know just how much I miss you these days that I just didn’t want to write yet another post here expressing my longing for you. I read posts all around celebrating you, your culture, heritage and everything that is Madras.

Hey Madras, every time I see a sign board giving details of a heritage place, road or a tree (Yes heritage tree!) in Singapore, I think about how we all have taken your culture and heritage for granted and, forget about taking care of it and promoting it, how much we are neglecting it. Forget about heritage, even your roads are not how they used to be. It is now filled with potholes and bumpy patches in many places. The new Metro and MRTS continue to run with not much patronage. Here’s wishing that you get your infrastructure back in excellent shape and your heritage gets preserved!

As it rained leaves from the raintree….

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On a sunny Sunday afternoon, there I was, sitting on a bench, watching my kids running around in the play area. As a slight breeze started blowing, bringing with it not just a welcome respite from the sweltering heat, but also a ‘rain’ of drying leaves from the raintree near us, my kids and I rejoiced together. The drying leaves in varied shades of yellow to green to brown continued to fall down in colourful bursts for a minute or two. As I lost myself in these dull colours of nature, my kids ran around laughing and catching as many falling tiny leaves as they could.

It is always with a touch of nostalgia that I look at a raintree / thoongumoonji maram. When I was a small kid, my father used to bring back thoongumoonji poo during his morning walks for me to play with. I remember how, back then, I used to watch the leaves of this tree closing down to fall asleep at the onset of evening.

In our apartment in Madras, we had a huge raintree growing more than three floors high. Every time I went to the terrace, I used to watch the beautiful combination made by the pink flowers and green leaves of this tree. Before we put mosquito nets, our balcony used to always have lots of dried leaves of this tree fallen inside. Huge branches of this tree fell during last year’s cyclone and the entire tree had to then be cut off.

Today, I have huge rain trees outside my window and did I tell you that there are always a few dried leaves to be swept away in my living room?

Miss you, Adi Sale

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Stuck in Singapore, one thing that I miss now is the Adi sale. Driving in the chaotic T. Nagar traffic and braving the crowds of Usman Road and coming back with bags loaded with all the new clothes is an experience by itself indeed. The ‘Great Singapore Sale’ which is going on here from May 30th to July 27th is no match to that to a hardcore Chennaiite like me.

Arupatthumoovar at Kapaleeswarar Temple

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After seeing the grand Arupatthumoovar at Kapaleeswarar temple, I had to ‘unblock’ the blogger’s block somehow and write this post. This is a very long post! Read it when you find time.

Despite living very near Mylapore for almost 15 years now, I had never been to Arupatthumoovar even once! When I was studying in school, festival time at Kapaleeswarar temple always meant getting a holiday or two and that was all. This year’s Arupatthumoovar was on last Saturday (27th March) &, initially, I wasn’t planning on going for it. My mom having gone for Arupatthumoovar for the first time last year, tempted me to go and, here I am now, all set to relive the grandeur of the fest which left me awe-struck.
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In love with Madras

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As I was reading Dandilsa’s post on why she wants to return to India, I realized how much I could relate to what she has written. Of course, I am already here. In fact, except for a few months of staying in another city, I have never been, forget about being away from India, been away from Madras itself. But, every time I am asked why I don’t want to leave Madras and go anywhere else, the reasons I give are quite similar to what she has written. This is the place where I have grown up and at this point of time in my life, there is only one thing that I am very clear about and it is that here is where I want to spend the rest of my life.
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Designer Sarees – The Changing Trend in Chennai

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The months of April-June seem to be the months of weddings what with one friend after another getting married! I don’t think I have ever gone for as many weddings as I have during the past couple of months! The one thing that is surely changing or rather has changed in Chennai is the popularity of silk sarees especially among youngsters.

Guys, you are most welcome to skip this post unless you want to read it for educational purposes like this person here. 😛
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