Namma Chennai?

I am in Chennai now for a couple of weeks – my dad is going through a bypass surgery tomorrow and should be back home just around Diwali time. My moving to Bangalore, good timing – I have been in and out of Chennai the last few weeks keeping my parents company.

Now Bangalore, Chennai and earlier Mumbai when I lived there – scary how small and close these cities have become. Are becoming. And other cities in India, in the world too, I guess. The more the world seems to be opening up, the more closed places seem to be getting.

Mumbai? Bombay? And wanting all the non Mumbaikars, non Maharashtrians out… And Bangalore? Everything is namma – namma Bengaluru, namma Metro, namma Chief Minister – reclaiming our land for ourselves. It is the same in Chennai – sure nothing is overtly namma, yet the strength of Tamil pride here makes me reel.

I grew up in Chennai, went to school and college here – yet, there is nothing here I can relate to. I feel uncomfortable and long to get out each time I am in Chennai – the Tamil I hear around me is not the one I grew up hearing – and I mean that in every way. So, all cities are like this, what makes it so bad for you in Chennai, asks my husband.

I guess Chennai is so bad for me because it is my state, my people – and I feel ashamed to be a part of this parochialism. It is not easy for me, as it is in Bombay or Bangalore to shrug it away, or not even think about it till I am forced to. There, I am too busy being indignant about being an ‘outsider’ and not part of the inner namma circle. Not so here in Chennai…

4 comments

  1. நம்ம ஊரு பெருமை பேசறது எல்லாருக்கும் இருக்கிறதுதானுங்களே! நாட்டுப்பெருமை , வீட்டுப்பெருமை மாதிரி இதுவும் ஒரு பெருமை! எங்கூரு மேல எனக்கு அப்படி ஒரு பெருமைங்க! அதுக்காக மத்தவங்களை மோசம்னு சொல்லமுடியாதுங்க.. அது கூடாதுங்க!

    நட்புடன்,
    ஓசை செல்லா, கோவையிலிருந்து . .

  4. know what is happening? after being “global” for so many years, you are forced into this “parochial” way of thinking. in all the countries i have lived in, i kept saying this is my world, manmade boundaries i will not acknowledge. i am one with all those alive, different only to those that are dead. whenever i was told “indian go home” i replied, “i am home”. then i come back to glorious india and discover i am an alien wherever i go – non-marathi, non-tamil, non-malyali, non-bihari, non-bengali, non-gujerati, non-assamese, non-oriya – the list goes on. “non” has become like a pre-fix to who i am. in my own state, i am non-domicile and “from phoren”, people hear me speak (without any accent, and after 25 years overseas, i take it as a compliment!!) and say that i use very old-fashioned terms. i have nothing in common with the community i belong to, but a lot with a people who don’t accept me as one of them. but, there is hope. if one recites “namma this” and “namma that” like a daily mantra, the open horizon that forms your mind will shrink and fit into the narrow and restrictive embrace of “belonging” once again.

Comments are closed.