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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Why Dr.Sheldon would prefer Chennai


 Why Sheldon Lee   Cooper   would prefer Chennai!!(Read it in sheldon's voice)

Chennai’s location at 80.27 E and 13.0810 N makes it a thermally favourable place to live. The summer at 35 degree centigrade is not very unbearable and the winter at 20 degree centigrade is a pleasant season for a hot beverage,  and  one doesn't need to search for his jacket before leaving a place as in Pasadena. Its adjacent  location to the sea ensures accessibility to the right levels of the rain bearing winds and the chances of the raining water engulfing the city is pretty low. Even if the drainage fails and the rain water stagnates on the roads, the sun,  which shines at a bearable 32 degree centigrade average, evaporates all the water clearing the roads of water in a jiffy.

The potholes in the roads made by the rainwater in addition to numerous oddly placed speed breakers, transforms the bus travel into  a fun ride at the theme park saving one the cost of a monthly trip to the amusement park. And with all the shakes and jumps one might lose enough calories freeing one from the twenty minutes of cardio. Plus the travelers  in the Bus, engage in casual talk with topics ranging from politics to science which makes the ride worthwhile and also if the bus is crowded enough, you might get a free full body massage.

One of the best things I like about the native culture of Tamil Nadu is that they avoid contaminating each other’s hand through handshakes. Instead,  they follow a hygienic  process of welcoming people by joining their own hands. And when I visit their place, they welcome me with full heart and mouth and they offer me a cup of hot coffee. And fascinatingly, when they visit my place, they bring the fruits and sweets I like, as a gift. They call this practice  ‘Viruthombal’ which is quite fitting for someone of my importance.  Most people even make sure the Americans feel at home by pretending to be Americans and they even manage to pull it off as good as us the westerners! The food here is unbearably spicy and what’s worse  is that they are mouth watering and irresistible. Especially the Masala Dosa made of fermented rice flour with mashed potatoes in the middle which are served along with sambar and the delicious chutney.When one's stomach burns with spice other world cuisines are just minutes away.

The elders of the family here are well  aware of the Placebo effect .They tie a piece of thread around the wrist of the children of the family ,or hang  dollars of God or symbols of god around  the neck, or wear streaks of ashes on the forehead which are believed to instate confidence, power , courage and luck.

The chennaites have strong acoustic capabilities. The sounds they make with their mouth is amusing and at times funny. They insert their thumb and index finger inside their mouth producing a sound similar to a whistle blown by traffic men. I usually hear it whenever I hear the word ‘Rajinikanth’ and ‘Dhoni’.I have seen men and women shouting  with their hands hitting their mouth periodically producing a crazy sound.One day ,an auto driver  called me ‘annaathe’ .they also call you with sweet sounding names such as ‘ayya’ ,’prabhu’ and ‘pichapodu’.The politicians here are very animated and fun loving people adding the name of a ferocious animal or dynamic thing before their names such as ‘Tiger kumar’,’jumbo Ramalingam’ and ‘Rocket Raja’.But nothing can  match the ‘infinite Sheldon’.

Unlike other cultures, life threatening habits such as smoking and pre -marital sex are looked down upon and culturally unacceptable. Though Chennai has diseases like bird flu, chickungunya, considering it is the health capital of India, the probability of a self clean disciplined person passing away due to the above reason is pretty much lesser .Not all people except the world famous cops of this region are provided with gun license and trading of guns is illegal. Hence the chances of getting shot by a random guy in schools, malls, and theatres are very low. Except a few incidents there is no history of massive earthquakes, volcanoes, violent terrorist attacks making it an ideal place to live on.

Chennai, being the land of the second longest beach, oldest language, richest tradition, largest cultural diversity, scientific developments and coolest people, I find no reason to say that Chennai isn't the best place to live.

PS :I didn't mention about the locations and the things that have already been stated in the tablog so that this post doesn't become monotonous.

This post is a part of the blog tag where a group of bloggers of Chennai Bloggers club post their view of  what chennai means to them.The tag was passed to me by Destination Infinity who has actually outsourced the work of replying to the comments of his blog to a MNC based in  Chennai(:p) and I am passing the tag to Prashanth Ashok,an NRI whose heart is still stuck in the roots of his legacy.