Sunday, October 07, 2007

Lost in translation: Chennai travel

This weekend I had breakfast in a land, far far away. Around 1200 km's, precisely 1 hour 45 minutes of travel with a large metallic bird with several powerful motors.

My first sense of this mega polis down south was a waft of lukewarm breeze, followed by a waft of even more warm breeze, the same temperature as piping hot coffee, minus the pipe. This was followed by a smattering of alien guttural sounds that were harsh from male origins and sing-song melodious from female lips.

This is Chennai, home of the proud Tamil people, south of the mighty Dravidan mountains which pierce India's soul. This is also the place affectionately called 'Madras' until politics played its poli-trick. I am not sure what may be thrown at me if I were to refer to these people as 'madrasi's', affectionately coined by north Indian's for all beings south Indian. I dared not find out, I made enough social gaffes to be made into an idli, or maybe a dosa.

Chennai is warm, and I cannot emphasize that enough through beads of crystal clear, porcelain, shiny sweat. These folks are brave, wearing the thickest silk sarees in equatorial soleil. For a white skinned delicacy, pink is the new white.

If the sun posed one challenge mightier than Mao's war cry, communication with a people who speak an alien language, was akin to Musharraf sharing mutter paneer with Shareef.

Unlike north Indian languages of yore, which are linguistically similar, where you can get a meal and a half, without any fries, in Chennai, you get hard boiled eggs when you inquire about a delayed order of egg biryani. The poor sod, all of 13 and a half, who got the eggs was extremely crestfallen, displaying abject deject, followed by a trance-like state, transitioned to a sizzling hot red, and uttered something which sounded like 'anda punda inge pinge singe dinge, cuckoo clock, mother, father, sister, cuckoo clock, inge pinge pinge.' I could imagine the amount of saliva that would drip when the hard boiled egg was replaced with the egg biryani. I felt for the boy, who could not understand English or Hindi. We were strangers in his domain, guests in Chennai who mistakenly inquired about an egg biryani which was 10 minutes late.

We did get our egg biryani, with a pregnant chicken, minus the young hot-blooded waiters saliva. We checked the egg, to inspect for signs of origin. Its a bird, its a plane, a bird flew over another plane. If you think it's absurd, you haven't heard what the waiter suggested we order instead of egg biryani: bird biryani. 'Vaary tiny bird, saar. Vee make baard saar.'

NO BIRD!