Chennai

A city I hated. The city I despised to try out. The city I was scared to explore beyond my college’s vicinity. A single theatre was my only place to cool down and hang my sorrows into oblivion. Communication with a stranger was as hard as….well, as hard as something that’s hard. A beer bottle cost us a few kilometers of petrol and the brand always sucked. Every minute in the city of south light was followed with a shadow of impure doubt and distrust. In this fascinating city, a feel of a certain air of alienation covered me in the blanket of hesitation. But, then…something happened.

An October sky, filled with rain and dark clouds covered this city of the sea. The beach became a place of forgetting any riddle in my head. She was there holding my hand and pulling me to herself, and I was more than happy to get pulled over. At first, Chennai didn’t give me that pleasure and I had my own questions, probing out without an answer. Then the few final days of the winter showed me my immediate future. The city had changed into a garden of my own eden. People became friends, a companion. Streets with no names, became streets I follow. Music flowed and danced I stood. She was there too, with the city, loving me and accepting me as I had never felt.

Chennai. Now. The city I love. City with no limits. Anytime cigarettes with a cheap tea. A cold vodka with plain soda. A heartbeat away falling in love. It’s a center of the universe for me, a place I call HOME. A place where I want to die, side by side with the crashing dying waves of the sea.

To Chennai. To fruit shop on Gream’s road, to pizza hut, to diesel, to Zara’s, to leather bar, to Mocha, to Pupil, to the pavement on the beach, to Hi-Look, to everything…….

Was listening to: ”Mehfuz” by Euphoria.

14^th May, 2007. 6 P.M.