Gemini to Lighthouse; in fifteen minutes or less!

I have often wondered, if I could write about Madras the same way I once wrote about Calcutta - with the fascination of discovery and the serendipity that only new things can bring. I realized that I cannot. However, I also figured that I can write about Madras in a different way - a way that only my experience of the city can justify. Not such a long stint of experience, to be honest. I was there for a better part of two decades in the city; however it was in the last four years that I even got to be around and know places and only in the last year, did I get to do my explorations on my own. Do I think that I am underprepared with my knowledge of Madras than that of Calcutta? Hell yeah. However, things that I do know about Madras, I know so well because those things are people and experiences to me. This once, I was writing to a friend about the weather here in Calcutta. Suddenly, I found myself in a narration of a single stretch of the city without the people or its experiences but just the place in itself. I have given the excerpt from the same as follows...

Tell me what's happening in your city? The weather'z been a psychotic bitch here. Presently, (however) its a pleasant, cool, before the rain moment. Should not blame the weather when she is being kind. What about there? Have you ridden with your hair down on the beach road, on a hot sticky day when nothing as much as a leaf seems to move? It's a pretty thing about Madras. You are at Gemini, you feel like killing the guy honking next to you. At Stella, you feel inspired to run over those careless girls with big smiles shared only between themselves that cross greedily over to Gangothri. You move a little ahead and see that some punk-bitch thinks that he is so gangsta that he can cut widely across from left to right and take the lane to Chola. Many times, one wishes to not brake hard but make a bender on the fender of that Benz. The crossing after Gopalapuram (which you reach in normal time if the CM does not decide to come back home for an early lunch), is pure hell. Welcome to Alwarpet. Expensive restaurants and bad looking office building takes you into the most annoying road in the city before ending up in another annoying part of the city; Adyar. Let me not even go there. Seriously. No matter how much I would like to. Not because I am banned from that area. You know that it does not matter even if I am; because if I want to, I will. But let me stop the rambling, which is not unlike the Alwarpet road itself. Of course, I have had a nice dinner at Sangeetha's and many a good lunches at Sandeepa's. But tell me, have you never wanted to kill some of the signals there, if not someone at these signals? Coming back to the slice of life that Radhakrishnan salai is; let me linger on for a moment on one of the better things in that road. If you can go over the fly-over by the Music-Academy (which is, undoubtedly one of my most favorite spots in the city), then you are saved; momentarily. For the next right is, you are right, Mylapore. That whore has never sat on my lap. I still don't understand why one of the most hectic places in the city is called that. Except for the Saravana Bhavan (not so much an ego massage here, as much as a quick evening snack or a lovely late night dinner) on the corner, I would like to give this right turn life and make it human, just so that I may throttle it to a sweet, never ending death. A few other choice restaurants that taunt me with their air-conditioned interiors and many a high-rise buildings that have come up so quickly that makes me wonder if they were just cardboard cutouts. Moments pass by as I still think of the destination I seek; my client! Oh, there, with a massive overly done facade and an impressive looking approach, stands the citi-centre building. I am like, here'z my stop, I have to get in. Almost with resignation. I slow down and the indicator is on. I slowly drift towards that right. Something inside kicks into action. The indicator is off; noone was looking anyway, it is 3 in the afternoon. I give an extra turn to the throttle and roars my lovely bike forward. I slide between other vehicles that move forward like human sacrifices to the pit in an Indiana Jones movie. Something strikes my face apart from the oppressive weather. It is the winds of change. I see that the signal is red at the end of the road and Gandhi looks ahead as if he is walking out of the city. I don't care. I don't cut down on my speed. I see a white building full of cops on my right; and I still don't hesitate continuing to violate the laws. I knew that the winds of change was too dramatic an idea. I was not willing to blink though. The final moment was on me and the signal turned green. Anti-climactically, I still had to reduce my speed to take the right turn. But wait my dear, my story does not end here. I go a little further ahead and take that left just after; I park somewhere in the vicinity of the light-house. I don't have to seek its shadow. Because. I looked up and it rained. It was 3.20. My phone was ringing. It was my client. I am sorry Ron. You have to wait. I am squeezing life out of time.

I seem to have omitted writing that I had my first job on that road, my brother'z wedding, the first chance I had to betray my company, my first (subsequent) proof of corporate loyalty, my first almost-empty tank at five thirty in the morning, my first almost-accident, and so many more things that a gentleman cannot write about and friends should not ask about; have happened on that very road. But I did not write about all these things, not because they were not important but because they are of a different world and a different account. Accidentally, I seem to have stumbled on to an account of a part of the city as if it is an isolated entity, a thing in itself; not unlike my discovery of Calcutta...