Live dont just exist!

Down Diwali lane


Seasons greetings, come Diwali and Ranganthan street becomes cut off from the rest of the world, not for people with extremely toned bodies and have the stamina to push themselves through the maddening crowds though, for the rest of us T-nagar might as well be Antarctica, Pondy bazaar Artica, lol. But it is the season of shopping and where does one head to in Chennai? T-nagar or Ranganthan street to be precise, to enjoy the sounds of nature that include catcalls, screeches and not to forget the loud blaring of horns and the constantly reminding by the police that your purse can be picked any minute, that however makes me wonder whether they ve brought a couple of thieves and left them there. And of course the boys who try to sell you toys made from plastic and yo-yos that light up when they fling it at your face, and sometimes successfully selling these yo-yos to enthusiastic shoppers who feel that someone has just said ‘let there be light’ and then bringing it home and discovering it isn’t as pretty as you thought it was. Yes, people in clothes stores act like everything is on sale for FREE! Pulling and tugging at something you ve just decided looks better than rest of the Bling clothes on display, someone buying the dress you liked and your size of the only pair of good shoes just before you could try them on. It helps that there is a juice and ice-cream store just at the entrance to Ranganathan street as everyone who is going in decides to take a drink before going in and people coming back refreshing themselves with sugarcane juice means that the entrance could have been plastered with plaster of Paris instead, as people just stand there leaving no place to even push people. And if you are lucky when you finally push through the human plaster and walk past you mite get a generous dollop of ice cream on your face from the kid who while being carried by a dad decided to stick an ice-cream cone at you. Then you have the boys who pull at your bags, walk beside you, in front of you but facing you i.e. they walk backwards asking you to get your material stitched at their tailoring shop, just an hour to stitch a salwar kameez and half an hour for a blouse, the shopkeepers who insist the blue saree looks best on you, the jewelry shop where again people pretend everything is free, not to forget shopkeepers calling out to you insisting that the nighties they have on display would REALLY look good oh you. Oh and yea the railway station at the end of it all, when you come back into the ‘world’ from Ranganthan street, remember to take a look into a mirror, trust me you will have an entirely new hair-do, and your clothes, no they wont get creased or wrinkled, they instead look like they have just been pressed, because after all they have, by people and not a machine.


Last heard- Saravana stores is doing brisk sales in oxygen cylinders, people who have managed to push through the crowds and reach the store are sold a couple of cylinders of oxygen before they can proceed inside the store.