Wednesday, July 15, 2009

What defines Chennai? What defines India?

Deep questions ... but a simple story ... In a recent stroll through Nishat Bagh in Srinagar, we came across a family with a small child wearing traditional pahadi clothes. While asking her grandfather if I could take her picture, we got to talking -- he told me they were visiting from Kargil and how he had had to abandon his house and village and flee when the Pakistanis started shelling his village ten years ago. पाकिस्तान कभी अमन नहीं चाहती was his conclusion. It was just in the last 3 years that he had started rebuilding his house and his life there.

He asked me where we were from. Finding out that we were from Chennai, his face lit up and he looked like he would hug me there and then. "You are from Dhoni's city! He is my favourite cricketer, and Chennai Super Kings is my favourite team". I tried to gently remind him that Dhoni was not quite from Chennai, but he waved it aside as an irrelevant detail. For him Chennai was Dhoni and Dhoni was Chennai.

What a strange country we live...and strange are the things that unite us -- cricket? Bollywood? food? perhaps all of these and some more...and I will have something to say about the last in a future post.

5 comments:

AmOK said...

OLO waiting for your future post.. but tell us .. -- why did you tell the gent from Kargil you are from Chennai? You are as much from Chennai as Dhoni is from Chennai. He was right. Not to nitpick or anything...

Rahul Basu said...

I have been in Chennai upwards of 20 years - does that count for nothing?

AmOK said...

Thanks for the clarification, Sire. Indeed you hail from Chennai now. Mannikkanum! Naan thamizh pésa véndum.

Anant said...

Cute post OLO. With the added bonus of comments from AmOK, he who is not Omar Karim.

AmOK said...

Well observed, Anant. We are united by who we are -- and even by who we are not!