Chennai Diaries

It has been almost a year since I left Chennai to start work in Bangalore. The memories are faint and the emotions are in traces.

I remember many a nice day spent rollicking in my grand parent’s place in Annanagar, Chennai. It is now a faint remembrance of what it used to represent a decade or more ago. A decade ago it would be a potboiler of childhood fantasies. I used to spend hours with just about a patch of mud, building imperfectly perfect castles and cavernous pits to snare that imaginary thug from tales of yonder. A couple of rupees from my mother could end up in hours of budgeting all the goodies that I could afford with that money. The sound of tinker-bells meant either ice-cream lollies or better still, candies being sold in imaginative, bulbous glass containers. The same sound at night could only mean Kulfi, which was sadly out-of-reach for the reason of persistent and menacing common-cold. Grandpa’s snoring could only mean that we could go to the terrace and jump on the roof so that he would come thundering out the the house cursing all of us as he couldn’t possible beat all of us.

All I remembered is an instant, like worn out photograph-negatives that you find in run down boxes from the attic. The trail is missing and so are the players.

Chennai…Ah!