The Madras Mail

I haven’t been in a temple in over a year. It’s something that I’ve never seen the need to do, considering that I now think it’s very cool to be Agnostic, a rather questionable way of saying that I simply don’t fucking care about God and his/her supreme power, or at least the way people prescribe to it presently.

In a rather quirky turn of events, I found myself in the Kapaaleeswarar Kovil yesterday a couple of days back. It’s a majestic expression of what Tamil Nadu is most famous for, and I don’t mean Rajnikanth. A towering stone creation that has a nondescript board that says, ‘Non-hindus not allowed inside’. This board actually made me laugh out loud, scaring that poor maami who was praying for her daughter’s health and her daughter-in-law’s painful demise. I think this was about the time I started asking my Dad, what he and my tribe were trying to do by all this. A bit of history here, my tribe refers to the ubiquitous gangs of people you will find all over Chennai, wearing their religion on their foreheads and making it so very clear to their children that they were born into a special family who could trace their lineage back to stoned sages from yore. Ah!

I’m not even going to bother.

I’ve just realized what I am, I’m what orthodox paatis tell their grandchildren to stay away from, ‘…andha payyan –oda pogathe da, avan cigarette, drinks ellam kudippaan…’, I’m what people like my brother consciously try to stay away from owing to the rather obvious rum stench, I’m what the class toppers decide is a waste of useful space, I’m the guy that wears his underwear on his clothes and decides it’s formal enough.

Dammit! … I’m Superman.

Life is always about moving on and hoping that things turn out better than they are presently, at least that is what most of us hope life is. It’s quite easy to do the math, as we get older, we ‘supposedly’ get more mature, and things that were precious to us before seem childish, and we have new wants, the need to be more intelligent, more powerful, and more happy. I’ve spent the last 6 years doing crazy, crazy things, and I still miss doing almost all of them.

In less than a month, am leaving Chennai, possibly for good, to Jamshedpur and then the world. And now I have very complex feelings in me. I’m leaving behind my family, my friends, who I’ve known for the most part of my life and am leaving behind Chennai, where I had my first vodka shot at ECR, my first smoke at the beach, and so many first’s in life. I’ve sort of grown to like my chicken at Sea Shell, my beer at Bronx, my 9:30 smoking session at Bhai, the extremely vetti conversations, my late night coffee at CCD (that’s Cafe Coffee & Dum), the neighbourhood dog that gets kicks out of chasing me, endless days spent talking about the future, and so many more things. I’ll probably never get to do any of these things again, and knowing that is a kick in the balls. When I come back after 2 years, the bespectacled, baby-faced, not-so-Brahmin boy will be a bespectacled, baby-faced, not-so-Brahmin MBA graduate with a job; someone who wouldn’t do shots at the back of a car, who wouldn’t pass out at a party, and who definitely wouldn’t drink at Besant Nagar TASMAC.

Am sure the next two years will be a lot of fun, albeit with a completely different set of people, it’s something I wholly look forward to and as Mrs. Rowling said, ‘…, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.’