CBC Tablog 3: Chennai - A blend of the Traditional and Modern

This post has been published as a part of 'The Chennai Bloggers Club Tablog - 3.' Read previous post by Salesh Dipak Fernando here…

Arriving temporarily from Delhi, in the year 1994, in a sleepy town and then having stayed back to create a life around work and business, I have seen the city grow. But when I sit down to write about “CHENNAI - A BLEND OF THE TRADITIONAL AND MODERN” I find that it is still, in it’s soul, a traditional city. Modernity per se has only seeped into its being as general growth due to flow of time, unlike Bangalore, where it was forced down the city of gardens’s throat due to the tsunami of IT Sectorial advancement.

When I say it’s traditional, it is because of…

A) People: - You still find the people dressing up traditionally across the city. Thronging to the various temples as ritual and frequenting the traditional eating places in ritualistic way. If you drive across the city, you will find that 90% of the people are dressed conservatively as well as traditionally, until and unless you are only cruising around the upmarket malls and hotels.

B) Places: The T-Nagar’s, The religious places and the markets are almost the same apart from the cosmetic design and architectural changes. The gold jeweellery, silk sarees and the road side eateries along with the customers remains the same to a large extent. Most of the parks remains the same too, where the elderly retired gentlemen from the govt services vie for the same space with fertive love birds and noisy children.

C) Entertainment: It is still the movies, margazhi and Temple festivals. The same enthusiasm and craze around the ‘larger than life’ icons; Same revernces towards deities, devotees and  Political leaders.

D) Culture: Well that’s one thing that has not at all changed, however old the city has become. In fact I am very happy to note that it has grown to be a bigger draw than other forms of entertainment across generations.

Over the years, the city has retained it’s traditional values, ethics and culture. That’s the reason a north Indian like me came over to stay for few months, still lives here after two decades.

Looking forward to Sahithya Sridhar's thoughts about the same at her blog Rhythmica and passing on the baton of CBC Tablog 3 to her... 

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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