Chennai - Speaking Hindi - An offense ?

Back from Chennai trip. Glad to be back at home. Chennai sucks big time. Nothing about the whole trip was good, except for the company of people who were travelling along with on the train. i.e., some of my colleagues.

We boarded the West Coast express from Mangalore on Saturday night at 9.15 PM. The train was pretty much on time, but towards the end, it got delayed by around 1.5 hrs, due to (heavy) rains in the Chennai area. Its actually not heavy rains. If one compares the rains that Mangalore receives, its just normal rains. The problem is, there is absolutely no drainage system in Chennai. So, even if it rains for a couple of hours, many of the roads and low lying areas get flooded. So, due to the (heavy) rains, lot of the low-lying areas were flooded, and lot of chaos across the Chennai city. Luckily, our train didn’t stop forever.

We reached Chennai Central, i.e., our final destination at around 4.45 PM. It was damn cloudy, and was raining outside. We were around four of us, and non of us knew Tamil. Not knowing Tamil is bad in Chennai. And little did we know that speaking Hindi is a big offense in Chennai!. Majority of the Tamil people in Chennai have some major ego issue when it comes to language. At least, that’s what I felt. For example, one of the auto Rickshaw drivers refused to take us just because we spoke Hindi!. He blankly said..”If you know Tamil, only then I will take you” !! He even began to curse us when one of my colleague told he knew Hindi. Come On man….. Give me a break.

If you ask anyone … “Anna Salai …Where..?”.. they might tell you were it is. But if you ask the same question in Hindi… “Anna Salai Kaha Hai”, they might curse you!…… I am not exaggerating here. This has been our experience.

Most of the Auto Rickshaw Drivers are major crooks. Even though there were around 100 auto rickshaws just outside the railway station, we couldn’t engage even one of them. Either they refused to take us (because we spoke Hindi), or they charged around 3 to 4 times more the actual cost. The meter is present, but its always tampered, or they take you to the destination after going round and round the city. Oh.. there is also supposed to be a “Pre-Paid” auto rickshaw counter. But no one was in the counter, and the rickshaw drivers seemed too happy about it. (not that it works great even it was open). Its always better you have a fair idea of how much its gonna cost you before you engage a Rickshaw. Its also better you fix the fare before you sit on the rickshaw. If you don’t do so, you will be ripped off.

We were put up in the New Woodlands Hotel. We got the standard rooms since the deluxe rooms were all full. The rooms look pretty old. Kind of stuffy too. Not at all worth the money that you pay for. The fittings in the toilets were kind of rusted…horrible. May be the deluxe rooms are better, but I would not recommend this hotel to anyone. The Hotel serves only vegetarian food. Since it was raining (heavily), and it was kind of flooded, we ordered for food in our room itself. And we did a big mistake. We ordered for North Indian food. The North Indian food was bad as it can get. It was clearly done by some South Indian cook. We had ordered for a Paneer dish, and what came was….something like big pieces of Paneer dipped in something that looks more like sambar along with other vegetables. Somehow we managed to eat it. No other go, and we were hungry too. BTW, Food in Chennai is quite expensive!

The next day. i.e., Monday, the condition was much better. It wasn’t raining. But it was cloudy. Our work took more time then expected. Reached the room back at around 3 PM. Then we went out in search for a good restaurant. Found one. But the food again was not as great., But again, Hunger took priority over taste. :).

At around 5 PM we went to Spencers Plaza for some small time shopping. We spent around 1.5 hrs at Spencers, and came back.

We took the Mangalore Mail train at around 8.15 PM. The return trip was pretty good. The train was almost always ahead of schedule, and reached Mangalore 15 mins earlier.

One thing that I noticed in Chennai was, almost every other person you take services from is there to rip you. May it be a Rickshaw Driver or a Taxi/Cab driver, or a waiter at hotel or the room service guys. Everyone wants you to pay at least 2 to 3 times the normal.

One more funny thing is…..Even though speaking Hindi is an offense in Chennai, some of the Hindi Television serials like Kaun Banega Crorepati 2 etc is beamed in Tamil. Some TV Channels were also beaming some English movies with Tamil voice overs. What an Irony!

Many of my Tamil speaking friends too agree with the above mentioned reality/facts! I don’t have anything personal against the Tamilians or the Tamil Language. Yes, is a beautiful language. But its time that people open up and accept other cultures and language too. Its very essential if you want to be a part of the global economy. I have traveled to many of the places in South India. And except for Chennai, I didn’t have any problems when it comes to communicating with people. May it be Hyderabad or Bangalore or Cochin. If you speak in English or Hindi, people understand what you are speaking and respond back and try to help you in the best possible way they can.

But that’s absolutely not the case in Chennai!

13 comments | November 8th, 2005 at 09:39pm