Movement

There is a lot of it everywhere you turn to. Movement. A big city like Chennai is always on the move, even if it does not seem like it on most occasions. But even when you are stuck in traffic in Chennai, it is not a full stop. Traffic moves, even if slowly, on such occasions. There are several other places in the world, and even in the country, where traffic comes to a standstill on multiple occasions. 

Chennai is far better. Most of the pauses in your journey on the road happen at traffic intersections, where the red light stays on for longer than every motorist thinks is required. One such intersection is this one at the meeting point of Jawaharlal Nehru Salai (that's the NH 45 going inside the city) and Arcot Road. With the Chennai Metro construction also encroaching on the road space, everyone tries to get past this crossing as soon as they can.

And, if the car coming at you flashes lights at you, you had better stay out of the way - he is in too much of a hurry for you to attempt any movement into his path!

Theme Day at the CDP - and you had better get a move on there if you want to see the theme 'Movement' interpreted in cities around the world!

Multiscreen opening

When it opened, thirty-seven years ago, it was one of the first public cinema theatres on Arcot Road. AVM's Rajeshwari was more of a preview theatre in those days, and Kamala Theatre filled the gap between Liberty Theatre and the studios at Vadapalani. With a capacity of almost a thousand seats, it was one of the better halls to watch a movie in; being at the edge of the movie industry's hub, there was also a chance of getting to see a star, too. The lobbies and the stairways used to be lined with all the industry bigwigs who had visited Kamala Theatre - actually, not just the bigwigs, there were photos of just about anyone. None of them had any signs, so it was a fun game to try and identify all the lesser lights of the industry, each time we went to see a movie there.

Filling a thousand seats, show after show is a huge challenge these days, and the hall is doing what it can to meet the challenge now. Even then, they are going with just one additional screen - with their plans of adding about 600 seats, the challenge of filling seats does not seem to have got any easier. Let us hope they continue to grace their walls with bits and pieces of Tamizh cinema history; that might yet prod me to go watch one (or two) more movies there!

Star light, star bright

Despite all the doom and gloom around, there are still many reasons to celebrate. Noticed the Christmas stars for sale for the first time this season only this evening. All the 'fancy stores' have them, reminding us that the festival season is not over yet.

There were a couple of other shops with brighter stars; missed taking pictures as I passed by, because this one was meant to be. Bright and fancy!

Which Queen was that?

Over the past six years or so, the number of people working in call centres in Chennai has surely gone beyond the six figure mark. Call centre jobs were slow to come to Chennai, mainly because of two reasons: one, with Tamil Nadu contributing to just under 20% of the country's engineering graduates every year, it was a hot destination for software recruiters - and even science and arts graduates were aspiring for software jobs rather than settle for less. The second reason was some kind of a myth that English in Chennai (or south India in general) is much more 'accented' than its cousin in the Gurgaon belt.

The dotcom bust of 2001 meant that engineers from the class of 2002 found their dream software jobs drying up and turned to a couple of companies which were establishing their technical support call centres in Chennai. Once that barrier was broken, it did not take long to bust the my-accent-better-than-your-accent myth. Part of that was thanks to several 'training institutes' such as this one. All kinds of accents could be heard coming from these buildings as the accent gap between the supply and demand was narrowed. Most of the demand was from North America, so that was the first offering from almost all such institutes. And then, to differentiate, newer accents were developed, and courses went beyond verbal calisthenics to grammar and suchlike.

At least the sign reminded me that I cannot take it for granted that any Queen would speak English!