CHENNAI :
“Inga veyyil kodumaiya adikuthu
(Here the sun hits you harshly)
Nizhala thaedi marathadiyila olinja
(Searching for a shade, we hide under a tree)
Anga karumbu chaarum inji morum kedaikuthu
(There we get sugarcane juice and buttermilk)
Bore adichu beachu poyi nadandhaa
(If we are bored, we walk on the beach)
Anga maangaiyum milaga thoolum vikkuthu
(There they sell spiced raw mango)”
hese verses from musician Kaber Vasuki’s Chennai Paadal describe the vibrant scenes of the city in the backdrop of the blazing sun. Similarly, through words, summer becomes a kaleidoscope of sensations. From the shaded alleys of RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days to breezy beaches of Chitra Viraraghavan and Krishna Shastri Devulapalli’s Madras on My Mind: A City in Stories, Chennai’s summer heat permeates the pages of literature. In the words of Kamala Das, the city becomes a living, breathing entity, pulsating with the rhythm of life under the scorching sun. CE delves into the literary landscape of Chennai, where the essence of summer is captured in the pages of books and poems, offering glimpses into the soul of this dynamic city.
Madras on My Mind: A City in Stories
by Chitra Viraraghavan and Krishna Shastri Devulapalli
And so on that particular hot summer afternoon, Marundeeshwaran, wannabe author, sat on the sands of the Thiruvalluvar Nagar beach, attempting to squeeze some prose out of his misbehaving ink pen. He had set out as soon as Thirupu’s snores reached his ears...
He opened his tiny pink notebook and wrote in it:
In Madras, the weather is lovely,
So, too, the sea.
The sea, the sea.
The vast blue sea.
A vast blue liquid lump of a cliché.
In Madras, the weather is lovely
And so, too, the sea.
The Illicit Happiness of Other People
by Manu Joseph
“What did you tell your father?’ ‘I want to go to Marina Beach tonight with Bindu and Gai.’ ‘Why?’ ‘To see Olive Ridley.’ ‘Who is he?’ ‘Olive Ridley is a turtle.’ ‘A turtle?’ ‘Endangered.’ ‘Why must you go to a beach at midnight to see a turtle?’
‘The turtles swim in from the sea and walk on the beach at midnight to lay eggs.’ ‘Why are you interested in turtle eggs?’
‘We have to ensure the eggs are safe. Or Olive Ridleys will become extinct.’ ‘Do boys, too, want to save the Olive Ridleys?’
‘Yes.’ ‘Mythili, just think about it. You. Midnight. Marina Beach. Boys. How could you even ask your father?”
Malgudi Days
by RK Narayan
Fifteen minutes later Madras flashed past the train in window-framed patches of sun-scorched roofs and fields.
The Madras Affair
by Sundari Venkatraman
Walking out into the garden, Sangita sat on the grass to relish her coffee, enjoying the light warmth of the early morning sunrays.
The Covenant of Water
by Abraham Verghese
The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring. It pushes through on a broad front, up and down the coast; unhurried, reliable, with no slack until after midnight, by which time it will have lulled
them into beautiful sleep. It doesn’t know caste or privilege as it soothes the expatriates in their pocket mansions, the shirtless clerk sitting with his wife on the rooftop of his one-room house, and the pavement dwellers in their roadside squats. Digby has seen the cheery Muthu become distracted, his conversation clipped and morose, as he waits for the relief that comes from the direction of Sumatra and Malaya, gathering itself over the Bay of Bengal, carrying scents of orchids and salt, an airborne opiate that unclenches, unknots, and finally lets one forget the brutal heat of the day. “Yes, yes, you are having your Taj Mahal, your Golden Temple, your Eiffel Tower,” an educated Madrasi will say, “but can anything match our Madras evening breeze?”
Tamarind City
by Bishwanath Ghosh
The expression ‘pleasant weather’ may be an oxymoron for Chennai, where the climate is famously split between hot, hotter and hottest...
Yet, there is a Chennai that hasn’t changed and never will. Women still wake up at the crack of dawn and draw the kolam—the rice-flour design—outside their doorstep. Men don’t consider it old-fashioned to wear a dhoti, which is usually matched with a modest pair of Bata chappals. The day still begins with coffee and lunch ends with curd rice. Girls are sent to Carnatic music classes. The music festival continues to be held in the month of December. Tamarind rice is still a delicacy—and its preparation still an art form. It’s the marriage between tradition and transformation that makes Chennai unique. In a place like Delhi, you’ll have to hunt for tradition. In Kolkata, you’ll itch for transformation. Mumbai is only about transformation. It is Chennai alone that firmly holds its customs close to the chest, as if it were a box of priceless jewels handed down by ancestors, even as the city embraces change.
Chennaivaasi
by TS Tirumurti
It was almost six-thirty in the morning and the light coolness of night still hung in the air. She had wrapped herself in a thin shawl. Chennai was not always like this. In fact, for eleven months of the year, it wasn’t like this at all. Usually, the day started warm, became hot and stayed hot. Without respite. Day after day. Sweaty. Sultry. Sapping the strength of man and animal and bird. But this was the season for cool mornings. Cool, even chilly mornings.
Madras
by Arundhathi Subramaniam
I was neither born nor bred here.
But I know this city
of casuarina and tart mango slices,
gritty with salt and chilli
and the truant sands of the Marina,
the powdered grey jowls of film heroes,
my mother’s sari, hectic with moonlight,
still crackling with the voltage
of an MD Ramanathan concert,
the flickering spice route of tamarind and onion
from Mylapore homes on summer evenings,
the vast opera of the Bay of Bengal,
flambéed with sun, and a language as intimate as the taste of sarsaparilla pickle, the recipe lost,
the sour cadences as comforting
as home...
(Inputs from Archita Raghu)