I have been to Chennai four or five times. The first ever trip happened when i was a boy of nine. It was with my father and mother that i went to Chennai. My father was an employee of the Government of Tamilnadu, so was my mother too. They both got transferred very often. My father had to approach the head office in Chennai in case of being separated from his spouse. He wanted either he to be transferred to my mother's place of work or the other way around. It was in one such trip, i accompanied my father. Apart from his official as well as personal work, he did take me to some places in Madras.
The next trip happened after several years, moreover that was the first trip i took all by myself to a far-off place like Chennai. It was in 1998 i went to Chennai all alone not knowing anything about the metropolis wilderness. I had a friend (the tense has got impregnated meaning) who did his post graduation with me in Thiagarajar college, Madurai. He chose a different path to come up in life. He left studying literature after the completion of Master's Degree in English and pursued courses related to computer graphics and web designing. He belonged to a middle class family and had to struggle in Madras. He had a friend in Madras who gave him some initial support and made arrangements for his stay in Madras with other seekers of jobs.
Within a year this friend of mine, who had tremendous potential in visualising natural scenery and converting it into a two-dimensional image, found himself a job in a software firm that specialised in designing websites. His job was to cater to the image aspects of web pages. He started earning around four thousand rupees within a year of his departure from literature studies. I made a call to his company and informed about my ensuing trip to Madras. He had no phone in his living place and mobile phones were not thought of then as one of the existing gadgets on the earth. He promised to receive me at the Egmore terminus whither went the omni-buses. Unfortunately the trip of the bus got delayed due to an accident that created a lot of traffic jam. I reached only at 6:30 in the morning instead of the scheduled arrival at 5:30. I got down and did not know what to do, though i had his address, Madras was a jungle to me then. I was making enquiries about buses and the auto-rickshaw fare to reach his destination. It went on for some twenty minutes and all of a sudden i found him coming on his moped there. He slept ignoring the alarm and that was the reason for his delay. I was much pacified by his arrival. He then took me to his living place which was in 'Aminjikarai(Amanindha Karai)'.
The purpose of my trip was to visit the central employment office to register my
M Phil degree. He dropped me at the Vadapalani bus terminus and i boarded a direct bus to 'Luz' Church and from there i went on foot to the destination of mine. On that night we went to a film. I think it was to the SSR Pankajam theatre at Aminjikarai. The next day, he gave me his moped, rather a daring act since i did not know many places and roads of Madras, with which i visited the museum on Pantheon road. He came to send me off on that evening.
The next trip happened with another of my friend, who was his friend too. On this occasion too i went and stayed with this first friend of mine. I stayed for four days and there was no real purpose of my visit to Chennai except registering my SLET qualification ( a test that qualifies one to be teacher in colleges). On this trip, we went to another film in another one of theatre campuses, that has five theatres on the same campus, a primitive multiplex. Staying in Madras was so easy as there was a house for this friend of mine. In the mean time, he got promoted and was doing very well in his office. He was earning around twenty thousand rupees and involved his sister in a fast-track Japanese course that eventually took his sister, who was a Computer Science graduate to Japan. The family of him flourished with a lot of joint earnings. He was very much frequent in calling me and often invited me to Madras so that we could relive the days of our education. We had been very close friends, the seven of us boys, who were the only male strength in the literature course. The contact among us continued even after studies too.
In the meanwhile, I joined as a teacher of English in a college in 2000. I was inexperienced in my profession. The thirst to become a committed teacher took a bulk of my time and i never had an occasion to visit Madras for long. In 2003 June i received a call from this friend of mine. I was in Ooty then and i was sending short messages to his mobile phone, by which he traced me and made an SOS call to make me take a trip to Madras. The reason, he was getting married the following day. It was a love marriage. He fell in love with one of his colleagues and she accepted his proposal. I could never make it to marriage even if i started at the moment i had received the call. I was very unfortunate to miss such an event. Afterwards it took me three more years to go to Madras and to meet the married couple. It was in May 2006 that i visited Madras and was received by the couple. She was such a good girl as she, in conversation with me, spoke about recurrent references being made by her husband about his classmates and friends. She was quite anxious to meet them all and after a lot of time she got a chance to meet me. A pathetic thing about the life of the couple was that they remained childless even up to the time i met them.
I did stay for only two days then and she after coming back very late from work very much adamant in having me been served with supper. The food was very tasty and i spoke great of her privately to him. The next day i bade farewell in person to him and over the phone to her. Then i did not really get a chance to go to Madras again, though i was often in touch with him and his wife over the phone. He was an athlete and cricketer in his college days and a very committed worker. Of late he was designing the pages of the new tamil magazine 'Puthiya Thalaimurai'.
In the second week of February, i received a call from one of my other friends, who lives in Singapore. He told my mother that Mani was seriously ill. I telephoned Mani's wife to know about his illness. On his way to work, he felt extremely tired and hungry and wanted to eat cakes. He stopped his car bought cakes and lost his consciousness and was in a semi-conscious state. Luckily, her friends were near-by and they rushed to the spot and took him to hospital. A sudden shot up of blood pressure caused a snap to the blood vein going to brain. It was immediately diagnosed and rectified. He was gaining his consciousness, though the left part was paralysed, he was recovering well. I was happy to get the news of his recovery when i phoned a week after his hospitalisation. I did not make calls everyday from then on. I telephoned only four days later to his wife who was literally in tears when she attended the phone. I snapped the connection and made a call to my Singapore friend who immediately called some of Mani's relatives. It was a Friday evening, if my memory serves me right on the 26th of February. There was a flurry of calls afterwards and before the dawn broke he lost his life. It was because of a hole in the intestine, which caused feces got mixed with food and bacteria to spread to other parts of the body. It was a very fateful life. The wife got reconciled with her inlaws, after their marriage and got on quite well only then. It was a great strain that had stayed on on his mind that he could not father a child. He was only thirty-five when he breathed last. It is highly sympathetic of the wife that he left behind. She is courageous, however such a terrible shock would wither many a strong soul. He rests in peace now, i believe, having stripped off the peace of many. I did not make a trip to Madras to mourn his death, instead his mortal remains were brought to his native place near Madurai to have been cremated. My next trip to Madras will definitely be soaked in tears.
My condolences to you!
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