Today is my 39th day in chennai, capital of the state of Tamil Nadu. There is no special reason to write my first article in this blog which i had created about 2 years ago. The only reason to write it is i have been trying to write one since past 2 years, but never got the interest and neither had much time to pen down my thoughts.
Coming back to chennai (instead of discussing other unnecessary topics like why i am writing it... :D ). I stepped into Chennai on the morning of 7th April 2010. I had an impression of the city in my mind. I had thought that people out here are peace loving by nature, so there won't be much sound and all... But... I had to rethink about it just after my first step on the chennai central. It was 7 am in the morning and the loud speaker of the TV(primarily used for advertisements) on the station would have beaten even the croudest of a pub in any other city. It was loud... The sound pierced into the ears... And the main point is... None of us (a group of 18 ppl) could understand even a single word. All of it was in Tamil. :D Just wanted to rush out of the station as fast as i could.
Outside the station we met the taxi driver who was waiting for us to take us to the company for which we all have come here. He could neither speak hindi or english... And we could not speak tamil... We had to use our dumb charades skill to make him understand that we need to have something for breakfast. He did understand and took us to a decent place. We were really amused to look at the names on the menu. In kolkata or anywhere else, we have seen names of the south indian food like dosa, vada, idly etc... But don't know why do they put an 'i' at the end of all the names ending with 'a'. Thus dosa became dosai and vada became vadai. Which is the correct word have not been able to find it till now. If anyone else knows, then pls throw some light. :)
Finally we reached Mahindra City. It is a place built in the suburbs of chennai. It falls in the district of 'Chengalpattu'... About 65 km from the chennai central railway station. Why do companies open their offices at such far off places. We were just wondering where shall we get the accomodation... it would take 2 hours to reach the office... Ufff... But now things have settled down... The tension is not there because we had to accept how things were placed for us. We took a 3BHK in tambaram. 5 of us stay in a flat and yes... Even this place is 30 kms from the office. :) thanks to the local trains here. Bus and train connectivity is quite good and its on the cheaper side only. It takes 1 hrs 10 min (door to door) to reach office.
Till now... The worst part that i have found in this ancient city is the autowallahs... you ask them for any place... And they will tell you double of what the actual fare is... after bargaining i could bring them down to 120 for a 6 km ride. Compared to kolkata... Its double the taxi fare in kolkata... Ufff...
All in all people here are helpful (other than autowallahs). The main problem is to make them understand what you want. Once they understand your problem, they will do your work.
Many of you must have read 2 states by chetan bhagat. Whatever he has described in the book is true to every single word. No booze and no chicken allowed in the place where you live. Yes people... Its true. Waise it worked out in a better way for me... Cz i am a vegetarian and a no boozer. :D
Nothing much left to say about chennai. Just writing about the city cz i have nothing much to do right now. I don't understand how do these ppl take such a long time to assign the employees to some project. They would say that there are lots of vacancies for various roles but still they take 39 damn days to assign a work. I was so excited and so happy that i would be working for Infosys, a world renowned brand. I had so many expectations from the firm. But guess things work like this only in these big firms like infy, wipro tcs etc... Am baffled.
