Madras Memoirs

While scores of Chennai citizens are glued to TV and Netizens glued to their monitors or mobile phone screens to purportedly follow the Nivar Cyclone, I have a much simpler and more accurate way to forecast the weather for the day.  On days even when it’s a rain holiday in town and people are advised to stay at home it’s quite normal in my household for people to depend on me for their daily dose of weather bytes. My daughter would call out to me “ Appa, can i go out now ?’ without hesitation I would tell her  “ yes, you can go. There’ll be no rains today”. “Umbrella..?’ ‘Nah..! ’ Sometimes, it may be still bright outside with only a faint hint of dark clouds, and my daughter would be ready to dart out, I’ll tell stop her, ‘ don’t go out today, it’s going to rain or if you must, at least take an umbrella with you ” And so far, my weather predictions have worked without fail. If you are wondering if I have a supercomputer tucked away under my bed or if I have downloaded a soon-...

Good morning Friends Sharp at 9 am today, we huddled – sorry maintained social distancing  - in front of the TV to listen to PM’s address. We always switch on Doordarshan channel (no. 620 in Tata Sky) as they display  full transcript of his speech in English in real time and we can read it and understand his Sudh Hindi. But today,  the transcript was absent and we could not follow what he was saying. Other English and Tamil News channels were as usual showing Dettol and Lifebuoy advertisements. So, I quickly took out my notebook and started jotting down the words I could follow and made a list as follows: Panch April– that is 5th April Nau baje – 9’O clock (later I concluded it’s 9 pm) Bandh – as in Bharath Bandh where they close all shops, shutters and doors Then thankfully I heard quite a few English words like: Torch light, Lamps, candles, Mobile phones (he emphasised mobile phones) He also mentioned Ravivar and Diya – they must be some high ranking offi...