Vikesh was the first guy who made it to my friends list in chennai. He was my room-mate for around 5 months. He is from UP and he was in Linksys project in SlashSupport.
He started his career from Bangalore as a Marketing Executive and eventually switched his career to IT. I have seen him rejecting pretty good offers in Marketing field just because of his passion towards his IT career. Apart from that, this guy has a very short temper and I used to tell him the theory of “Relax-Think-and-Jump”. I am still amused that how he got tuned into my frequency !. He used to go to Bangalore during the weekends for meeting his friends out there. Initially he was really frustrated with the food and people in Chennai , but now it seems like he is getting comfortable with it. He is a chain smoker. I almost quit my smoking habit watching him burning all those cigarettes one after one… 🙂 . We used to go to Spenzer Plaza ( a huge shopping mall in Mount Road) whenever we wanted to spend ( or waste ) some time. It’s a fact that you can spend 2-3 hours very easily in Spenzer Plaza just by wandering though the shops !.

Then came Biju S Balan, my long time friend, member of “Royal 4” ( More about this later… ). Vikesh agreed to vacate the room for Biju. Vikesh moved to another nearby Mansion and shared a room with another guy, Ramesh. As I mentioned earlier, the time I spend with Biju is just unforgettable. He is a hardcore Marxist and still believes that Revolution may happen at any time now. 🙂 I used to irritate him by arguing against all the Marxian ideas. We used to go to the Marina Beach whenever we wanted. We enjoyed various faces of the ocean in midnight, early mornings, evenings. Its a nice feeling to have your feet washed up by the cool and calm waves in the early morning. We enjoyed “Arun Ice Cream” from Spenzer Plaza and Kerala style food from “Kalpaka”. We used to watch malayalam movies regardless of which theatre they were released. We even went to a theatre in a remote location of Chennai to watch “Udhayananu Thaaram”, a nice movie by the Mohanlal-Sreenivasan team. Satyam Multiplex was another place where we enjoyed movies.

Biju’s sister Bindu used to join us sometimes in our movie adventures. Once we watched a movie which turned out to be a disaster. The movie was “House of Wax”, a remake of a classic old horror movie. It contained nothing but brutal murders. If you would like to see many different ways to kill people, go and watch this movie. I sensed some danger when the guy at the ticket counter speciafically told me “not to bring any children”. Bindu was so frightened by the murder scenes that she kept her eyes closed at times. She complains about that movie nowadays also. 🙂

We went to “Mahabalipuram”, a cultural heritage spot in the outskirts of Chennai. It was a day spent worth it. We took some snaps of the nice stone carvings and the beautiful temple structures there. We also visited some of the new excavation sites too.

Decemeber 26th was a very sad day. The day that took away all the happiness of Christmas. Chennai was badly struck by the “Tsunami”. The killer waves took the lives of so many innocent people in a matter of minutes. Me and Vikesh rushed to Marina Beach as soon as we got the shocking news. All we could see was debris in the place of a nice beach we visited the evening just before that morning ! . We saw a lot of people were gathering to help but nobody had the guts to play with nature. Everyone was stunned by the unfortunate incident. I must mention that the Police and the Tamil Nadu Govt. did a very good job that time. They were fast in taking decisions and help was right there wherever it was required. Our company also voluntered later into the relief efforts. We accumulated a good amount of money and clothes to be distributed among the affected people. One nice thing that happened was every one of my family and friends called me that day to ensure that I was safe. Thak you all for that. I love you guys …

( To be continued….. )

It was all over by 21st May. I boarded the Chennai-Mumbai Express to join my new employer in Mumbai. I sat blank in the train. I was going through mixed emotions. It’s really hard to explain in words.

I must say I enjoyed every moment I was in chennai. I was very near to Kerala as compared to mumbai. I could reach my home in just a night’s journey !. I met a lot of new people in chennai and some of them really made it to my close friendship.

The best thing that happened to me was I got Biju S Balan as my room mate. He was my class mate in Sri Kerala Varma College and we are continuing our friendship for more than 11 years now!. He made every moment so vibrant that I ddn’t knew how days were passing by. We used to discuss about everything under the sun. I was totally dumb in most of the subjects we talked about, but I used to give him some arguments through which I cleared my doubts!!!! 🙂

Then there was the true “Kerala Style” food. I am a non-vegetarian. I found some excellent kerala restaurents with the help of Biju and his sister Bindu S Balan. I was a regular customer in “Kalpaka” , one of those hotels which served a good variety of non-veg food. It really helped me to maintain my figure ! 🙂

I got a lot of new friends in my company ( SlashSupport ). Vivek, Sriram, Gokul, Ajay, Anand, Praveen, Srini, Vincent, Prasanna, Anuradha, Jayakumar, Dominic, Deepu…. to name a few. We were the tech-support team for VMware. Our team was responsible for supporting some of the biggest comapnies in the IT field. The work load and the job timings were hectic, but we always maintained a cheerful atmosphere inside the team. I still cherish those moments which I spent with them. We used to go to a near-by tea-shop outside the company during the night shifts. That was when we used to discuss about future plans, dreams, love…. We used to play Table-Tennis in the wee hours of the morning ! I spent only about 9 months in Chennai, but that episode of my life is something I will never forget.

This is definitely not the end of my chennai experience.. I will share memories ( good and bad ) of chennai time to time..