Huh! The truth seems always bitter!

Nostalgic memories keep lingering on...

I am back after a very eventful vacation in Chennai. This big break was indeed mandatory as it comes after 3 years. The one month vacation was a culmination of all the national holidays that I had worked on..for the past 2 years and it has paid off. I reached Chennai on Dec 31st at 11:45pm. What a way to start the new year! My parents were there and words can't describe how it was to be in their midst. I presented my Dad with a Movado I had purchased and a Glenfiddich 18 year reserve. He was very happy. I gave my Mom a 3 piece cut diamond pendant. She was happy too. I gave a nano to my Bro. The next day..he started to show it off!Chennai has changed a lot over the past 3 years and when I look at it, culturally, its grown out more cosmopolitan in outlook, shedding out the "conservative" tag it used to hold. When I see Chennai, it reminds me of Bangalore as it was and is now. This time around since I was traveling alone, I was more at home with my parents than out on the roads chasing down the chicks! But I did find time out to go to some of the hangout places in Chennai. There is this new place called Mocha-Coffee and Conversations. Its set up in a middle eastern style with drapes and dewans adoring the dim lit walls and I guess wooden flooring. Even though it was afternoon, one had a sense of feeling it was night. Outside was a big patio which had lot of benches and they served Hookahs along with coffee. Well, with a decaf house blend on the house I thought a Hookah won't be such a bad idea. I could also figure out a big generation gap with the crowd from sixteens to the twenty two ish! More of the teens I suppose. I felt kind of embarrassed and so did my friend who had come down that day. It was strange to see teens holding upto a hookah. Traffic in Chennai has increased two fold with many two wheelers and small cars lining up the roads. I found it difficult to navigate through the streets for the first few days..but as days went by, I became one of them and drove around with ease. My travel in India was limited to Tirupathi, Bangalore and Mangalore. I had great fun in Bangalore with my cousins and we hung out in some new malls that have come up. Forum and Garuda mall. They pretty much look more like the malls out here with a 6-8 theater movie complex. The road that leads to the IT park is terrible and I guessed it right why the IT companies are trying to move out of Bangalore. Food tasted like ambrosia. I made sure I had breakfast and lunch at home and occasionally went out for dinner. Well the days did not actually fly by. I thought it pretty much went at a normal pace until the final week started to show up. It was during this week that I had a lot of emotions going through. Why couldn't India be where Mexico is today? It would have been so easy to cross the border every week and stay with my family. The distance is so big that when you come for a holiday, people treat and pamper you as though you have flown down from mars including the parents. I still miss the fights that I used to have and the normal conversations. I had a great time in Chennai and it became worse when I was on the return journey to Boston. I was all alone and felt terrible. Boston was snowing again. I was the only odd passenger out who wasn't wearing a jacket. How can I tell them, I just boarded from a city which has an annual average temperature of about 90F?

PS: I drove past SVCE, my Alma mater, on the way to Bangalore. It looks like a mess. What happened to the arch? They've taken it down. The road to the college remains the same red dirt road. There has been a few buildings that have come up. Learnt from PCK(Prof. Kishore Raja), my ECE..Data Comm prof, they've made it to 90% management quota. Well, AC Muthiah does'nt have to crib for more money and so is Jayendra Saraswathi-II.