They say there is no sense as evocative as the sense of smell, maybe that’s why I still remember the time I took my first whiff of Chennai. It was midnight in early June and I was about to step out of the deodorized sterility of the city’s excuse-for-an-airport. I was readying myself for a blast of hot air from the bowels of an equatorial hell with an attached steam chamber. Thankfully, that blast never came, or I wouldn’t have been recounting this as fondly. What greeted me was the aroma of the wet earth, the patter of rainfall on the aluminium roof of the terminal; a cool breeze ruffled my unruly curls and I remember thinking to myself as I stepped onto the concrete: hell, this ain’t half as bad as people make it out to be. Continue reading
Dissecting Chennai’s Autorickshaw Woes – Part II
10 Thursday Jul 2014