A Hostage's Life in Chennai

I woke up today morning, with this insane urge to blog about this road block in my life. I feel I have reached a point in my stay in Chennai, where if things do not change for the better, I am calling it quits.

Chennai truely has a long way to go before it can be cosmopolitan, and a City that can attract a vibrant dynamic multicultural work population.

I like the beaches, I am doing great at work, but I guess I can't live a bums life on the beach. I still have to manage a house, a maid, Dhobis, and a zillion other things that go to make life liveable. And mind you, I have done this for the past 7 years, which I have been on my own and I am good at this. But sadly not good enough to replicate in Chennai.

Chennai is being touted as the new IT boom town. But apart from the acres of marshland doled out to IT companies at throw away prices, and twonship that are upsupring village areas, hardly any social infractructure is in place. I don't see how Chennai will attract a dynamic, multicultural work population whos used to world class services and facilities.

I work with an IT major and most folks in my office in Chennai are native Tamils who after stints in other cities, are returning home to settle down. If I split it into ratios it will be as bad as 70:30, which is scary and should be red flags to the Organisation and also to city at large.

Life on the other side of town hopefully is different, but for folks who live in the OMR/ECR areas, where most of the expats will work, there is a severe dearth of people who can communicate in any other language, save Tamil.

Before you brand me a "Hater", let me make it clear, I don't hate Tamil, I don't know enough of it to Hate.All I know is that its rich, with a tradition that pre dates sanskrit. But alas like the french, you are linguistically myopic!

The moment I call a Taxi service, I yell ENGLISH Please, I do the same when I am with the Phone Company, I managed a complete AC unit installation without a single word uttered, it was sign language.

But I dont know where to go from gesturing in sign language, I just stare at the wall.

May be in time I will learn Tamil, just like I speak a bit of Tulu, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Hindi, English and some French. But on second thoughts, may be not, because all I am feeling right now is extreme dislike bordering on the verge of hate, which is what happens if its forced on some one.

I read in the newspapers that Tamil will be made compulsury in colleges, for all students. I quite like the Idea, but with a twist. All non tamil students take Tamil, all Tamil students take up one language thats other than theirs, even if it means taking - Spoken English.

To fellow hostages, please comment and do let me of any domestic help who speaks a bit of english or Hindi,any dhobi who delivers, I need these two needs attended immediately!

To the rest of the world, let me know if you have managed a better transition into this city, anything to Free me Up!

Hve you ever noticed how most of the messages you get over the saviour of Indian gay population aka g4m essentially sound like 'Hi, i like your profile, are you interested in friendship and fun'.

Well...all very fine I'd say, except that it's not quite. These messages almost make you feel that friendship can be forged instantly just on the basis of your sexuality, and that 'fun' is only as multifaceted as your kinks are. I hate how the meaning of 'fun' has been changed by cheap dirty jokes into sex....and the euphemism, if it be so, makes even sex sound dirty.

Why is everyone scared of uttering the word sex? it even has lesser number of letters than love, or friendship...the same no as fun and I guess that's why the replacement.

How pathetic must we be that we need to hide ourselves even when we are naked?

The Growing Years!

I just came across this , have a look and tell me what you think of it ? Brilliant! Raw, Edgy, Black and White ~ everything I like, including the greys that creep in.

Eric Sizmore Photos

Thought for the day

God exists because straight people don't have a sex life!

Ferris wheels

I was home, and there was the annual fair going on...with all the fanfare of a carnival. And a very very special friend of mine...someone who's almost as close to me as my own brother visited by chance. He is homophobic though, but that's another thing. So we went to the fair, and for the first time in my life, I suddenly had the courage to get on the Ferris wheel...and he was there with me...and we were both shit scared, and were screaming our guts out. He's a doc, and then he said that I should find a fixed point of focus, and everything would be fine. So I stared at his eyes, and did not take my eyes off his till the ride was over. And everything was fine...even great...even almost orgasmically great!

Funny thing how our lives are just like ferris wheel...everything would be just fine, or even great if we could only find a fixed point to focus on.

I wish it were easy to find that point to focus on.

I wish the point of focus always stayed stationary relative to me like his eyes on the ferris wheel gondola.

I wish I could find a place to stand steady for a moment with someone.

I wish I could make that moment eternity.

Bloody Homophobia!

Here it is - tell me that you have seen this, does this blatent homophobia make your blood curl!

It does for me, I know how short of blood our blood banks are and Have many a times had to give blood in emergencies, all this while staring at the writing on the wall - in Bold..

You should never give blood if:You're a man who's had sex with another man, even safe sex using a condom

Personally, I did what I did because I knew that I was safe and they needed blood. But this discrimination has to stop!

Here are the other people who can give blood, but not Me!

A straight man who has sex with a different girl every weekend can give blood TODAY.

Intravenous Drug users can give blood after 1 year.

Prostitute users can give blood after 1 year.

Those who have had sex abroad in a high risk HIV country can give blood after 18 months

Here's a movement in the UK, thats working for getting gays the right to donate blood.

A

This is officially my first post on the Curry Closet. I had to blog about something Spicy! And the choice was obvious, I had to blog about A!

The move to Chennai can be hard for any one, and I was no exception. Add to it my predilection of good food and brash Panju bois...both of which are extremely rare in Chennai. I was home sick, tired of iddli and sambhar and given notice by the office that I needed to get a pad, I had overstayed at the hotel for an extra 14 days..bowing down to such pressures I braved out and found the pad.

I braved for a month, stayed alone, and it had its advantages , but the novelty soon wore off.

I met a few people, A was the third guy I met..I was already at the table drinking tea at the Cha Bar, in waked A, nope he Slithered, his camera in hand and a smile that flashed.

Did not take long to do the pleasantries, and It was down to business..there were too may places where we found common ground.

Except for his annoying habit of clicking at everything and anything, I was willing to give this a try. Little did I imagine, that this was going to be a trip, a good one!

A - My Flatmate, Keeper of secrets, Nag about the House, Sous Chef,..I do have an long list of officious sounding titles that he holds in the Curry Closet, none come close to describing him..so he is simply A , my friend. Thank You !

B is back!

Yippie!

Well...B is back, and I am going off for a vacation of sorts. Going home after one whole year.

More pics when I am back.

cheers!

Pineapple crown on the beach

Sunset in Chennai

7/10 vs. 8/10

B has gone for a well deserved Vacation to Delhi. So passing this weekend through was all left up to me, and to be fair enough, I fared rather swell in that account.

Had a little intrigue (:P) with a german visitor in the city, met two really good friends after a long long time, and then met the cutest thing I have met so far.

It's the cute thing, whom we shall call 'Flash' as he wanted me to, about who this post is.

Well, we went to a coffee place which also served Pizza and such other stuff...and we had a rather funny (read lame) service out there. Ok, I am digressing here.

So Flash is 'kind of' seeing some guy, and has been going monogamous about it. (Alas!) He is 22 and I must say I felt a pang somewhere within when I was listening to him....maybe I was jealous at the optimism, or simply the faith in "happily ever after" which I have totally lost. I wonder if it's he who's naive, or it's me who's just plain old stupid (and that translates as plain, old and stupid!) !

Anyhow, while we were just talking about it, he shared an interesting facet of the young gay life in Chennai, and I think I might safely assume, of the young gay life. Apparently everyone's rated in terms of desirability; in his case, on a scale of 1-10. He was a tad insecure because he thinks he is a 7 on that scale while the boyfriend is an 8. So yes, I suppose you will never be good looking enough for your self. But is this how things really go?

For me it had always been a binary decision - interesting vs. not interesting, doable vs. not doable, cute vs not cute, good in the sack vs. not good in the sack...and so on depending on the situation. And now suddenly I see that there's this whole gradation in place. From what Flash said, most of his friends did the same and he seemed rather surprised when I seemed to be totally ignorant of this. Perhaps I should meet more people, or pay more attention to what they are saying. Or maybe he said it out because we already had decided that we'd not go beyond the 'just-friends' tag.

All said and done, it's still rather odd to feel a number glowing on your forehead by which you are being identified and/or classified.

Has the gay world become such a pageant?

PS: Flash would feature as a 9 on my list I suppose, but I think I'll stick to my binary version of the classification. Still classification no doubt, and definitely very very judgemental, but at least this way I need not feel like I am being judged on every single aspect of my self, or even my projected self.

PPS: For all those females who complain about life being hard, welcome to the gay world. Mostly you got to be 7/10, or you are just roadkill.

PPPS: Cheers!