There are cities you live in, and there are cities that live in you. Chennai is the second kind. I was born on its soil, stumbled through its lanes as a boy who found books harder than most, I found my voice in front of a microphone in one of its radio studios, I made a fool of myself and a name for myself on its streets with a camera in hand, and today, I stand in a constitutional office in this same city because it never once let go of me. People ask me sometimes why Chennai deserves to be celebrated, as though the answer needs to be searched for.
This city took in a boy who struggled with his lessons, who was told in more than one classroom that he was slow, that he wouldn’t amount to much academically and it gave him other classrooms. The pavement outside a recording studio became one. The bus stop where strangers argued about cinema and politics with passion became another. The second-hand bookstalls of Moore Market and the pavement stalls near Parry’s Corner taught me things no syllabus ever did. Chennai is not one thing you can hold up and admire, it is a thousand small things that happen to you
(As told to Meghna M.)
