Home Town Sweet Home Town
I am really excited and acutely animated to visit my hometown Kancheepuram for Deepavali after almost 3 months. This temple town has grown rapidly like a Complan kid for the past 5 years. Right from the standard of living to the cost of living everything has gone up. There are supermarkets, car showrooms, branded garments, good restaurants, foreign goods etc. There is nothing that we don’t have in Kancheepuram now except for the Statue of Liberty.
When it comes to people and their way of dressing, the town has seen a radical change. When I was young, I remember going to Chennai to buy clothes for festivals. That was largely because of the kind of garments available in the town and the taste of the inmates. They used to wear such bright shirts that would even affect the eyes of a blind man. The colors range from cotton candy color, bright yellow to all 7 rainbow colors in one. You cannot look into one shirt for more than a minute. When you walk on the roads during festival times, you’d require a sunglass to protect your eye. Even Color TVs in Kancheepuram came in Bright Pink, Bright green colors those days.
Shopping was one of the nightmares those days. There was no concept of supermarket or malls. If we get onions and tomatoes in the same shop, that is called the Supermarket. The only mall the inmates knew those days was GOL MALL. Nobody heard of home delivery of provisions and I remember the first time when it was introduced everybody started asking if it would be normal delivery or caesarian. Nowadays if you pay more, the provisions is not only getting home delivered, but they help in stacking it in the containers and very soon the time will come that they will cook, feed us and then leave I guess.
The girls in Kancheepuram were so not worried about their looks that it would reflect in their way of dressing. Their size would be 36-24-36 and that would be only for LEFT ARM. They used to be so fat that Government gave them a separate pin code. Their IQ level would be much less than their waist line. According to them Sherlock Holmes would be some Housing Project and Tiger Woods would be a thick forest in Africa. They were not interested in anything else other than gossiping. They had wonderful Sense of Rumor. But now, the trend has completely changed and the girls in Kancheepuram are scoring much more than guys in all the exams and they are getting more modern these days. They have started wearing clothes which start late and end early.
Even though there are changes in all coordinates, the nature of the people was, is and will be very good. They are so good natured that it would put heroes of Indian cinema to shame. There are certain things which will not be available in a city but only in a town. That is a different feeling altogether and should definitely be experienced to appreciate that. EAST OR WEST Kancheepuram is the BEST.