Happy Birthday, Chennai. I have known you somewhat intimately for about a year. It’s been a journey and a half.
When I first landed in you last year, I was crestfallen. I had flown in from Singapore, which, if aviation nerds are to be trusted, has the best airport in the world, and was warned, again and again, to rein in my expectations for the city I’d soon call home. I arrived in the middle of the night, wide-eyed and brimming with optimism. Your airport, I concluded, should be converted into a barn.
I prayed you would be nothing like it.
I started exploring you by staying in the nicer hotels, equal parts gleeful and uncomfortable with their interpretation of hospitality. I moved to the Madras Club, whose shortcomings I ignored because I paid less than half for a room there than I did in your posh hotels. Soon, I rented my own weekend place, because I wanted to call a little slice of you home. I continue to enjoy my wacky living arrangement, which I share with Pagir, a community art space. Some days, I wake up to music on the terrace. Other days, it is thumping feet. A few weekends ago, it was a singing conch.
I miss you when I am gone for extended periods. When I have been here a while, I relentlessly complain about you. You’re not a pretty city, even if wounded locals will claim some parts of you are breathtaking. You’re not a walker’s city, unless walker-friendliness is restricted to the beach. You could do with more accessible green spaces. Yet I rhapsodise about you week after week in this column.
I like you because of the food I find in you.
Take Avartana, for instance. As an avowed repository of insufferable declarations, I will not let you forget that I had pronounced your Avartana superior to Delhi’s Indian Accent long before the world woke up to it. Avartana is still consistently impressive, but it’s not the only excellent restaurant you house. You are awash with recommendation-worthy foods in Pumpkin Tales and Dahlia, Kappa Chakka Kandhari and Southern Spice, Zhouyu and Erode Amman Mess, The Farm and MadCo. There’s of course, Mathsya, my preferred place for late-night rasa vada and Murugan Idli, an endorsement of which, elite Chennai tells me, obliterates the last shred of credibility I possess as a gourmet.
I like you because you are a cerebral city. You are secure enough about it not to wear your brains on your veshti. You like poetry but will not recite it at a party. You like books. You restore libraries with quiet pride and are reticent to talk about it. You have birthed places like Tulika Books, stepping into which jaded adults become excitable children. It was on my first visit there that my new children’s book was incubated.
I like that you underplay yourself like someone who’s absolutely sure of themselves.
I like you because your best-kept secret — your remarkable metro — is actually a secret. Sure, other Indian cities have metros, but yours is cleaner and has more disciplined passengers. It’s completely devoid of hype — perhaps that’s why it took me months to discover that it even existed. Once I availed myself of a ride, I was hooked. It confounds me that something this groovy can be this absent from mainstream national consciousness. I understand the metro’s reach isn’t as wide as Delhi’s; that’s no excuse for you not to give it pride of place on your list of triumphs. But that’s you, Chennai — you don’t shout out your achievements the way other cities do.
I like you because you have convinced me that I am perhaps not carved from stone after all. I momentarily become a softer, kinder, more thoughtful version of myself in the midst of the chaos of the Kapaleeshwarar temple. My family thinks at this rate I’ll become a reincarnation of Shiva himself. I have you to thank for that, dear Chennai.
I like what you become in the winter. It’s as though you decide to shoulder the cultural burdens of the entire planet with your enthusiasm for concerts and canteens. Until I encountered a January here, I assumed Januarys were miserable almost everywhere. You make the ugliest month palatable, Chennai. And perhaps you yourself become more palatable because of your proximity to Kovalam, Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry. It helps that I don’t have to negotiate the obstacle course that is your airport to get to these places.
Happy Birthday, Chennai. You easily are among the least pretentious places in the world. Ostentatiousness isn’t in your DNA. I shall not romanticise your people and claim that you have the nicest, kindest, most helpful population in the world. I have met better people elsewhere, and I have confronted worse people elsewhere. But I am yet to come across a populace whose vast majority is as shorn of affectation as yours is.
Happy 386th Birthday, Madras. You continue to delight me, humour me and exasperate me. I look forward to seeing how you grow this year. I hope to be around for your 387th.
I love you,
Prajwal
Prajwal Parajuly is a novelist. Karma and Lola, his new book, is forthcoming in 2026. He teaches creative writing at Krea University and oscillates between New York City and Sri City.
Published – August 20, 2025 05:49 pm IST
