Mylapore to Thiruvanmiyur- in PTC bus.

 Day before yesterday I was on Thiruvanmiyur route for a play rehearsal scheduled at 6 am. Vatsan as usual presuaded me to take the PTC bus. I agreed because I wanted to soak into Namma Chennai after my five and a half months stint at my daughter's place in Minneapolis. I was also not yet ready for the Ola /Rapido/Uber auto man dialogues. Enga mmae droppu? Extra 20 sethu kuduppeengalaa? Appo Cancel pannidunga. The US return in me was not ready for all this lollu. ( lollu is a word with a lot of feelingsu - you may not find it in any dictionary. Ignore it - its unexplainable)

I took the T29C from Mylapore to Thiruvanmiyur. En route I saw many changes. I had left behind a much better Chennai. In these 163 days that I was away, "Take diversion" has become the wordle word  for all Chennaites. 

But the real changes came after I crossed the Adyar bridge. My mind went back some 40 years, into a retrospective mode.

Rewind! 

An 18 year old, young Shyamala, those days better known as R. Shyamala Devi. I  used to travel by PTC  to Thiruvanmiyur or sometimes to Besant nagar. There were 2 entrances to get into my college. To reach  Kalakshetra, my college I had to take the 5E bus for 5 years. 

The E in 5E stood for Eccentric, Evil and Elusive and never ever for Enjoyable, Easy or Empathetic. It was never ever Empty either. In this crowded bus, I travelled on 

all 6 days of the week at 7.15 am. If I missed it, then the CPT (central polytechnic) boys hanging from the footboard of the next 5E would make faces and mock at me for 5E wouldn't stop at Kavery nagar, near Aranganathan subway. The driver would ignore an 18 year old girl and drive past. With tears trickling down my face, I would walk back home as I hear the conductor give a double whistle. After getting subjected to ragging session outside of my college premises, I would get back home crying and my brother would drop me in his cycle at another bus stop. It was a ladies cycle, common for both of us. He will take the shortest route to Saidapet and see to it that I get into bus number 19S.  His cycle would crash through narrow lanes of Jones road. I need to keep my legs contained. My dhawani had to be tucked into my hip and my pavadai pulled up with petticoat playing - Sunday longer than Monday.  Invariably the petticoat would be of a different colour than the pavavadai. If petticoat was blue, I would be wearing a yellow or a red  pavadai. Pathetic I looked and behaved as I was wearing pavadai dhawani for the 1st time in my life. And traveling in PTC also for the 1st time. I used to return home with my dhawani pinned up on my shoulder perfectly from the morning, but all the rest of the material sweeping the Chennai streets. 5E, in a few months taught me many life lessons and also taught me how to carry myself with tremendous  panache.

As my T29C crossed the famous Theosophical society, I remembered the last time I saw Athai in this place. 24th February, 1986. People were mourning the loss of a remarkable individual.  Rukmini Devi Arundale. 

I remembered seeing great artists coming to pay their final homage.. 

That was the first and last time, when a suddenly announced holiday brought tears to my eyes. I remember seeing Padhu akka, Chitra Visweshwaran and Sudharani  in simple cotton sarees grief struck. I had always seen them only on stage in their bright dance costumes. 

I had the privilege of singing my first song in Kalakshetra, the entrance test krithi in Athai's presence. We fondly called her Athai, a Tamizh word which meant paternal aunt. When one day I was rushing from my music class holding a Tambura, she held my hand, chided me and said - "Tambura va oru edama vechutu odu." That was the closest I got to her. Her open-mindedness and willingness to embrace change did not diminish her respect for the traditional arts,  instead it augmented her passion for them as she found ways to blend tradition with modernity. 

Though I did not embark on becoming a musician or a dancer later in life,  the creativity that I saw around did get rubbed on my future teaching career and people would  recognize my roots at Kalakshetra.

As my bus crossed Malar hospital and turned left towards Lattice bridge road, Hotel Coronet came to my mind. In that corner, just at the turning, where I used to get down sometimes, to get some eats for my hostel counterparts who longed for their home cooked food. Me, being a vegetarian did not matter. The meat eaters were my friends and for friends I was ready to do this favor. Girls used to give me money the previous day and place their food orders. I was their Swiggy girl. That biforcating flyover was also not there those days. 

As the bus turned into LB road, I remembered Andrew yule, a factory on the left. We could see workers rushing in, into their work space and some times we would hear the loud siren, which meant we were late for the prayer. Now in that same place stands a very ostentatious building called Quadrant. From there 19S would go straight to Thiruvanmiyur and if I had been lucky to get the 5E, that I regularly missed, it would turn left to Besant nagar. Both ways I had to walk a long distance to reach Kalakshetra. The gritty path leading to my college was a tough walk. Within the college it was shaddy but all the more sandy. The sand under our feet provided a cushioning effect on joints, though it required more energy for balance and can cause strain if you are not accustomed to it. The long walk continued in-between rich tapestry of verdure, with lush green grass and huge trees blanketing the space above. 

Ankles would pain. There were no autos. Even if there were we never thought of it as an option because we just had enough change to get back home. But returning from college was fun. As a big group of girls we would chatter all the way. Often it would rain heavily and there were no buildings around the place where we could take shelter. The kalakshetra colony that we see now was just a beach land. A few houses were there like that of Cricketer Srikanth. Just to see him we sometimes knocked the gate asking for water,  but never ever saw him. His mother was kind enough to quench our thirsts.  We would walk to Mahalakshmi temple on the sea shore. If in Thiruvanmiyur, then to Pamban swami temple and Marundeeshwarar temple. 

I would get back home dead tired, but had to attend Accountancy, Costing & banking and Mechanics classes as I was also doing  BSc Maths through correspondence course from Madras university. 

A few concerts to attend and a lot more to  perform in  temples  were special occasions I used to wait for. Those were like internship programs. After concerts we used to take home broken coconuts, flowers  and bananas, along with some  positive and divine energy, leading to mental clarity and a feeling of well-being.

 

T29C stopped at Thiruvanmiyur and the conductor shook my shoulder and said that was the last stop.

I got down and started walking towards the seaward road. Quite a long distance but on wide roads. I walked through heavy traffic jam, crossed the road, walking past the temple tank.... a lot of shops had come up. Looked left and then right . Everything has changed. 

The music student had become a Maths teacher and now years later a passion driven theatre actor. 

This time it felt so good to walk again and not get tempted to take an auto ride. 

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You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone. 

Roy T. Bennet.