Its almost nearing a month ever since I opened that joining email, cried , packed my bags, waved back at my father and bro before the final boarding call, held my mother's hand, boarded the plane and landed in Chennai.

The plane braved bad weather, crossed the sea beautifully, and made a smooth landing. No, not actually.

Since then , we have been calling everybody Anna and Amma, bearing earsplitting grunts from bus conductors, missing busstops,enjoying rasam and pongal for breakfast , sitting on Besant Nagar beach n Saturdays , tapping foot to Tamil music in volvo buses, and escaping to Skwalk Ampa mall in between training breaks.

Traffic options are disgusting at times and Metro is frantically missed at times. More on nasty autowallahs, demonic bus conductors and fat TT later.

Disclaimer: The below post is a mail forward from a friend from another company. Some are funny, some I dont agree even as an outsider!

Comments from a software professional “banglorean”

Hi friends,

This is a live update from chennai.

Language – Tamil, tamil and tamil. Even if they know hindi, they dont speak up.

People – We never heard anyone laughing here (I wonder if they ever laugh or shout). So conservative, that noone talks even in the bus.

Food – Idly, sambhar, rice, dosa, vada, pongal. We have to cook our food ourselves (unbelievable naa).

Weather – summer from october to feb and rest of the year it’s deadly summer.

Lesiure – TV, dormitery, dirty sea beaches on weekends.

Rent – 6.5 K / 1 BHK. Advance – 6 months

Aata – Rs. 26 /kg

Apple – Rs 100 /kg

Orange – Rs. 10/piece

Banana – Rs 3 /piece

Mausmi Juice -Rs 22 /glass

Jeans Dryclean – Rs.40

Phulka – Rs. 8 (idly also Rs.8)

Interesting facts and incidents :

1. Here you cannot buy a needle after 6 PM (strange).

2. We asked an auto driver, “hindi aati hai”?. He replied in hindi “Hindi nahi aati”.
3. The most common suffix here is ‘a’, e.g. straight – straighta
2 cup tea – 2 cupa tea

4. Even dogs eat curd rice.

5. In north, names are like Gori Shankar, gauri prasad etc. Here the names are like Kaliraj, kalicharan etc.

6. When there is a ‘t’ in any name, they add ‘h’ to it. jayant – jayanth ; bharat – bharath

7. Here is a culture of adding mystical alphabets after ones’s name, like Mahesh R, Sandeep T etc.

8. Cable connection is of no use here as only tamil channels are broadcasted on cable TV, if anyone wanna watch hindi channels then you need to buy a set up box (Rs.4000).

9. Cognizant navallur office is actually not in chennai, it comes under a district called Chengalpet which is 51 kms from main city.

10. Once we saw a girl in the food court, she was looking and acting like a north indian. My friend became exited and planned to talk to her, but just then we noticed her breakfast and then “dil ke armaan aansuon mein behaye”, she was having pongal. (disguise!!)

11.How dare anyone come to chennai : Cognizant Chennai MCity comes under SEZ(special economic zone), swap and transfers from here are not possible.

12. No life after 9 PM.

13. No need to worry for Tsunami, because noone will be left to cry on your grave.

Bye Bye (waiting for banglore, pune, hyderabad update)

Life is not about cursing your posting location but it is about how soon you leave the company.