Dr. Atul R Thakare

The question which all the people who stay in Chennai is that Why Chennai is considered as Conservative???Before coming to this city I also used to think the same. And its obvious,being a METRO and a city providing opportunities,it should not be considered like Conservative or Cheap. But the answer for this question,i got to know only when I landed in this City. No other city be it MUMBAI,DELHI,KOLKATA,BANGALORE or HYDERABAD is considered as conservative except Chennai. The reason is all these cities are open to all other cultures and languages that are found in our diverse country called INDIA. But Chennai is a city where though there are people from various parts of INDIA,the people here are not open to other cultures and languages. I do not mean that speaking tamil is "conservative and cheap" . To be proud of your mother tongue or to speak it is good,but being ignorant and indifferent towards other languages and cultures surely shows the parochial attitude of the city towa...

Last week, my friend came to Chennai from Bangalore for official work.He is not a native of Bangalore( like the 60% people in Bangalore) but he got settled there from past three years. He stayed here for a week and on weekend,he was sharing his experiences in our city, i.e. Chennai . The first thing he told me that Chennai is not yet ready for the metro revolution as well as globalisation. As it is perceived by the outsiders Chennai is still conservative city. Although Chennai is a Metrocity, and there are all the big corporate offices here, still it doesn’t appear like a Metro, as my friend was telling. People over here are very traditional, but they seem to be overpossesive about their culture, so much that they are averse to the changes that globalization is offering. Language is just one of the factor. Otherwise it’s a sheer surprise that even the autowallahs in Chennai don’t understand any other language than tamil, however the reality is that most of their customers are outsiders...