Gentle Sweep; A tribute to Chennai.

Its not often that I see the light of the day as early as I did today. At 5.30 in the morning Chennai is a place as good as any other I have been to. The morning breeze brings with it a chill that tells you that the winter is not far away. Air is fresh, its already bright outside and the roads are not yet busy to bring up the dust that must have settled overnight. There is a lot more to the Chennai morning than this calmness and serenity. A place so often cannot just be special with their tangible attributes, I feel. I think its the culture of this place that holds it close to my heart. I couldn't help noticing the fact that much of the families

were up by the time I got to the road, the only people who would still be enjoying the morning chill in their beds would be us students(every other day I would be in my bed) and the people who have migrated to Chennai. Here, or in any other place in Tamil Nadu for that matter, you would know it because the lady of the house or the maid would be out drawing the 'KOLAM', and that is how I came to know today that for half of Chennai the day really kicks off at 5.30 AM. I don't know another town that wakes up that early.

But what I really took out of the day and my early morning ride on the street of Golden George nagar was not any of this. It was a sound, a sound any Indian would recognize, the swish of the broom. One of the very characteristic early morning sounds of our country. It could be the maid sweeping the cemented drive, the gardener cleaning the leaves off the lawn, the government sanitary workers swishing yesterday's garbage into little heaps for the hand carts or lorries that follow to pick up. Vacuum cleaners and heavy-duty cleaning equipment are still not the norm, even indoors. But there is something quite restful about the swish of the broom, all said and done. I think its one of the most soothing sounds of a city coming awake.

There is an Indian superstition that it is unlucky to be greeted by a person wielding a broom while leaving on a trip, albeit, I would love to see someone cleaning my front yard with a broom when I leave. There is an unspoken promise there, tomorrow the place would be just as neat as today. There really is something about that gentle sweep.