Contrary to popular public perception, chennai is not just about hotweather, bananas, coconut trees, beaches and madrasis who refuse to speakhindi.
it s also about........about..........ah well........
After almost two months in chennai, I can add to/modify that list :
1) "HOT" weather
2) water shortage/dirty water
3) lots of bananas and coconuts
4) long clean beaches (i have yet to visit one)
5) madrasis who are trying to learn hindi (about time too)
6) good traffic sense (far better than mumbai....you’ll find traffic policemen at every signal, junction and street corner actively managing traffic.....in mumbai this happens only when a minister or some big shot visits)
7) Clean Streets (a complete contrast to aamchi mumbai)
8) well disciplined people
9)overcharging autos (there is no meter system here......autos charge asthey deem fit......say if you need to got to a place 1 km away, oneauto will quote 50 bucks while another one barely 5 meters behind himwill quote 20!!!!!!!!!............so bargaining helps - and thats wherethe next problem comes in)
10) language problem- im notcontradicting point no 4. its just that apart from the numbers, madrasis have still a long way to go as far as the national language isconcerned.......even the limited hindi they speak is difficult todecipher because of the inherent tamil accent........so lesson learnt....learn tamil to survive in chennai)
11) big shops.........believeme a single sarvana store can compete with any of our malls in terms ofnumber of products and size. there are almost 10-15 such shoppingcomplexes in my area... and god knows how many more all overchennai..the biggest of them being spencer plaza which I can safelyassume to be almost as big as our crossroads and r mall put together, if not bigger.
12) all in all. its a city which was verytraditional, dull and slow... and is now on the threshold of being atruly cosmo city like mumbai or delhi.my bet is that in probably 4-5years time it will be developed enough to truly deserve the tag ofbeing one of the four metros of India.