But this time, my pal was having the away-from-home blues and as we embarked on a morn-to-night roam around Chennai, starting whining about South India, South Indian food and South Indian people for hours and hours. Since this was a rare opportunity to be with him, I had no desire to retain a sour memory of this meeting and as the tamil cliche goes, quietly took his rants in one ear releasing them through the other. I didn't quite understand why he had to make a North-South issue out of casual differences in lifestyle, food and customs. The only valid point was when he exclaimed, "Why can't you tamils learn from the gults and mallus instead of biting and tearing each other apart like dogs?"

Anyway, he was talking about his south indian boss and wondered why the latter pronounced hair as rhyming with there and not as hayyrrr. I was puzzled since as far as I knew that was how hair was meant to be pronounced.

Then he went on to talk about the south indian female colleagues in his offices and how often he went to dinner or movies with them. For a person with such low tolerance of South Indians, his tolerance of south indian females seemed remarkable indeed !!
He mentioned how he befriended some Chennai girl from some Java forum that he was a part of and they would often exchange emails about tamil movies. That evening we happened to stop at a browsing center and were sharing the same PC. He opened his mailbox and sure enough there was a mail with the gal's name on it. However the name in the Inbox showed up as Chandramouli.

Promptly I smelt a rat. But then they had known each other for a few months now. Besides, I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Who can rule out the probability of existence of a Ms.Chandra Mouli? Just like a Meenakshi Sundaram, Gowri Shankar or Leela Krishnan. Theoretically, they're valid. Heck, Navjot Singh Sidhu married Navjot Kaur and Navjot Sidhu(the bride) is now a very legitimate housewife!

In the opening line of the email, Chandra had made some comment about Jothika. This piqued me even more for I'd expected a girl to yap about Ajith or Maddy.

The sledgehammer blow came in the next line, where in response to his suggestion for a rendez-vous at Besant Nagar beach, our dame answered that she would arrive on her bike and pick him up and later on, they could visit her bachelor's flat!

(In some movie, Koundamani turns up at a village and wanting to check out the chicks, contacts Senthil. Senthil tells him that Radha, Chandra and Gowri are all waiting. An impatient Gounder wants to meet them all, and Senthil takes him to a deserted place where 3 banian-clad rowdies bearing clubs and grinning like the Beagle Boys accost Gounder. Senthil introduces them as Radhakrishnan, Chandramouli and Gowrisankar, who waste no time in whacking the shit out of Gounder!)

Anyway, that was the end of my friend's adventures and when I saw that mail, I promptly thought "Goodness me, these dumb northies don't even know the difference between a guy and a girl! How the hell will they know the correct pronunciation of hair?!?"