We were in a home with a small baby and no death in sight, only poetry. And still, she wept. Somebody took her in their arms and kissed her cheeks. Someone else brought her fruit.

Her work is the lament. She could not sing lullabies; her voice was too oriented in the work of grief, of allowing the bereaved to mourn.

This was months ago, at the home of a noted folkloric preservationist, and the singer was a professional mourner from Chennai's Marina Beach. 7000 people live in the kuppams between the lighthouse and Broken Bridge. Many depend on fishing for their livelihoods. They bear every stigma that the marginalized suffer, and were Chennai's most devastated community in the 2004 tsunami.

Last week, in conversation with someone deeply involved in the community, I came to know of what some fear is the second tsunami: eviction, dislocation, clearance.

I am told that what we are about to witness is disaster capitalism - in this case, using the tsunami excuse as a means of changing the entire face of the beach. The actual plans have not been released - but beachfront luxury properties and corporate buildings are expected to take precedence over human rehabilitation.

I went to the kuppams, just to get a feel for this change. "Of course there is sadness," one man told me. "But the government has promised that fishing people can stay. Only ‘guests' will be moved elsewhere." I asked if he trusted the government. He said he did, adding, "We don't want what happened in MGR's period. We'll adjust." The incident he referred to were riots that took place during an attempted clearance of Nochikuppam and surrounding areas.

One woman saw us looking over a bare plot of land. "Fishermen's houses will we built here," she said, broadly smiling. But I knew, for a fact, that this is not absolute. Other intentions - some good, most not - have different designs.

I came away knowing I had only begun to scratch the surface of something enormous.

When I think of the oppari singer, I wonder if the death she was serenading that night was as much oracular as it was body-memory. A way of life is dying out, and there will be people who suffer with it as it does. It can be argued that it's dying anyway, and it is - but to be evicted 20km from the beach means it could die even within the lifetimes of those engaged in it today.

It is more than armchair anthropology that leaves me heartsick. The battle for the kuppams along the Marina, if there is to be one, is the battle for the soul of Chennai. This cannot be overestimated. Imagine the beach overrun with high-rises, hotels, corporate monoliths, and maybe, a few discreet low-cost buildings. We may be on par with any first-world city. But we will no longer be Chennai.

Before Chennai, before Madras, were the little pre-colonial fishing hamlets along the Coromandel Coast.

This is where it all began. To lose this is to lose the origins of the city itself. Take any side you want - rationalist, sentimentalist, spiritualist, socialist, traditionalist, artist. Take the capitalist side if you must, but acknowledge what we are about to lose in this gentrification of this coast (as if a wild geographical feature can ever be gentrified - did the tsunami teach nothing?).

Perhaps nothing can be done but mourn. Then, let this be mourned the way it deserves to be. Like the oppari singer did that night. Like nothing but the song exists - because soon, nothing will.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express. “The Venus Flytrap” is my weekly column in the Zeitgeist supplement. Previous columns can be found here.

TamBrahms are basically the brahmin community (iyers or iyengars) of Tamil Nadu. When you say TamBrahm in South of Vindhyas the following words come to my mind (and in no particular order) they are studious, prohiths or priests, wear veshti or dhoti, aspire to be in USA & software, again aspire to study @ the IITs, try and be good at Maths, live around Triplicane, Mylapore or Nanganallur ..... there can be more added to this community which gives importance to education.

A collage of pictures of some Brahmins of Chennai shot at Triplicane.

Now I have no complaints about the way movies are screened at Sathyam Cinemas...nor am I gonna bang my head concerning over the rocket high prices of popcorns (they are good, and ask for some 'extra butter' to be added...yummmy deliciiouusss!! :P ) sold over the counters there.

But the concerns that I have is again (like last time) related to booking and this time its regarding the online booking portal. Earlier the payment gate was well within the Sathyam portal, but of recent they have started directing the payment through some secure channel...I have especially had terrible experiences the last 2 times that I have bought my tickets online. As I log in, select the movie of my choice, choose the seating location, reject the food-at-my-seat option...it leads me to the 3rd party secure payment gate and thats when all the problems have been. The last time I booked 2 tickets for 200 bucks, the seats were booked and monetary transaction was successful (as it got debited on my credit card statement) but it failed to take me back to the Sathyam Cinemas portal and hence I ended up without the booking-number...which is essential to collect tickets later...nor did it appear in my ticket booking history column on the portal...The same thing happened when I booked the tickets for 4 - 320 bucks - the time before.  :(

Asked the bank guys, they said that the money has been credited to Sathyam and Sathyam guys say that I have not booked any tickets as my booking is not reflected in their portal...What can I do, but Sigh! :(

I don't know if any of you have faced this problem...but this has made me not to use the Sathyam portal, and as a result watching movies on big screen at Sathyams has stopped since 2 weeks now...am missing it, no doubt...booking tickets is tough as I stay at a distance and mainly the timings don't suit for me to rush in for a newly released movie...

So I've headed to Inox Movies and Mayajaal to watch movies of recent...but its not the same...Inox is a small place...and it being on the top floor of the Citi Center Mall, does not have that appeal of a complete movie complex...while Mayajaal being on the ECR (East Coast Road) is way too out of the city and travelling late nights is a pain with the cops and cons treating you alike if caught!! Moreover, I miss the Sathyam popcorns at these two complexes...hmmm...

Hope the Sathyam guys do something about this...esle I have no other go, but to watch movies at INOX and Mayajaal. Not that good an idea, if you ask me even in sleep.

Although the Chennai media generally has little insightful coverage of the problems of urban chaos, an attempt has been made by today's Times of India to focus on various questions.

Page 2 of the Chennai edition of the newspaper has tried to look at the problems and solutions, including congestion charging, fast-tracked transit projects such as metro rail. There is, in our view, insufficient emphasis on pedestrianisation and cycling, two of the cheap, ready to implement alternatives.

The various features in the Times today cover the following aspects:

Chennai Inc gives a wake-up call

Bikes grow in numbers, buses crawl on roads of Chennai

Experts favour satellite towns

Chennai waiting for Metro rail

We are not in agreement over the advocacy of greater sprawl in Chennai as an overarching solution for decongestion, although it is our stand that good transport links must be built without delay. Having chosen to allow residential construction between Chennai and Tiruvallur, Arakkonam, Sriperumbudur, Chengalpattu and Sholinganallur, the DMK Government can no longer remain indifferent to the transport needs of these arteries. But the sad reality is that the Government has been asleep at the wheel of its rickety transport system.

The Times also reports today that there is a proposal to augment the city bus service with a limited number of routes and with 10 air-conditioned buses. See MTC to launch 13 new routes today . We reiterate that these piecemeal solutions are NOT helping to reduce transport inflation for Chennai residents, or provide a comfortable, reliable and efficient alternative to personal vehicles. The DMK Government must stop window dressing and address itself seriously to the crisis at hand. Moreover, MTC seems to be interested in competing with suburban transport corporations in neighbouring districts, rather than improving services within the commercial districts of Chennai that more people have to use for business and social purposes. Is the laggard character of MTC traceable to its anxiety to please autorickshaw owners who command and control the price of travel today?

We must also take this moment to condemn the statement, if it was accurately reported by the media recently, that the Builders Association of India prefers to have smaller footpaths (as opposed to wider ones) and make way for more vehicles to use roads. This is a cussed, ill-informed, unprofessional and pedestrian-unfriendly attitude from an organisation that ought to know better.

The pedestrians of Chennai have accommodated a roguish class of builders serving commercial entities for a long time now. These builders have corrupted all wings of Government and ensured that available space goes to serve commercial spaces, through schemes such as CMDA's regularisation plan, without realising that it is ordinary people who keep the cash machines ringing in the shops. Without being able to walk to shops comfortably, commercial activity can only reduce, not increase.

The ambulance driver will find the best way to pass through the roads in the same time he has many lives in his hand, his own, people on road and also patient in ambulance. Since there is no seperate way or route for the ambulance to pass through we try to hornk and make people to give way for ambulance. What best we can do from our side when we have the ambulance behind is just move in a way where the vehicle can cut through the traffic and move faster. But our chennai people! wow! heights of stupidity! Most of the bikers and cyclist and even cars! sometime run behind the ambulance and aheading to the destination faster!. Running behind the ambulance might be of great risk. What if the driver puts a break when he cannot find a way or he has to make a sudden turn. He can be cautious while driving but not the people who are following the ambulance from behind to reach faster at their destination.

I happend to see similar accident this morining at saidapet corner. You can imagine how busy that road would be and how the traffic would flow in peak hour morning times.

If Chennai is really reading/seeing and listening to this issue/concern. Pl keep in mind that there is a life in do or die situation and we have to pray or  make way to make him reach the hospital at the earliest.

We might also join hands to print notice or public message to make this a success.

"This page contains both secure and non
secure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items?" YES, NO

I was using Flash / JavaScript Integration Kit to embed my flash application as my application needed to communicate with Javascript variables.

I tried google to find some answers but was in vain. Finally started to look in to Flash / JavaScript Integration Kit js files to find the culprit. There was a hard coded URL in the js file "FlashTag.js"

flashTag += 'codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version='+this.version+'" ';

flashTag += 'pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">';

All I had to do was replace http with https the problem got resolved

flashTag += 'codebase="https://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version='+this.version+'" ';

flashTag += 'pluginspage="https://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">';

You can even question me why should I use Flash / JavaScript Integration Kit in the first place when I have the "ExternalInterface" Class. If you are targeting flash player less than 8 version.

Thought this should be a useful to some one who got stuck up with the IE security error dialog box.

Happy flashing...

Technorati Tags: flash, actionscript, js, IE, security, https, fix

The other picture on warding of evil eye / Drishti or Nazar, this is a very famous idea used across India. HSBC too featured an advertisement campaign around this.

Seen at a shop front.

(P.s.: I'm delayed in putting up this post by a day because i could locate the HSBC adv. a bit late)