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Lots to laugh about
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"Chennai Latte: The Madras Brew" captures the pulse of the city in a humorous way
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Write partners: Biswajit Balasubramanian and Ranjitha Ashok
GLOBALISED CHENNAI is no longer the hamlet-tish Madras of slow days and early nights, quiet avenues and conservative lifestyles. And yet, beneath the gloss lies the old sheen of kapi-tipan and Carnatic music, as we find out when we read Ranjitha Ashok's "Chennai Latte: A Madras Brew", vivified by Biswajit Balasubramanian's cartoons, a collection of their "A -Musings" partnership in The Madras Musings since 2002. Happily, the book is no nostalgic dirge. It chortles over paatis with beauty parlour dates, and noodles slithering into puliyodarai on the banana leaf wedding feast.
The aroma gets stronger as scenes shift from home to street, office, classroom, consulate, park, restaurant, camp, clinic... Nothing escapes the laughing pen and chuckling brush. The humour is gentle, with local flavours to guarantee general appeal. No surprise to learn that Ranjitha loves P.G.Wodehouse, and Biswajit has a fondness for Asterix.
Interestingly, the collaborators grew up in Bangalore and Madurai, not Madras.
From columns to book
Ranjitha did a course in Mass Communications because she wanted to write. "I know I lack discipline," she says. Publishing occasional pieces in Eve's Touch led to a humour column in The Madras Musings. Editor S. Muthiah's encouragement bolstered her confidence. "Didn't think we'd make it into a book," she says, though "Chennai Latte" is her second publication. The first is part of the Penguin series "Icons From The World of Art".
"I got admission in NID but somehow my parents thought that the U.S. was closer to Madurai than Ahmedabad," says Biswajit. After a degree in engineering, and a diploma in design from New York, he gave up interior design with wife Shalini ("I realised husband and wife can't do business together") to take up family business in yarn manufacture. His creative yearnings had to find an outlet, but book illustration was no answer. "There's no money in cartooning," laughs the self-taught artist, but it is so enjoyable that his office room often turns into an atelier.
Do the happy collaborators think their book will actually sell? They reply in unison, "We have no idea." Then a rush of overlapping comments — as corporate gifts? At airports and railway stations? Random choice in bookshops? Will Chennai-ites? Tourists? NRIs? Isn't there a huge market in New Jersey for Chennai tales? You join the laughter and move on to their future plans.
Shouldn't Ranjitha be thinking of something more lasting? After a should-I-shouldn't-I moment she confesses shyly, "I'm writing a novel." And Biswajit? His plans include launching something like Mad Magazine in Tamil. "Muttaal (imbecile) would have vast scope and endless material," he says. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
Chennai flavour
Not champagne, but filter coffee in yewerseelwar dabara-tumblar flowed at The Park when the book was released by N. Sankar, Chairman, The Sanmar Group saying, "Chennai Latte makes you realise that with lightsome, irreverent humour, problems looming like a mountain can be reduced to a molehill." Decared Keshav, cartoonist, The Hindu, "The writing adds to the cartoons." Heritage enthusiast V.Sriram stressed that the book had captured the pulse of Chennai-specific humour, sophisticated, mute and indirect. Historian S. Muthiah, who received the first copy was delighted to note that Ranjitha and Biswajit were the sixth and seventh contributors to his Madras Musings to publish books of their own. T. T. Ashok, who compered the event in pattu veshti and jarigai angavastram, admitted that it was not always easy to explain to friends that events in wife Ranjitha's columns were not straight-lifted from home life. If the packed hall had Chennai-ites wholeheartedly welcoming humour, the responses by the collaborators showed that old-fashioned modesty is not extinct in the modern metropolis.
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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