Short N Snappy

Beach Road to Banner Road

O Chief! The Man from Madras Musings is well aware that you hold the heritage buildings of the beach road extremely close to your heart. MMM therefore also considers himself to be in loco parentis of sorts to the same structures and watches over their welfare. How would it be Chief, if MMM were to, rather in the manner of the man who drew Priam’s curtain aside in the dead of night and told him that half his Troy was burned, inform you that not one of those beloved buildings is now visible to the naked or in the case of MMM, the bespectacled eye? Chagrin would be your reaction if not downright despondence. Sadly this was the truth till recently.

Most of the pavements on the beach road, all re-re-re-re-rebuilt as part of several beautification programmes, were covered with endless banners, all acclaiming our leadership. Purple prose would best describe the contents of these banners had not most of them belonged to the realm of poetry. Into that MMM will not go as we at MM eschew politics of any kind. Suffice it to say that there were enough Hails and Hosannas to please biblical characters. You would not be far wrong in describing the entire sidewalk of the beach road as one long banner.

And guess how the banners were being held up? By tying them to the newly built ornamental grilles that were literally thrust down every beach-fronting building’s throat. If you recollect, the idea then was that the promenade should have a uniformly pleasing appearance. It still does – it is just that instead of the rather handsome metalwork that pleased many, we had an unbroken façade of banners that pleased a chosen few. What then was the purpose of spending so much money on breaking down the old compound walls and putting up the new ones, wonders The Man from Madras Musings? Those in charge may have saved quite a bit by simply pulling down the existing walls and putting up banners or, even better, painting the old walls with political graffiti. That way, we would have had the same message and the road would have presented a uniform face.

What puzzles MMM is the way the bureaucracy, the police and, if MMM may add with due respect, the judiciary, passively accept this gross violation. We have laws forbidding the erection of hoardings and banners in front of heritage structures, we have laws threatening us with dire consequences if we break or damage public property – MMM assumes that the digging of holes in pavements would come under this category – and we have laws that state that no public wall can be defaced. And yet not one of those in authority has cared to notice the way the political establishment gets away with such acts. Makes MMM wonder if such legislations and judgements are binding only on lesser mortals. MMM said all this and more to someone in authority whom he knows well enough to unburden his soul. The response he got was that while everyone is aware that the consequences of breaking laws is dire, it pales into insignificance when compared to the political establishment’s ire. Nobody wants to face such fire.

Anyway, MMM notices that we now have the election model code of conduct in place and so these banners have disappeared. Post elections, the model code will disappear and the banners will reappear. As to who they will then extol is anybody’s guess.

EE Road

Have you recently driven down the major arterial road named after a former President of India? The Man from Madras Musings refers to what was once named after a 19th century police chief of the city, who eloped with a friend’s wife and caused quite a scandal in his time. He had the initials EE and MMM has much to his amusement seen several Raj apologists still refer to that thoroughfare by its old name without much of an idea as to how ignoble that man whom they commemorate was. Anyway, now all is well, for if it is referred to as EE Road even now, the letters can only stand for Extreme Endurance.

MMM can see several of his readers (and he assumes there are several) raise their eyebrows and wonder as to what he is getting at. Has MMM finally become non compos mentis they ask themselves. To rebut such slurs, let MMM explain himself more clearly. Extreme Endurance is after all one of those tough physical regimens that demands a high degree of fitness to be able to get through with it. In MMM’s view there can be no more difficult terrain than EE Road.

Let us begin with the legs. The pavements are all of such heights that merely climbing up and down these would train your calves, knees, thighs and ankles to great levels of fitness. Then comes the back. This is made highly flexible and supple by having to duck under the casuarina supports that hold up political banners. We now come to the abdomen, of which most in our city have six bags while what are needed is packs of the same number. These, MMM understands, are achieved by crunching in the stomach muscles even while tucking your chin in so that your back is not strained. The circular banners are heaven sent for this purpose. Each time you need to get through these, you need to lower your head and crouch thereby tautening your stomach muscles. By doing this, you get those six packs that you always wanted to have but did not know how to.

Let us now progress to biceps and triceps. As also chest. All you need to do is to volunteer with the tireless team that is forever putting up banners on this road. These men can do with some help in erecting the poles, nailing the struts and tying the ropes. All of these will give you the Hercules-like torso that you had so far only dreamt about. We now come to the jaw muscles. After all, these need to be steely to give you the macho look. For that, you only need to read the syrupy slogans that are printed on the banners. These will set your teeth on edge and get your jaws working. Presto! You are all set now to enter those body-building contests.

But these are days when flexibility is also a necessary measure of fitness. For that too, our EE Road has the answer. Walk on the pavements with the openness of mind to step off it onto the road each time you encounter a banner. That means you will be immediately nudged by the passing vehicles back on to the footpath. This hop on, hop off routine will loosen all the muscles made tight by the exercises prescribed in earlier paragraphs. For best results, do the former routine alternate days, thrice a week. The flexibility regimen is to be followed on the three intervening days. On Sunday you need to rest. These are simple remedies offered by our political establishment and can be interpreted as yet another freeby that it so specialises in. Think of the gymnasium fee you have saved!

Tailpiece

You will all be aware as to how the political parties usurp wall spaces for graffiti by the simple expedient of drawing arrows all over and then scribbling the word ‘reserved’ on them. The Man from Madras Musings was much amused to see one that went further – ‘reserved in bull’ it said. That evidently did not mean a horned animal and it was not a reflection on the party manifesto either. It was simply the vernacular of the word ‘full’.

-MMM

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