Even as I rode my bike inside my office yesterday afternoon, I noticed some goon-ish guys standing downstairs eyeing the over-head wires carefully. And our building maintenance man, Arivu was seen talking in an above-normal-decibel-levels voice with them.

Sensing some abnormal activity, I parked my Apache and walked over to the potti kadai for some tea while my senses were sharp focusing on the conversation going on. You see, I’m a mara-thamizhan. I love watching fights and love to stand among the crowd while watching a street fight going on. Anything resembling close to a commotion draws the us like magnets to form a ring around the activity. This is Tamizh kalacharam and panpaadu. But I’m a third generation mara-thamizhan and my suaveness doesn’t allow me to stand among the crowd and watch the proceedings along with lungi-clad beedi-hanging-from-mouth aam junta. So this third generation suave mara-thamizhan usually finds a nearby tea shop, orders tea and drink the  single tea till the commotion gets over while looking for something interesting to blog about or tweet about.

Anyway, coming back to the present, even as my tea came, I realized that the goon-ish looking guys were looking at our sign board and not the over-head wires as I had initially thought. They were from the Chennai Corporation. Lets call them CGs. And then there is this new rule that all sign boards should carry the name of the firm in Tamizh too.

Dear Kalaignar, we all know your love for our mother tongue. When I got  my tenth standard results, I was overjoyed to find out that I had secured state second rank in English. The next day’s papers carried the photos of students across the city who had secured state ranks. I didn’t know that students who had taken Tamizh as the second language were only deemed worthy of recognition. It didn’t instill in me the importance of Tamizh. It instilled in a 15 year old teenager, hatred towards the system. Anyway, Pink Floyd entered my life a bit after that incident. But that’s another story for another time. Plus I became a much more matured person in the next couple of years and knew that most of what we got was B.S. I began to have less expectations from the system.

And do you think Kalaignar sent his numerous kids and really numerous grand kids to Tamizh medium government schools? Huh?

Anyway, I didn’t care much about the tea I had just ordered as much as I stopped caring for what the system gave me. I walked over to the maintenance guy who was joined by our own office admin staff, Joy Mahesh.

Me: What’s up Joy?

Joy: They’re removing our sign board. It has no Tamizh in it.

I looked quizzically at the CGs.

CG: Illa ba! Board laam tamilla irukanom ba. Mayor sollitaru. Naanga corporation lendu varom.

Board, Mayor and Corporation. I wonder about the Tamizh equivalents of these words.

And all this politically motivated to coincide with World Tamil Conference.

I came back to my desk disturbed and tweeted about it. I then realized that lot of people across Chennai were facing similar CGs that day. Skiddyrow tweeted about CGs removing the board of Stereovision because the logo was not in Tamizh. Maybe Kalaignar has a strategy to talk international brands into converting their logos into ones bearing Tamizh script.

Maybe you guys could check out the hashtag #brandsintamil which has some really hilarious take on this.

I read in the morning papers about Mayor M. Subramanian briefing journalists about the drive. I wonder if our respectable Mayor knows the Tamizh equivalent of the word Mayor.

And then there is our honorable CM, Kalaignar who names his son Stalin. And then the next generation runs companies like Red Giant Pictures, Cloud 9 Pictures, Sun Pictures, Sun Network. (thanks to @cornerd for pointing out)

If you look at the wikipedia entry about Signage, it says

Signage is any kind of visual graphics created to display information to a particular audience. This is typically manifested in the form of wayfinding information in places such as streets or inside/outside of buildings.

And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that wayfinding is best done in a language that most people understand. The auto wallah on the road can read English. The tea shop guy can read English. But how many of us can read Tamizh? I can’t.

Atleast this is better than a certain so called cosmopolitan city starting with the letter B in a neighboring state who’s chief minister’s initials are are apt – B.S. (I read this joke somewhere on the internet. Don’t remember where). A cosmopolitan city they say and all bus routes on buses are in the native language.

And then what’s with renaming colonial sounding roads in Madras Chennai?

Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Devar Salai?

Dr.D.G.S.What’s His Name Salai?

Already there are the namesakes at the center who are hell bent on renaming all good sounding roads after this former Prime Minister who was assassinated? Any kid would say that Old Mahabalipuram Road sounds much cooler than Rajiv Gandhi Salai. And can someone give me a count on the number of Rajiv Gandhi Roads across India?

It’s not only about cool sounding. How many of you know that Eldams Road is now renamed Dr. Kamal Hassan Salai? I’m just getting used to Anna Salai btw. How many of you know that Nungambakkam High Road is now Uthamar Gandhi Salai. Not MG Road. Senthamizh vaazhga!

The funny thing is people who are die hard Tamizh fans are also not quite comfortable with all this hype about Senthamizh Syndrome.

Here’s @shankzz’s take on this. I have no clue what is written in the blog post. I can’t read Thamizh.  I presume it is supposed to be sarcastic as the comments show hints of the post being sarcastic. Plus I spotted mom reading the post and holding back a smile.

Let me wrap up this post with this clipping from a random Tamizh movie featuring Vaigai Puyal Vadivelu. Do wait till the last few minutes to watch the satire.

Senthamizh Vaazhga!

Update at 11.30 am, 22 June 2010

Also check out @aravindkumar’s take here and @krishashok’s take here