Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them.
And one ring that landed me here- Ranganathan Street in the middle of T.Nagar at a time when the God Ra was in full glory. Now am sure those who have been in Chennai and T.Nagar especially would understand what I am talking about. The heat was killing me and the crowd combined with that sweaty feeling that is so typical of Chennai weather was taking its toll on me.
Before I go on let me fill you in on how I got there in the first place. I have a ring presented to me by my late grandmother. The ring had grown loose due to endless wear and tear and was refusing to stick to my fingers. After losing and finding the ring for as many times as there are stars in the sky I finally had to cave in to my mother's pressure of getting it tightened. Now, I did not want to get it tightened in the first place because that would mean a visit to GRT at T.Nagar and I was sure that if I landed at T.Nagar I would be forced to go out shopping with her!!
Now for the non-chennaiites, T.Nagar is like the middle class shopping hub where you supposedly get all things that are needed for your "Family". There are quite a few shops here which have carved their commercial successes here- Nalli,Kumaran, GRT... the list goes on....essentially a place where a middle class wife would find everything she needed.
Anyway I was hence forced to take my mother to GRT to fix the ring. GRT was crowded to the core. GRT has 3 floors and all the floors were so crowded that I could only just manage to stand. The lust for the yellow metal will never be lost, I guess. Luckily my job took only half an hour and I was out of GRT in half an hour. I was hoping that my mother would hear my stomach rumbling and let us head back to home. Wishful thinking!!!!
Ranganathan Street is synonymous with T.Nagar, a narrow street- filled with shops and more shops and more shops. Bangle shops, Grocery stores, Utensil Stores, toy stores and shops which sell edible items( and believe there are lots of these) etc..All these shops sell goods in the range of cheap to moderately affordable, and that is what makes them so popular. There are so many shops for each item with almost similar names (kumaran Sons Stores, Kumaran Stores) that finding out which shop is the best for the item you want is in itself an achievement.
Now all this is fine. Though I am not a shopping buff, I don’t entirely hate shopping. But Ranganathan street is different, for one it is way crowded.. there are lots of shoppers at any given point of the day, peddlers hawking their goods- basically too many people in one narrow street. Wading through that many people is in itself one herculean task, combine that with chennai's hot and humid climate you have a cocktail you would rather do without.
Here I was in the middle of the afternoon, making my way through Ranganathan Street just because my mother wanted to buy some Applams!!!!!111 The shop that my mother had decried contained the best applams were at the end of the street. Since there was a bangle shop in the middle of the street, we went in and bought my sister some bangles(I never knew why girls liked bangles anyway) .Then of course enroute there were some other shops that were selling some provisions which my mother felt were better and cheaper than the ones sold near my home. By the time we reached the applam store, my stomach was making noises that were hard to ignore, so we stopped to have something to eat(Thankfully). Finally we got the applams and started our back stopping at a few more shops to get some more odd things that only a mother can think of.
By the time we reached the end of Ranganathan Street I was sapped of my energy and so had to refill at a Juice Junction that was aptly placed at the end(These guys are strategy gods)
While sipping on my icy sugarcane juice, I thought
All because of that one Ring~
