*Vokay,' he said and extended his hand for a handshake. I shook his hand. He laughed and zoomed off into the Chennai sunset.

I saw the city. It had the usual Indian elements like autos, packed public buses, hassled traffic cops and tiny shops that sold groceries, fruits, utensils, clothes or novelty items. However, it did feel different. First, the sign in every shop was in Tamil. The Tamil font resembles those optical illusion puzzles that give you a headache if you stare at them long enough. Tamil women, all of them, wear flowers in their hair. Tamil men don't believe in pants and wear lungis even in shopping districts. The city is filled with film posters. The heroes' pictures make *

you feel even your uncles can be movie stars. The heroes are fat, balding, have thick moustaches and the heroine next to them is a ravishing beauty. Maybe my mother had a point in saying that Tamil women have a thing for North Indian men.

*Hey, that's IIT?' the auto driver said a word which would have led to trouble if he had spoken it in Delhi.

I looked at the campus wall that lasted for over a kilometre. The driver recited the names of neighbourhoods as we passed them a Adyat, Saidapet, Mambalam and other unpronounceable names so long they wouldn't fit on an entire row of Scrabble. I felt bad for residents of these areas as they'd waste so much of their time filling the address columns in forms.

We passed a giant, fifty-feet-tall poster as we entered Nungambakkam. The driver stopped the auto. He craned his neck out of the auto and folded his hands.

*What?' I gestured.

*Thalaivar,' he said, pointing to the poster.

I looked out. The poster was for a movie calledPadayappa. I saw the actors and recognised only one. *Rajnikant?'

The auto driver broke into a huge grin. I had recognised at least on landmark in the city.

He drove into the leafy lanes of Nungambakkam till we reached Loyola College. I asked a few local residents for Chinappa Towers and they pointed us to the right building.

I stepped out of the auto and gave the driver a hundred-rupee note. I wondered if I should give him a ten-rupee tip for his friendliness.

*Anju,' the driver said and opened his palm again.

I remained puzzled and realised it when he gestured three times.

*You want five hundred? Are you mad?'

*Illa mad,' the driver said, blocking the auto to prevent me from taking out the luggage.

I looked at the desolate street. It was only nine but felt like two in the morning in the quiet lane. Two autos passed us by. My driver stopped them. One of the autos had two drivers, both sitting in front. The four of them spoke to each other in Tamil, their voices turning louder.

"Five hundred,' one driver who spoke a bit of English turned to me.

"No five hundred. Fifty,' I said.

*Ai,' another driver screamed. The four of them surrounded me like baddies form a low-budget Kollywood film.

"What? Just give me my luggage and let me go,' I said.

*Illa luggage. Payment...make...you,' the Shakespeare among them spoke to me.

They started moving around me slowly. I wondered why on earth didn't I choose to work in an air-conditioned office in Delhi when I had the chance.

*Let's go to the police station,' I said, mustering up my Punjabi blood to be defiant.

*Illa police,' screamed my driver, who had shaken hands with me just twenty minutes ago.

*This Chennai...here police is my police...this no North India...illa police, ennoda poola combuda,' the English-speaking driver said.

Their white teeth glistened in the night. Any impressions of Tamil men being timid (influenced by Ananya's father) evaporated as I felt a driver tap my back.

*Fuck,' I said as I noticed one of the drivers take out something from his pocket. Luckily, it wasn't a knife but a pack of matches and cigarettes. He lit one in style, influenced by too many Tamil movies. I looked down the street, for anybody, anyone who would get me out of this mess.

One man came out of the next building. I saw him and couldn't believe it. He had a turban a a Sardar-ji in Chennai was akin to spotting a polar bear in Delhi. He had come out to place a cover on his car. Tingles of relief ran down my spine.

Krishna had come to save Draupadi.

*Uncle!' I shouted as loudly as I could.

Uncle looked at me. He saw me surrounded by the autos and understood the situation. He came towards us.

The drivers turned, ready to take him on as well.

*Enna?' the uncle said.

The drivers gave their version of the story to him. Uncle spoke to them in fluent Tamil. It is fascinating to see a Sardar-ji speak in Tamil. Like Sun TV's merger with Alpha TV.

*Where are you coming from?' he said.

*Airport.'

*Airport cannot be five hundred rupees. Hundred maximum,' he said.

The four drivers started speaking simultaneously with lots of *illas'. However, they had softened a little due to uncle's Tamil. After five minutes, we settled for a hundred bucks and disgusted glances from the drivers. My driver took out my luggage and dumped it on the street as he sped off.

*Thanks, uncle,' I said. *You've lived in Chennai long?'

*Too long. Please don't stay as long as me,' Uncle said as he helped me with my luggage to the lift. *Punjabi?'

I nodded.

*Come home if you need a drink or chicken. Be careful, your building is vegetarian. No alcohol also.'

*Really?'

*Yes, people here are like that. For them, anything fun comes with guilt,' he said as the lift doors shut.

I rang the chummery doorbell. It was ten o'clock. A sleepy guy opened the door. The apartment was completely dark.

*Hi,' I said. Krish from Delhi. I am in consumer finance.'

*Huh?' the guy said. *Oh, you are that guy. The only North Indian trainee in Citibank Chennai. Come in, you are so late.'

*Flight delay,' I said as I came into the room.

He switched on the drawing-room light. *I am Ramanujan, from IIMB,' he said. I looked at him. Even just out of the bed, his hair was oily and combed. He looked like someone who would do well at a bank. With my harried look after the scuffle with the auto drivers, I looked like someone who couldn't even open a bank account.

*That's Sendil's room, and that's Appalingam's.'

He pointed me to my room.

*Anything to eat in the house?' I said.

*I don't know,' he said and opened the fridge. *there is some curd rice.' He took out the bowl. It didn't look like a dish. It looked like rice had accidently fallen into the curd.

*Anything else? Any restaurant open nearby?'

He shook his head as he picked up two envelopes and passed them to me.

*Here, some letters for you. The servant said a girl had come to see you.'

I looked at the letter. One was the welcome letter from Citibank. The second envelope had Ananya's handwriting on it. I looked at the curd rice again and tried to imagine it as something yummy but I couldn't gather the courage to eat it.

I came to my room and lay down on the bed. Ramanujan shut the lights in the rest of the house and went back to sleep.

*Should we wake you up?' he had asked before going to his room.

*What time is office?'

*Nine, but trainees are expected to be there by eight. We target seven-thirty.

We wake up at five.'

I thought about my last two months in Delhi, when waking up at nine was an early start. *Is there even daylight at five?'

*Almost. We'll wake you up. Good night.'

I closed my door and opened Ananya's letter.

Hey Chennai boy, I came to see you, but you hadn't arrived in the afternoon as you told me. Anyways, I can't wait any longer as mom thinks I am with friends at the Radha Silks Shop. I have to be back. Anyway there is a bit of drama at home but I don't want to get into that now.

Don't worry, we shall meet soon. Your office is in Anna Salai, not far from mine.

However, HLL is making me travel a lot all over the state. I have to sell tomato ketchup.

Hard, considering it has no tamarind or coconut in it!

I'll leave now. Guess what, I am wearing jasmine flowers in my hair today! It helps to have a traditional look in the interiors. I broke a few petals and have included them in this letter. Hope they remind you of me.

Love and kisses, Ananya.

I opened the folds of the letter. Jasmine petals fell into my lap. They felt soft and smelt wonderful. It was the only thing about this day that made me happy. It reminded me why I was here.

16.

It is bad news when you hate your job in the first hour of the first day of office. It isn't like Citibank did anything to piss me off. In fact, they tried their best to make me feel at home. I already had an assigned cubicle and computer. My first stint involved working in a group that served *priority banking' clients, a politically correct term to address *stinking rich' customers. There is little a customer needed to do to become priority except wave bundles of cash at us. Priority customers received special service, which included sofas for waiting areas instead of chairs, free tea while the bank representative discussed new ways to nibble...oops sorry, invest clients' money. And the biggest touted perk was you would get direct access to your Customer Service Managers. These were supposed to be financial wizards from the top MBA schools who would take your financial strategy to a whole new level. Yes, that would be me. Of course, we never mentioned that your customer service manager could hate his job, do it only for the money and would have come to the city only because his girlfriend was here.

I had to supervise eight bank representatives. The bank representatives were younger, typically graduates or MBAs from non-blue-blooded institutions. And I, being from an IIM and therefore injected with a sense of entitlement for life, would obviously be above them. I didn't speak Tamil or know anything about banking, but I had to pretend I knew what I was doing. At least to my boss Balakrishnan or Bala.

*Welcome to the family,' he said as we shook hands.

I wondered if he was related to Ananya. *Family?'

*The Citibank family. And of course, the Priority Banking family. You are so lucky. New MBAs would die to get a chance to start straight in this group.'

I smiled.

*Are you excited, young man?' Bala asked in a high-pitched voice.

*Super-excited,' I said, wondering if they'd let me leave early as it was my first day.

He took me to the priority banking area. Eight reps, four guys and four girls read research reports and tips from various departments on what they could see *

today. I met everyone though I forgot their similar sounding South Indian names the minute ii heard them.

*Customers start coming in at ten, two hours from now,' Bala said. *And that is when the battle begins. We believe trainees learn best by facing action. Ready for war?'

I looked at him. I could tell he was a Citibank lifer. At forty, he had probably spent twenty years already in the bank.

*Ready? Any questions, champ?' Bala asked again.

*Yeah, what exactly am I supposed to do?'

Bala threw me the first of his many disappointed looks at me. He asked a rep for the daily research reports. *Two things you need to do, actually three,' Bala said as he took me to my desk. *One, read these reports everyday and see if you can recommend any investments to the clients. Like look at this.' He pulled out a report from the equities group. It recommended shares of Internet companies as their values had dropped by half.

*But isn't the dot com bubble bursting?' I asked. *These companies would never make money.'

Bala looked at me like I had spoken to him in pure Punjabi.

*See, our research has given a buy here. This is Citibank's official research,'