The Chennai fan club!

The basic human need is food, clothing and shelter. But for a person from Chennai, there is another more urgent need. He does not care if there is no roof over his head. But a fan should surely be overhead! It may seem an overstatement. Not quite! A Chennai person will nod his head in total agreement.

In Chennai, the fan runs 24 hours a day, 7 days of the week and 12 months of the year. After an outing in the blazing sun, you reach home, crank up the fan to top speed, and sit beneath.  You close your eyes and experience the sensation. It is seventh heaven!

You hear the whirl of the fan punctuated with a rhythmic creak. In some fans, in addition to the arms rotating, the entire shaft wobbles from the base. Cool air runs through your hair and caresses your entire being. Newspapers on the center-table take wing, and scatter about the room. 

Your reverie is unceremoniously broken by a sudden power cut that leaves you high and dry. The fan loses its steam and with a series of successive groans, comes to a halt. Sometimes, your karma works through a fan! 

You are now up and about. You kick-start the generator, but tough luck, it has run out of diesel. You make frantic calls to the watchman, but he is missing. Literally, the wind is taken out from your sails. Heat and humidity gatecrash into the room. You are cooked, as though, in the burner of a steam engine! 

Time hangs still. A book with a stiff-cover doubles up as a hand-fan, but it is hard work. After what seems an entire yuga, the fan swings back into action. Relief and joy erupt in unison. The feeling cannot be expressed in words.

Sometimes, an overhead fan is inadequate. A table fan gives focused relief, unlike the aloofness of the overhead fan. However, table fans have a strange habit. As they rotate, they move their face from side to side, as though they’re watching a tennis-game from the side-lines. You rest your cheek against the fan-grill and gyrate with it! “Get away from the fan! If you go any closer, it will slice your nose off, or pull all your hair out!” you are warned.

As if these fans were not enough, yesteryear “foreign” cars carried a pocket-sized fan inside the car. A Chennai person sees his fans everywhere, even in a windmill. For him, a windmill is a giant fan, something, his city could put to better use!

At times, relatives land up in Chennai after spending years in the US. By the time they reach home from the airport, they cannot take the heat anymore. “How can people live in Chennai?” they question incredulously. You switch the fan on, and give a fitting rejoinder, “There are 11 million people living here, for your kind information! We develop character and tolerance this way!” 

These days, the air-conditioner has made inroads into most homes. It comes for a price, more than the obvious monetary reasons.  The Chennai-ite tries to recreate an Antarctica at home, while it is Sahara-like outside! Air conditioners accentuate the temperature contrast, so much so, you are incapable of facing the heat anymore.

The fan stays as your faithful friend round the year- never in the face, but always cool and soothing.