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This pincode now made famous by a superhit film last year is the pincode of the place where I lived the first 18 years of my life . Film makers always had a liking for the place with the bus numbered 12B appearing in many films and also having a film by its name . It is not actually a Kodambakkam which smells of film even before you step into the area , but there were some people from the cine and tele industries who were mostly one hit wonders but are looked upon whenever they walked by . It was also through one of these small time TV serial directors I made my TV debut of 5 minutes, who picked me up while playing cricket in the nearby ground .Though that remains the only time I came on TV and will ever be , I have fond memories of the place which goes by the name “Foreshore Estate” for its proximity to the sea. These were all running through my mind aboard a bus last week when I was going to Mylapore , another nearby area which shares the pincode, for the Mylapore festival . It was for the Mylapore quiz conducted as part of the festival and with a born-and-brought-up Mylaporean as my quiz partner, I at least wanted to make it to the finals. I reached the place well in time (ahem..ahem) and my first reaction was “oh sh*t” . There were only kids and their grand parents in the room and I immediately punched my cell phone to call my partner . “Man it is a kids quiz , I am leaving” was what I said and he assured me it is not and told me to hang on atleast until he turned up . I was sitting there with unease, for all others were either too young or too old to speak to . I even had a thought of how embarrassing it would be if we make it to the finals and win the quiz defeating 10 year olds .But that was short lived and the eternal quiz winners of all the Chennai quizzes , the qfi teams landed . Though I knew they leave no quiz unattended , I was surprised they had come to one where all were school kids . It was little reprieve for me though I now knew the chances of making it to the finals were very bleak with some of the best quizzers in the country sitting besides me . The prelims happened with my mylporean partner doing justice to his bringing up in the area and we did good , but not good enough .We didn’t qualify much to the disappointment of my partner who got senti about betraying his birthplace and kept blaming himself throughout the quiz . Two qfi teams qualified which had landmark and KQA quiz winners but the rest of the finalists was what set the stage for an interesting finals . One of the other teams had two nearly-eighty grandpas who were born and brought up in Mylapore and who still didn't seem to have got enough of the place having walked the same streets and dirty alleys (each one of them having atleast one small Ganesh temple) for nearly eight decades . Another team, a complete contrast having two 10 year olds , who had just met in the quiz and named their team rightly so as “Just met” , another having a young medical student and his nearly-eighty grandmother and the last but the best team of the day consisting of two Mylapore maamis in their fifties, who left cooking sambhar unfinished and bumped into the quiz and qualified for the finals . Since the theme was Mylapore , even if you have won some hundred landmark and odyssey quizzes , your knowledge wont match to theirs , which was gained through living there for half a decade . They were actually leading in the initial two rounds particularly with questions like identifying some temple in a remote blind alley in Mylapore . The most funny moment of the quiz was when they complained to the quiz master(a college guy who put some heavy accent to impress tam-bram gals ) saying the format(infinite bounce) was not fair and they didn’t get to answer questions . Their complaint was no less innocent than their usual complaint to the street vendor for having given them a rotten tomato the previous day and that brought a smile on everybody . Altogether a day well spent .
Though I didn’t exactly live there , it was very near to the place were I lived and even nearer to my school and I could still see the same book store I used to buy my books at and where no book ever went out of stock , the same crowded streets with the vendors shouting the prices(though the prices they now shout looked like a hundred years has passed since I was last there) , the same small hotels , the names of which I never knew but can make out by seeing them and the same people who never change their life style and hold the ethos of the place intact.

Moral of the story : I DO GET NOSTALGIC :)