Reporter's Diary: Defining my city, who to blame?
A recent marketing campaign to celebrate Chennai described the city’s identity as filter kapi, dosa, beaches and Carnatic music in the eyes of the world.
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CHENNAI: The educated class of Chennai often gets jittery about the portrayal of the city and its dwellers in popular culture, north of the Vindhyas. So much so that it has been the theme of several not-so-funny stand-up comedy gigs.
There, however, seems to be an elephant in the room as people from the city are as much guilty. At least, for those in the ‘creative’ sector.
A recent marketing campaign to celebrate Chennai described the city’s identity as filter kapi, dosa, beaches and Carnatic music in the eyes of the world. One wonders whether it was written by a human or ChatGPT as readers have long been conditioned with the stereotype about the city.
And, the AI cannot be faulted for reproducing what has been written for years!
A city is so many things to so many people, but our culture writers have been guilty of shoehorning a city into a few blocks and a couple of pop icons for so long now that it’s not funny.
I will leave it to the academics and historians to debate on what makes a city, but I am sure there’s a set of people who are going to take offence for this stereotypical portrayal of Chennai – real estate developers. For them, Tindivanam is Chennaiku miga arugil. And, one wonders whether filter kapi is everyone’s cup of tea.
