Trip to Chennai, IIT Madras

I was at IIT Madras(for some reason the IIT has stubbornly stuck to Madras and not changed the name to Chennai) recently, for a series of workshops on open source technologies, like Android, GIMP, Drupal, etc.

And I wont go for stereotyping in this post.

The logos of Drupal, GIMP, and Android respectively.

Ok. Let me first explain you the terminology. But don't worry I wont go into the tech stuff. Just a memoir of the trip.



Android. It is an open source operating system for mobile phones and tablet PCs,

GIMP. GNU Image Manipulation Program. Open Source software just like Adobe Photoshop.


Drupal. Open Source Content Management System. In understandable terms, a free software to create and manage websites.


IIT. Indian Institutes of Technology are the premium engineering colleges of India.


Chennai. Formerly known as Madras. The capital of Tamil Nadu. The place stereotyped for coconuts, lungis and movies defying all laws of physics. I won't do the stereotyping.

Approximate route from Chennai to bhubaneswar

While we were on our way from Bhubaneswar to Chennai, in a train, we were going through a lot of fields and we were not sure whether we are in Andhra or Tamil Nadu.

And then we saw a clearing where people were playing cricket. The batsman was Wearing a lungi. The bowler was wearing a lungi. The fielders were wearing lungis. And they were handling the lungi in the windy weather with incredible expertise.

And then their was no doubt. We were in Tamil Nadu.





This is was also confirmed by the way the lungi was folded in a sort of skirt. Which would have been a treat for eyes had the person wearing it was of opposite gender, but then here its just a way of life, I am not stereotyping.

Just my advice to the companies.

And then we were wondering whether the high brands like Flying Machine, Levi's, etc. ever consider keeping lungis in their showrooms in south India keeping in mind the huge consumer market. But lets not sway off the topic, and I don't want to stereotype so let's FOCUS.

So, where were we? Oh!! yes, we were in Tamil Nadu. :)

After we reached there, we came out of the station. The usual scene, Auto Drivers coming after you. We asked a driver the location of our destination, IIT-Madras. His initial demand to take us there was 300 Rupees. And according to him the government has fixed the rates and the poor auto driver can't do a thing, he is just being honest. But he will do us a favor, He will take us for 200 rupees.

We refused to torment this utterly honest auto driver and went with another auto who agreed to take us for 120 rupees. This usually happens when you don't speak the local language and look like this is your first visit. (none of the auto drivers were wearing lungis so there is no possibility of stereotyping.)

Faces hidden for obvious reasons. :)

So we went to IITM, as it is fondly called. Its a beautiful campus, very close to the Guindy national park. The campus boasts of a wide variety of deers, and birds. The first being that we met in the campus was a security guard (I was a bit surprised to see him not wearing lungi, but it was a welcome change, and m not stereotyping.) and the next was a deer, who seemed equally surprised to see us there. It was quite evident.

We were alloted rooms, in there hostels. We were tired. Sleeping was the only sensible thing we could do then.


We woke up next morning, and decided to spend some time in Chennai and Mahabalipuram or Mammalapuram, famous for temples. Lets keep that for another blog post. Writing about the whole trip at once would be too long, so I will be writing a few other posts on the trip.

The next day we had the android workshop. Due to all that traveling and lack of sleep at night, and the air conditioned environment, and the cozy chair, it was hard to concentrate on the topic. So I let my imagination run wild. Came up with a few ideas. And since I am an avid user of Photoshop, I used it to materialize my ideas. Hope you like it. Do leave your comments.

The chennai version of Android.