Wednesday, November 12, 2008

ABYTE OF LIFE

FREE CIRCULATION

Vol. 2No. 215

ALLTHERIGHTCHORDS

As Vaaranam Aayiram hits the theatresﬁnally, V.Lokpria caught up withHarris Jayaraj and found out aboutthe magic behind the music.

THE DADA SPIRIT

Readers pay tribute to Sourav

PAGE 10

ERGO

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

NAMMA CHENNAI

Drunk setshimself aﬁreaccidentally, dies

An inebriated man who threatened tocommit suicide in front of his wifeafter dousing himself with kerosenewas later immolated after he lit abeedi and accidentally dropped thematchstick on himself. He later died inhospital.According Pallikaranai police, thedeceased was identiﬁed as Suresh (28),a painter residing in Mylai Balaji Nagarin Pallikaranai.Suresh, who is known to be analcoholic, had a historyof frequent quarrelwith his wife Nagamma(27). On Thursday night,November 6, Sureshcame home in aninebriated state andhad an argument withhis wife. He dousedhimself with keroseneoutside his house and threatened to sethimself on ﬁre. Therefore, an irkedNagamma took their children Pavithra(11) and Sundar (8) and left for hermother’s place a couple of streetsaway.An exhausted Suresh sat down outsidehis house and lit a beedi, when disasterstruck. Neighbours rushed a badlyburnt Suresh to the GovernmentKilpauk Medical College hospital,where he succumbed to his injuries onMonday evening.

Ergo Correspondent

nflation may have hit the big and medi-um hotels hard enough to warrant aprice hike. And though D. Jaba wants todo the same he has compelling reasonsnot to. “My mom is against the idea,” hesays. “We feel happy when we see our cus-tomers enjoying our good food, at a cheaprate.”Jaba runs ‘David Idly Shop,’ a small ea-tery at Mandaveli, where crowd buzzesthrough the day, with people ordering forparcels or a quick meal to fill themselves.Run by the mother-son duo, Rajam andJaba, this shop sells a variety of tiffin itemslike idli, vada, puri and pongal. Rajam isfamous in the area for her hot Thavala vadaiand this is the favourite next to the soft idlis.Talking about their ten years’ experience,Jaba says: “We had helpers when we firststarted off, then we decided to take care of the shop all by ourselves. People prefer that we do the cooking and mom’s the best.”David is Jaba’s dad, who ran abetel leaf business out of Mandavelibefore the eatery came up. Word of mouth publicity and some of dad’scustomers make up the chunk of Jaba’s customers, It has now be-come a favourite for several bache-lors who look out for some cheapand tasty food. While idli, vada, pongal, adai andpuri make up the breakfast menu,variety rice like lemon and tomatois served for lunch. The idlis and vadas arepriced at Rs 3 and Rs. 4 and the puris, pon-gal and lunch comes at Rs. 10.People prefer to parcel the food especial-ly for dinner and no extra money is chargedfor it. “We open up at 4:30 a.m. to preparethe food and customers start coming in by 7:30 a.m.,” says Rajam. Selling 500 idlis perday, David idli shop is on good food on thego.

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Too Good for Critics is a weekly column tocelebrate Namma Chennai’s ‘Kaiyendi Bhavans’ and small eateries. If you can think of a similar place, mail us at feedback@goergo.in

Two things don’t change much at this small eatery in Mandaveli: taste and price!

NANDHINI RAMKUMAR

David Idly Shop at Mandaveli.

PHOTO : R.RAVINDRAN

Everybody loves David

How to get there?David Idly Kadai is situated at 47,Kesava Perumal East Ward Street,Mandaveli. Just take the road straightdown Madaveli market towards StAntony’s School.

TO LAUGH OR NOT TO

Ever played a prank on some one? Or did youever become a victim of one – funny or not-so-funny?Tell us about it in not more than 150 words. Mail your memory tofeedback@ goergo.in with the subject line ‘PRANK’ beforeWednesday evening.

his morning while I was ne-gotiating the busy Nanda-nam signal on my bike, waiting for the trafﬁc signalto turn green, I saw this company bus coming from the opposite di-rection. The yellow signal hadturned red and vehicles from my direction were all set to leave when the blue-white bus jumpedthe signal to tear across the road. A poor cyclist, who was a few yards before all of us, narrowly escaped the driver’s fury. A dozen vehicles honked, thelonely trafﬁc inspector whistledand many screamed ‘

Eppadi po-ran paaru arivu kettavan

…’Sounds similar to something you have got used to seeing andhearing while driving on the city’schoc-a-bloc roads? Some of youmay rant and a few may writeposts on their blog. But a majority do nothing. Which is where www.trafﬁcviolators.com offersan interesting option. That’s thecitizen initiative to make roads asafer place.

Booking the violators

TrafficViolators is a non-profitinitiative started by Abhishek Kant, an employee of Microsoftin Gurgaon, to encourage safedriving. The core participants of the website are citizens who liketo vent their anger on varioustypes of violations on the road.The idea to bring the culprit tobook through the virtual platformstruck Abhishek two years ago,after a youngster in his apartmentblock died in an accident. Neitherthe local community nor the po-lice could do much to proceed with the case.“This is a community initiativeand relies on people accurately reporting the violations on theroad so that other people can be-come aware of the threats posedby dangerous drivers on theroad,” says the community pro-gramme manager, who spent a week designing the website.So, how do you benefit fromnoting the registration numberand putting it on the website?Perhaps, an immediate satisfac-tion that 480 registered users(their current strength) have tak-en note of the violator’s vehiclenumber. “Or, if a person has vio-lated rules more than a couple of times, it calls for an ‘investigativescenario’. One could even joinhands with NGOs to bring justiceto an individual,” says Abhishek.Still wondering about its effec-tiveness? The repeated offendersare top in the list and the mostfrequent type of violator is re-ported. “Interestingly, Chennaitops with the maximum numberof violators,” says Abhishek. Also,if the violator has registered withthe site, with his email id and oth-er details, it is brought to his no-tice.

Interactive

If you are too lazy to note downthe violator’s registration num-ber, you could click photographsor shoot a video that can beuploaded on the site. The ‘ShameBoard’ has all details of the vio-lator – city, vehicle type, violationtype, location, etc. The ‘API’ isanother interesting feature, where all info on the website canbe shared or used by others.Though the police has not joined hands with TrafﬁcViola-tors to book violators, Abhishek says that the day is not far away.“Nowadays, police takes helpfrom citizens in their various so-cial initiatives and, hopefully, this will become a platform to book trafﬁc offenders.”

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A web community initiative that asks eye-witnesses to register violations seen on the road

LIFFY THOMAS

liffythomas@goergo.in

Seen a rogue driver? Report it here!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Ashley News bags gold

Ashley News, the quarterly in-house journal of Ashok Leyland, has wongold at the Association of Business of India(ABCI)’s 48th annualawards.It was judged best among more than 50 entries in the internalmagazine(English) category, for the year 2007.

A cool nap



An icecreamvendortakes anap on hiscart atMarinaBeachafter therains inChennai.

PHOTO: S.S.KUMAR

A voluntary blooddonation and eyedonation awarenesscamp was held at HCLTechnologies (Ambattur6) recently. SeveralHCl-ites donated bloodand registered for eyedonation. “The diversedonors included notonly the softwareengineers, but also thehousekeeping teamand the security guardsof this facility,” said S.Samson, theCommunity ServiceCouncil head of HCL.He added that similarcamps will beconducted across all theHCL facilities inChennai.

Ergo Correspondent

Blood donation camp at HCL

ABHISHEK