The tale of 2 cities within Chennai!

This post is all about the tale of 2 cities. Cities which are completely different from one another. Cities which are a part of same city i.e. Chennai. Yet they continue to baffle and surprise me. For starters, i hereby declare that i have shifted from the Pallavaram-Chromepet belt to the Mambalam belt.
            One can keep on writing about them. One feeds the OMR - IT junta while the other feeds the government apice Mount road oldies. Rewind a couple of months back, on any weekend which falls immediately after the salary day, i will be working as a loadman , buying monthly groceries at a supermarket such as reliance fresh/spencers/nilgris. Rice costs 65 rs per kg in my old city and there will be lot of people standing in queue. The length of the queue will be more than the length of the queue in PDS shop which sells rice at Re 1 . Only cards and sodexo coupons will be exchanged.
          Fast track it to last week, the same loadman i.e. me, searched for reliance fresh in google map and went there on the  same weekend falling after salary day. No prizes for guessing, there was not even a single person there. As usual, the loadman did his job and returned home. Later, i came to know that the street side veggie vendors and our famous annachi shops sell the same items at very much lesser price. Good quality rice starts at 50 rs i learnt.
          Another thing was traffic. The worst traffic i had seen earlier was Velachery signal traffic. Any day you start early from office at 5 30, you can reach home early. After shifting to new home, this appavi software engineer tried it once and was royally screwed at every signal starting from tidal ,madya kailash and all other signals.Traffic experts told me later that government offices close at 5 and any travel around 6 o clock on mount road should be avoided. Another day, another lesson learnt. Try to reach velachery signal by around 8:30 and all of the 1 lakhs of software engineers will gerao the junction. With same feverish feeling, i started at 8:30 few days back and what greeted me on mount road was near empty signals(by chennai standards :) ) . Thank god, the pondy bazaar crowd don't have night life shopping habit!
      Street knowledge tells me that maids cost less here compared to the OMR belt. Mambalam neighbours give you the strange-what-creature-are-you look when you say that you work in OMR. They are more curious to know who are the members in the house while i didn't know my next door guy in my previous city.The patti next door is more curious to know whether the old lady in your house  is your mother or mother-in-law. You will find that lengthy train-like houses where you can see the toilet door from entrance and you will be amused to find a TVS 50 standing in front. Every small shop you will find some mama  bargaining for something. Inner roads are narrow and one guy jokingly said, any 1 inch deviation while walking will make some 2 wheeler to ride his bike on your back.
           Life throws up surprises and teaches you lessons even though some times, you don't have intention to learn. In one way or another, this has thrown me out of my comfort zone which i have been enjoying for years.