The day i almost found the sherlock in me part 1

A few days back my mother wanted me to come along with her and my sister to egmore to buy some cotton material. it seems pantheon road in egmore is famous for its material shops. finally it took a promise of dinner outside to convince me to sit in the car.

we went to this place called "prince plaza"

now before i go to what happened in this Prince plaza, i will give the reader a small bit of wisdom on the "plaza phenomenon" in chennai.

in the early 90s the government of tamil nad gave a number of construction companies, approvals to build smaller version of malls which have the dubious name plaza(except of course spencer plaza which is monstrously big). all these plaza's have a very similar structural plan.

a flight of stairs leads to the ground level which has shops along two corridors of the rectangle. on the side opposite to the entrance there are a couple of lifts. all of them have an atrium and a basement which has predominantly eatery joints. most of these plazas have two or three floors above which there is one floor for the accommodation of its workers, shop employees etc.

now these plazas instantly became a craze with the then youth population of the city. the pink shirt-green pant and maroon salwar clad love birds flocked to these Establishments to relish each others company and the one rupee ice creams. unfortunately for the shop owners, our love birds were severely constrained on the financial front. imported perfumes and pure cotton home decor products were leagues out of their pocket depth. so there was little or no business happening in these 'plazas'.

that is when these plazas fell over to the dark side. they embraced crime and anti-social activities to make ends meet.

now we fast forward a few years.

av is now a class 4 student of kendriya vidyalaya ashok nagar. the video game bug which had bit all his class mates had finally become strong enough to infect his extraordinarily strong mental frame. he coaxes his mother to take him to a "raahat plaza" to buy the latest video games.

there he meets a line of young ugly women decked to their noses with make-up. their haughty appearance and bad make-up affect the nervous system of the young man and he asks his mother, "who are those girls?". one of the decked lizards turns her head and gives av a big smile.

my mother never took me to raahat plaza after that.

this incident early on in my life made me avoid these plazas for the rest of my life (except of course Spencer plaza where the choc fountain cake thing is AWESOME). so this "PRINCE PLAZA" is the first plaza i was about to visit after that lizard experience.

i was apprehensive. i geared myself to meet crime in the eye. the plaza criminals might have got the better of class 4 AV, but college second year AV is an altogether different ball game!

we reach prince plaza.

i look around. recon. most essential.

the trademark flight of stairs leading to the ground level.

i go up the stairs. one step at a time expecting the line of lizards to greet me with their bad make-up and scaly looks, any moment.

i never knew that that day, i will almost discover the sherlock holmes gene in me.