One of my favorite, interesting (read: weird) things about Chennai
are the addresses. Every address has an old number and a new number, which seemingly
indicates that at some point in the past, all the houses were renumbered.
I know that many streets, too, were renamed. Many street
names were switched from their British Colonial names to new Indian names (in
much the same way Madras became Chennai), and Livingston Lane became
R. P.
Ramaswammy Lane.
Fascinatingly you need both the old number and the new number to find where you are
going. I can’t imagine that the Indian postal service renumbered all the houses
to make things more complicated, to make people remember two numbers instead of
just one, so I am cautiously optimistic that at some point in our two years in
Chennai, we will only need the new number and can forget the old number.
But for some reason I don’t think that’s going to be the
case.
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