A Japanese wife in Chennai

FINDING HER SPACE Akemi loves the temples of Mylapore and tamarind rice Photo: R. Ragu

August 22 is Madras Day. Raveena Joseph profiles Akemi Yoshii Purushotham who grew up near Hiroshima but is happy to make Chennai her home

It’s 1995 and superstar Rajinikanth, with lustrous leading lady Meena at his side, is riding a horse carriage. He is being chased, of course, by a group of no less than 20 men with carriages of their own. When they chance upon a gorge, Superstar’s super horses rise to the occasion and fly across, leaving the chasers defeated.

In a small town called Yamaguchi near Hiroshima, as this scene from the movie Muthu unfolds on screen, an otherwise stoic Japanese audience breaks into applause. A young Akemi Yoshii, sits among them, clapping along.

Today, Akemi Yoshii Purushotham, a Chennai resident, remains a fan of Rajinikanth movies. In fact, she watches Chandramukhi everyday to pick up a few Tamil words. Her mother-in-law now converses to her in Tamil, so that she can practise the words she is learning. She also watches Tamil television channels in the evenings, even though the jokes still elude her.

“Naan Tamil padikirane,” she giggles, after taking a few minutes to come up with something clever to say. Having lived here for over six years now, she feels that knowing the language helps her understand the city, its people and culture, better. It’s definitely earned her a few fans, one among them an auto driver, who insisted on shaking her hand for her negotiation skills.

“When I first arrived in Chennai, I thought there were many people here. I also thought there were many animals on the road. It was crazy and at the same time, it felt like I’d come back home,” says Akemi.

While studying Gastronomy in Australia, Akemi met some Indians who spiked her interest in visiting India. She made the shift to Chennai in 2008 when she heard about a job opening for a Japanese translator, wanting to continue her research into ancient Indian food. In a couple of months, she met Purushotham Bhasker, a software engineer in the company she worked for, who was interested in learning Japanese. A year later, she married him, even though he only managed to pick up a few odd words of the language.

Five years hence, Akemi has a routine and a rhythm to her life in Chennai. Out of bed by 7 a.m., she starts her day with yoga. She heads to the kitchen to make breakfast right after and has to choose between the usual suspects — idli, dosa, upma or toast. Then, she makes and packs lunch for her husband — rice, kozhambu, koottu. She works as a freelance translator from home and when she has to leave the house, she doesn’t set out without a pottu on her forehead. She often makes a Japanese dinner for herself and when her husband returns from work at 10 p.m., she practises her Tamil and asks to have her doubts cleared.

An expat who has completely taken on the culture of the city, she’s finds her bliss in the finer things that Chennai offers. A lover of Mylapore temples and a fan of prasadam, Akemi particularly likespuliyodarai and sakkarai pongal. She’s been lured by the sound of Carnatic music that takes over the Madhya Kailash Temple during Navratri. She’s tasted sukku kapi while sitting barefeet at Besant Nagar beach. She has woken up early in the mornings to watch women drawing kolams during Margazhi and has abandoned cutlery to indulge her hands during meal times. When her friends visit, she takes them to shop at Nalli Silks and follows it up with masala dosa at Murguan Idli or sandwiches at Amethyst.

Akemi notices the nuances of Chennai and in turn, celebrates its culture. She complains about the heat and the mosquitoes and gets rather amused by serious looking men who stack buckets on their head, hoping to sell them on the road. She has found the simple pleasures of living in Chennai.

Patrick Martinent and Chong Bee Bee

French-born Patrick Martinent met Malaysian of Chinese origin Chong Bee Bee in Singapore. He proposed to her in Jaipur. They decided to settle down in Chennai. 17 years later, they’ve picked up a bit of the language, met many warm-hearted Chennaiites and made the city their own. Accompanied by their two teenage daughters, it’s become tradition to eat South Indian food every Sunday. Their usual haunts include Saravana Bhavan, Murugan Idli Kadai, Apoorva Sangeeta and Hot Chips. Because even though Bee Bee likes her spicy south Indian prawn curry, Patrick’s favourite is the clichéd idli-sambar.

Dominique Lopez

“I had to move to Chennai if I wanted to live with my husband, I had no other option,” says Dominique Lopez. Born and raised in Paris, she came to Chennai to find that it had a different way of living and thinking. There was a lot of adapting to do because the city demanded that she become more accommodating and shed her European mindset. Three-and-half years later, Chennai has grown on her and she makes the most of it. The trees, the sea, the colours at the Koyambedu flower market, the life at Marina beach, women with jasmine in their hair and drives along East Coast Road. There’s an undeniable charm to a city that offers all that.

H August 22, 2014