JANUARY. It is called chai cutting. And is performed every time you ask for a cuppa. The chai may be grossly overcooked, but you can’t beat the delivery.	FEBRUARY. The students of a local college take local transport to a whole new level. There are a lot of expectations for this. We think it’s sheer joblessness.
MARCH. The famed Chennai auto meter. Legend has it; they used to actually work at some point of time.	APRIL. Visits from the local temple on special occasions are occasions in themselves. You certainly won’t find anyone refusing.
MAY. Completely drunken men, lots of mad dancing and drumming, blocked roads, and some fireworks thrown in for good measure. This is how the locals deal with the departure of a loved one. Death in Chennai is something that is shared. Whether you want to be part of it or not.	JUNE. The second longest beach in the world is home to numerous pairs of hands. They gather together, bringing their respective bodies along to watch the sunset.
JULY. The boss. Some Chuck Norris fan stole a new facts. And has been dispatched for a trip into space.	AUGUST. This is a spectacle. And there’s none like it anywhere else. You won’t need to record it because you won’t forget it anytime soon.
SEPTEMBER. Rowing down what is effectively an open sewer at 5 am might seem mad to some. It however builds character, kills olfactory cells. Both essential for life in Chennai.	OCTOBER. The wine shop. The TASMAC. Wretched government owned places that sell booze. Plastic cups. And pickle. They open early and close early. Reflecting the drinking habits of the locals.
NOVEMBER. The great Valmiki sat here for so long in meditation, an ant hill grew over him. And in that time, he also managed to receive the Ramayana. Some believe it, some don’t, but the fact remains that this temple is still in the middle of the road.	DECEMBER. This is what Chennai is tripping on at the moment. Setting up new statues, painting its walls, restoring its historic buildings and generally doing a bit of sprucing up. Some might say it’s a task too large, but maybe, just maybe, 2011 will see a cleaner, more colourful Chennai.

Why are we writing about a 2010 calendar this late in the year? you ask. There is an explanation for the utter lack of timeliness, but the fact is it doesn’t matter. Because to think of Indian-Bred 2010 as a mere calendar would be to miss the point. This is a work of art which celebrates the quotidian life in Chennai, or Madras, if you prefer the capital’s older name. If you are fortunate enough to have acquired one of the 500 copies its creators, the founders of Whoa Mama Design (WMD), handed out for free, hang it someplace where everyone can enjoy the witty illustrations and commentary.

Live in one place for too long and there is a danger that, over time, you will become inured to both its peculiar charms and its undeniable warts. We know that our capital city is distinct from other metropolises like Shanghai, Singapore City or even Mumbai, but what are some of the core characteristics that set it apart? Capturing the subliminal essence of contemporary Madras in twelve images is no mean task. But the WMD team – Shaun D’sa (art), Anek Ahuja (interactive) and Nishant Philip John (writer) – has done it with style. Those who call Chennai home, hometown, or both, will probably regard Indian-Bred 2010 as a love poem to the city.

The creative trio, with an average age of 25, uses mixed media to depict vibrant local scenes. The old formula – finding a dozen photogenic Madras landmarks, allotting a picture to each month, and writing literal captions to match – is far too passé for them. The new form combines photography and artistic rendering, with pithy commentary to boot. People become vivid pencil illustrations while buildings stay put as photographic elements. “Besides, the idea was to make local graphics stand out in all their glory: be it on a fishing boat, a matchbox label, or the ubiquitous movie poster,” says D’Sa. “We see these things day in and day out, but tend to overlook them.”

While the trio’s imagination soars and carries you along, every frame is still grounded in reality. Take, for instance, the September sheet with the poetic name Gently down the Sewer. As it happens, people do scull in the smelly waters of the Adyar River. Mildly amused at my surprise, D’Sa informs me that the Madras Boat Club conducts rowing training and holds races on that polluted water body. “Anek used to do a bit of rowing himself; he was the one who came up with the title,” he adds. The discarded rubber tyres on the bank are real, as are the buffaloes wallowing in the dark slime. And the fantastic-looking bird perched on the phlegmatic beast? “That red-blue bird probably escaped from the nearby Guindy Park,” D’Sa quips.

Even the unlikeliest scene contains a kernel of truth, and that is precisely what makes deconstructing these images such fun. With December’s Singaara Chennai they end on an optimistic note. “Maybe, just maybe, 2011 will see a cleaner, more colourful Chennai,” John writes in the blurb. These are all good ideas: restoring historic buildings, better civic amenities, and brightly-painted houses to dot the landscape. But a cleaner Chennai is impossible unless resourceful residents, who believe in civic action, decide to bring about this transformation themselves. For that they need to notice their surroundings once again and maybe this calendar will serve as an eye-opener.

Meanwhile, get gritty and enjoy the unique aspects of our city in the theme running through this well-crafted tribute. The limited edition calendar was originally meant for creative people from other design houses, ad agencies, potential clients, friends and family of the WMD folks. The work is bound to find aficionados outside the intended audience. If that fan-following reaches a critical mass, maybe, just maybe, we can clamour for a re-print?