chennai it may have taken chennai close to two decades since rabbi yaacov deyo in 1998 held the first timed in his consideration anyway matchmaking event in peets caf beverly hills california but the city on sunday finally had its tryst with speed datingthis toi correspondent found herself in the unlikely position of not just covering the event but with encouragement from the organizers participating as well after all an inside scoop would one imagined compensate for the probable awkwardness of pretending to speed date a dozen men and spending six minutes with each man later close to a paroxysm from bottledup nervousness i recalled that i had chanced upon this event while going through margazhi listings mission control american pop culture this is chennai here but strikingly most participants including the women all of whom live in the city long and on evidence of sundays shindig perhaps anachronistically regarded as conservative and oldfashioned were eager even excited to take part ahead of meeting prospective partnerspart of the plan was to see if the startup life of line lol which was hosting the event would live up to its no creeps promise part of the plan was also to take a girlfriend along and have her take part girlfriend alas failed to show and vijay the organiser lol founder and user of a single name suggested that i take partby 315pm a group of 15 women and 20 men were at the venue a popular restobar in nungambakkam each participant was supposed to wear a tag with their first name only for purposes of security but most men showed off their full names anyway there were fewer women than men taking part even though tickets for men cost rs 2999 each or rs 1500 more than those for women and a discount for participants who brought along a woman friend willing to try her luckjust before things got started as the men took their seats at designated tables and the women sat together at a larger table i asked the fellowparticipant next to me are you as nervous as i am she shook her head so unfazed and enthusiastic that it made me even more rattledin retrospect though i realised that there was no call for anxiousness i met 12 men in the age group of 25 to 45 though i was informed that the age group for the event was 23 to 33 and all of them seemed genuinely interested in meeting someone they could develop a good relationship with none of them at least as well as one may judge in six minutes appeared to be a creep to the credit of lolthere were pizzas placed and free drinks to keep participants going and hydrated but we had to raise our voices over the autotunescreeching of pitbull and tpain via powerful speakers the conversations were pleasant enoughone a researcher with iit told me that the airconditioning had left him with a sore