Chennaiculture & etiquette

Most of India is soaked by the south-west monsoon from June to September. Chennai gets the north-east monsoon instead, from roughly October to December, and that is also Bay of Bengal cyclone season. The 2015 floods and Cyclone Michaung in 2023 both hit in this window. If you arrive in July expecting monsoon and find it dry and 38°C, this is why — and it means your flood risk assessment should be about November, not July.

Chennai has flooded catastrophically and nearly run dry within a few years of each other. In 2019 the main reservoirs effectively emptied and the city ran on tankers; in 2015 and 2023 large areas were underwater. Ask a prospective landlord two separate questions: does this area flood in the north-east monsoon, and where does the building's water come from in April and May. Neither answer predicts the other.

Employment visa holders with a visa valid over 180 days must register with the FRRO covering their Chennai address within 14 days of arrival. Fully online through e-FRRO, no agent required. You need passport, address proof, appointment letter, employment contract and proof of annual income.

The Permanent Account Number gates banking, salary and most financial transactions, and without it your employer must deduct tax at a higher rate. Foreign nationals can apply online. Start it in week one.

Tamil Nadu has a long history of resisting Hindi imposition, and Tamil linguistic identity is genuinely strong. English works fine professionally and in the IT corridor, but Hindi is much less useful than in Delhi or Mumbai, and assuming otherwise reads badly. Learning vanakkam, nandri and a handful of Tamil courtesies goes further here than almost anywhere in India.

Chennai sits at sea level on the Coromandel coast, and April and May combine high thirties with high humidity, which is considerably harder to tolerate than Delhi's dry heat at the same temperature. Air conditioning is essential, power backup matters, and the local rhythm shifts to early mornings and evenings. Agni Nakshatram in May is the peak, and locals genuinely plan around it.